In the above screenshot (click for a larger version), compare the text in the left screen (taken from a blogpost about Flemish illustrator Ray Gilles that I wrote in 2008) and the one in the right screen (taken from this blog, published a week ago).
A reader (Thanks, Katie) pointed me towards certain similarities between both articles. Â I am a bit miffed that the I Love Belgium writer simply copy-pasted my line about Gilles’ style. Â OK, so you borrow a line from an obscure source or two, change a bit here, add a word there, and you’ve got yourself a whole new article. Â Not really fair, and a practice more to be expected in your average high school paper than on the Internet, but a practice nevertheless.
What I cannot let pass, however, is the fact that the I Love Belgium hack blatantly takes over whole paragraphs from a quote that I make from a book by Gaston Durnez, one of Belgium’s most venerated cultural journalists. Â Not only did he simply copy the paragraphs without mentioning the source, he was even too lazy to even ever so slightly change the translation (as the book was in Dutch, I translated the profile).
That’s just shameful. Â Try to attract attention for forgotten graphic geniuses all you like, but at least write your own pieces. Â And don’t have the effing nerve to paste a copyright symbol under your hack work. Â We will notice…
