Nerve Endings Firing Away

The Pinto episode has taken an interesting turn. The Indi-blogosphere has been abuzz with this new found plagiarist who literally "cut-pasted" whole posts on his blog (including comments!) in spite of having a contradictory “Why Do I Blog” section. Everyone jumped at the chance to uncover this person who didn’t respond to any emails earlier. Amit Varma took the lead in uncovering the bugger’s actions which later revealed that he was into much more nefarious activities like credit-card fraud and domain name registration frauds.

Flurry of emails and a phone call later, Mr. Pinto finally responded and feigned total ignorance on blog etiquette. He confessed that he had lifted passages from other blogs but denied any malicious intent behind doing so. He simply said that he didn’t think it was wrong to do so and didn’t know that the writings were copyrighted. Although most of the Indi-blog writing is not copyrighted (in the legal sense of the word although is supported by the CC license), lifting whole passages and giving the impression that you wrote them is certainly not fair game. In that case, the top reasons for his “Why do I blog?” should have been — to compile a list of noteworthy posts. But not providing a reference or hyperlink to his source is inexcusable. A simple note that — I found so-and-so interesting on this blog — would have sufficed; even without the hyperlink. An ignorant novice would do that; unless you expressly do not want to. But for argument’s sake, if we are to believe Mr. Pinto, is ignorance excusable? The law certainly doesn’t allow us to hide behind the cloak of ignorance. Imagine saying — I took the money lying in his house because I didn’t know it was wrong to do so. You would be laughed off as being extremely naïve.

Regards the other serious charges of credit card fraud and domain name registration fraud, he insists that his other sites were hacked and he had no control over their content. He goes on to add that he has removed them now. Am I to believe that he hadn’t noticed that his sites were hacked and were involved in illegal activities until we pointed it out to him? If yes, he should have withdrawn the sites immediately.

Finally, in an email to Amit, he paints himself as a hapless victim of our relentless umbrage on his website’s content. He claims to have been a victim of “branding”(?). Amit has rightly demanded an unconditional apology on his website including a detailed explanation of the activities on his other sites. Let us see how he responds.

Does the Indi-blogosphere have its own little “Rathergate” now?