Stolen
I'm so angry. I was reading the Jan-Feb issue of Floodgates, DUMC's church newsletter, when I had a sense of déjà vu. Wait a minute, this sounds very familiar...
Bloody hell! My work's been plagiarised!!
You know, I've sometimes wondered if I'd one day come across one of my works on the Internet -- perhaps a poem or a blog post -- on somebody else's webpage, without crediting the writing to me. But this is worse -- this is in a church publication. And it wasn't copied wholesale -- paragraphs and sentences were lifted from the original work, very slightly modified (a word or two changed here and there) and plonked together to create a shorter article. Trying to be devious or just trying to be brief? You tell me.
The writing was taken from a review of Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life, which I'd written in August 2003 for the Graduates Christian Fellowship Malaysia (GCF) newsletter. Which I'd also happened to post on my blog.
You can judge for yourself:
The Floodgates article vs. my original post.
Incidentally, I'm acquainted with the person who ostensibly "wrote" the review published in Floodgates. I don't know him well at all, but we met at the iBridge camp last Oct (iBridge being the GCF's young graduates' arm). I have to say I'm very disappointed and any regard I might have had for this person has... substantially diminished.
I'm so angry. I know it sounds corny, but everything I write is a part of me. When someone takes it and pretends to have written it instead, I feel violated, like something precious has been stolen from me. You wouldn't take my clothes, wear them, and say they are yours -- why take my writing, publish it, and say it is yours?
I'll be writing to the Floodgates editor to complain. This whole thing makes me feel sick to my stomach...
UPDATE (May 31): Please see follow-up post, Measured thoughts. Comments are now closed on this post, because I don't think anything edifying can be added to what has already been said.
UPDATE (June 2): The issue has now been resolved. He apologised.