How I Fought Plagiarism And The Ways To Curb It! - II

*             *              *

Jolly sardar stretched his hand as he saw me coming after my first lecture. Balwinder aka Ballu has been studying with me for the last one year but I have never seen such a big smile on his face while greeting me. We made a handshake.

‘What an article, sir jee?’  said he.

‘Did you read it?’ I asked him with a surprise.

‘Almost half, then, there was a power cut. But, what I read was superb. You really write well,’ he said still holding my palms.

‘Just trying my hand on blogging,’ I said as I slowly pulled out my palm from his long, heavy fingers. We both moved in opposite directions in fraction of seconds.

Although it felt great getting appreciation from my classmates but there was still a pain in me of the last night. I attended my lectures for the day and went back home.

* * *

After having my dinner for the day, I wrote a long post mentioning my blog post link, Aakash blog’s link and my grievances at indiblogger family at the facebook. Priya posted the link to other blog posts or websites from where Aakash copied his several other blog posts. Several other fbians joined our discussion on the post and started giving their suggestions. I was talking to them when suddenly a chat message popped out. It was from someone named, Namitha. I greeted her. She suggested me to post comments at Aakash’s blog and also to ask my friends to do the same. I did not understand the logic behind it. But Namitha persuaded me by saying that we should try to get so many comments there that the blogger feel ashamed of his plagiarism act. Priya was the first to comment on Aakash’s blog, followed by few others who were part of the discussion in the indiblogger family at facebook. I started pinging all my online friends and requested them to comment on Aakash’s blog. Soon Balwinder, Aastha, Naren, Aabhar and few others commented on his blog. Every comment was cursing the blogger for his act. It was total ten comments when Naren asked me to stop.

‘He might not be  aware of the evil. Is it right to post so many bad comments?’ he asked me.

‘What can we do otherwise?’ I replied with another question.

‘Can’t we wait a little? The guy does not seem to be online.’

I thought for a moment. I was of course hurt by the act but the good part somewhere deep in my heart still did not agree to hurt the ones who hurt me.

‘OK, we should stop today with the comments but if the guy does not remove his blog post after two days, we will continue with it with a faster speed,’ I declared finally.

Naren agreed for my condition with a smile. We all departed for the day and decided to act more rigorously if we did not achieve our goal after several comments.

*            * *

Few more appreciations from few others literary lovers came to my chatbox within next days. The pain was reducing gradually and slowly but I almost decided not to blog anymore. But, then she pinged. Who’s she? She is Deepika. I added her just the last day when saw a friend request from her. We exchanged the normal hi/hello stuff and then she sent me the link to a facebook profile. It was profile of Aakash Mishra.

‘Are you sure? Is he the same guy?’ I asked Deepika.

‘Yeah, I am chatting with him. :)’ she replied back.

I took Deepika’s pardon and tried to read about me of Aakash’s profile. He was some engineering student from some engineering college from the NCR region. Luckily, he was in my friend list so I was able to get all his details now. In the recent months, my friend list has been increasing with greatest speed from requests from literary lovers and people who somehow read my blog. He might be one of them. I sent the profile link to Priya. She cursed me by saying that she is seeing no input from my side to punish the culprit. I could just smile at her comment.

‘Hi,’ I wrote to Aakash.

‘Hey,’ he greeted me back.

We shared some normal conversations before I gave him my blog link asking him whether he copied my post from my blog.

‘Yes,’ he replied it without hesitation.

‘Have you heard about plagiarism?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he replied in no seconds.

What should I say to a guy who was so innocent, who did not know the meaning of plagiarism? He just completed his higher secondary school last year and joined some engineering. He believed that knowledge is important but not the way how it is shared or from where it is copied? How could I punish such an innocent guy? We did not exchange any words for few minutes.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked him after several minutes.

‘Was searching for the meaning of plagiarism.. Is online from mobile, so, it’s taking a little time,’ he explained.

I laughed out loudly on his sentence. I took a deep breath and explained him about the act of plagiarism and the plagiarized articles. He took no seconds in deleting his copied blog post. He promised me that he will delete all his plagiarized articles in a day or two or will try to give credit to the original authors and also will renovate his blog. I felt better after two full days. We talked about several other topics. He was greatly impressed by the talks we made and asked me for a guest lecture at his college. I would have loved to have the honor. But, I spend all my lectures sleeping in the first bench. How could I give another set of students same sort of torture? It took me long to convince him that I won’t be able to come to his college for the lecture. We still chat several times on several other topics and I really find Aakash a nice guy.

So, this is my story of my plagiarized article. I hope I did not bore you much. By the way, there are a lot of ways to curb this act. There are good html codes available on internet which when you paste in your blog/website can disable right clicking of the mouse thus preventing the copying option. But if you are not comfortable so much with html codes, you can always use copyscape.com. There are limited number of times when you can use it. But, if you need an urgency for it, you can surely buy a premium copy. And, if not there are always people like Namitha who come with a boom to save bloggers like me. Go on commenting the blog. By the way, I am not using html code for this blog post, nor will use copyscape for it. Why? Because I want you to share this short story in your blog/website even without giving me a credit because some kid taught me some day that knowledge should be spread, no matter from where we copy-paste it. That’s all for today, keep blogging, keep smiling. Bbye for now.. :)