I spend most of my time after work updating one of my three blogs. As I was teetering on the brink of aloneness and loneliness, I have since few days ago been holing myself up in my room trying to find instead blogs on the net, particularly those within my WordPress community, about how to cope with being alone and being lonely.
While I found a lot of must-reads among the blogs I viewed, I had this strange feeling of surprise – perhaps, shock – when I discovered my write-up “Kevin Villanueva: A Phenomenal Celebrity,” which I posted on April 6, saw posted on another blog on April 12 or after with a title changed to “Kevin Villanueva: Sophisticated Student.”
This is somehow reminiscent of the days when I, working in a Cebu’s local newspaper, was at times tasked to find on PNA, AP, AFP or Reuters some news stories to be posted in the Nation, World and Business sections with edited headlines and contents. It is acceptable, though, as our newspaper is, I think, officially subscribed to these news agencies, and changes made on these news stories by section editors were in accordance with the newspaper’s newswriting standard.
“Kevin Villanueva: Sophisticated Student” is not a reblogging. It is not a crib either. To call it a reblogging or a crib is inappropriate. You just call it a copy of my own. After all, my post is not copyrighted. Or, is it copyrightable? But there is one thing for certain. Before coming up with an article about Kevin Villanueva, I sought his permission by sending him a private message on Facebook. The message was, thus:
“Hi Kevin. I saw on Facebook your photo with a message so emotionally touching to everyone. May I ask permission to post it on my blog, “Of Life and The Living” (URL: www.oflifendtheliving.wordpress.com)? If you may, may I get some info about you on [erratum: this should have read ‘from’] your Facebook profile? This info will be used for me to write a short feature article about you.”
And I got his permission. “Sure 🙂 Thank you :),” Kevin replied.
In “Kevin Villanueva: Sophisticated Student,” some parts of the first and last paragraphs were missing – I don’t know if they were intentionally omitted – and Kevin’s photo taken by the grave of his parents was placed on the right side and the cropped photo of his face, on the left side.
There is nothing wrong with reblogging a post as long as credit is given to the original blogger. In fact, I reblogged on March 6, 2012 a post, “Highest and Best…..” from Tracie Louise Photography. For you to know if I gave Tracie Louise due credit, click this link http://wp.me/p11Gpl-gN.
But there is something wrong with plagiarizing it or posting it as if it were your own. It is an act of cheating. In plagiarism, you are cheating not yourself alone but your readers as well.
Related articles
- Kevin Villanueva: A Phenomenal Celebrity (oflifeandtheliving.wordpress.com)
- A Touching Graduation Photo Goes Viral: Kevin Villanueva (marvelmom.wordpress.com)
- How do you know he is cheating? (bloggingforher.wordpress.com)
- Young manâs graduation photo by parents’ grave moves netizens (technology.inquirer.net)
- How a graduation photo inspired thousands (michaellego.wordpress.com)
- Viral photo of the week: The Graduate (rojan88.wordpress.com)
- Kevin Villanueva: Sophisticated Student (ryandanielle01.wordpress.com)
There’s a reason why we have a reblog or share button. So weirdo that there are people who were too lazy to come up with their own ideas. If they don’t want to give credit to other people’s work, no matter how silly it is, then they don’t have a choice but to use their own fuckin’ neurons.
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