Sunday, April 10, 2005
One Crime doesn't Deserve Another
I was surfing Kuro5hin and was attracted to a story written by a pretty shameless troll there about a girl who was caught plagiarising when she asked some guy online to write a paper about Hinduism. Unfortunately, she asked the wrong guy and her act of plagiarism has made her famous on the Internet... I've always told people that if they want something to be kept private, to communicate through a secure channel... definitely not online! Course, no one ever believes me, and then stuff like this happens. On the other side of the story, I'll give you a quote about this blogger's website, just so you know what type of person she was busted by.
Quote:
A Week of Kindness, New York’s only sketch comedy group, until recently was a bad handball team, with a bad handball team name and a bad handball game. We began to dabble in sketch comedy when a grizzled kinesiologist with a magnificent collection of beards and osteoporotic strength told us on his deathbed that it would be good cross-training for handball. The rest is glorious legend.
You know they have to be good with a story like that right? :-o Anyways, I'm not really interested in the aspect of this story regarding the plagiarism as it's clearly wrong without any doubt and if you want to read about that, you can check out the guy's website, A Week of Kindness. I went ahead and used Google's method for preventing the link from being spidered since I really have no desire to reward someone who has performed that type of cruelty on another person with any type of PageRank boost.. Back to the story, I'm not interested in the plagiarism, but instead the privacy violations this blogger has committed.
I have to take a strong stance against such privacy violations, as I have always taken a benevolent stance with people I know on my own website. I don't mention names because I feel as though I'd be violating their right to privacy, although I do have some pictures up. Your privacy is safe here, I have never had any desire to embarrass anyone I know on this website... that would be evilness far beyond my league. I had to bring this up because it isn't anyone else's business about what goes on in an instant message, or in a conversation, or even what happened that day. The right thing to do was alert school officials of the conversation, send them a transcript, and then wash his hands of the matter instead of blowing it up into a big farce and publicity stunt for himself. The blogger, Nate Kushner, went out of his way to humiliate this girl online, and now people are harassing her and he's made a name of him and his website that way. Is this the type of treatment you would appreciate from someone online? I would most certainly would not!!
In the end, one crime has been matched with another. A student was caught plagiarisng, but in the process, the person who caught her violated her right to privacy online for personal gain and has done nothing to protect it after the whole matter was resolved. Sure, you can't erase everything on the Internet, but you can remove the damning evidence and respect someone's privacy. It's just simple courtesy afterall. ¶ 4:18 AM
I was surfing Kuro5hin and was attracted to a story written by a pretty shameless troll there about a girl who was caught plagiarising when she asked some guy online to write a paper about Hinduism. Unfortunately, she asked the wrong guy and her act of plagiarism has made her famous on the Internet... I've always told people that if they want something to be kept private, to communicate through a secure channel... definitely not online! Course, no one ever believes me, and then stuff like this happens. On the other side of the story, I'll give you a quote about this blogger's website, just so you know what type of person she was busted by.
Quote:
A Week of Kindness, New York’s only sketch comedy group, until recently was a bad handball team, with a bad handball team name and a bad handball game. We began to dabble in sketch comedy when a grizzled kinesiologist with a magnificent collection of beards and osteoporotic strength told us on his deathbed that it would be good cross-training for handball. The rest is glorious legend.
You know they have to be good with a story like that right? :-o Anyways, I'm not really interested in the aspect of this story regarding the plagiarism as it's clearly wrong without any doubt and if you want to read about that, you can check out the guy's website, A Week of Kindness. I went ahead and used Google's method for preventing the link from being spidered since I really have no desire to reward someone who has performed that type of cruelty on another person with any type of PageRank boost.. Back to the story, I'm not interested in the plagiarism, but instead the privacy violations this blogger has committed.
I have to take a strong stance against such privacy violations, as I have always taken a benevolent stance with people I know on my own website. I don't mention names because I feel as though I'd be violating their right to privacy, although I do have some pictures up. Your privacy is safe here, I have never had any desire to embarrass anyone I know on this website... that would be evilness far beyond my league. I had to bring this up because it isn't anyone else's business about what goes on in an instant message, or in a conversation, or even what happened that day. The right thing to do was alert school officials of the conversation, send them a transcript, and then wash his hands of the matter instead of blowing it up into a big farce and publicity stunt for himself. The blogger, Nate Kushner, went out of his way to humiliate this girl online, and now people are harassing her and he's made a name of him and his website that way. Is this the type of treatment you would appreciate from someone online? I would most certainly would not!!
In the end, one crime has been matched with another. A student was caught plagiarisng, but in the process, the person who caught her violated her right to privacy online for personal gain and has done nothing to protect it after the whole matter was resolved. Sure, you can't erase everything on the Internet, but you can remove the damning evidence and respect someone's privacy. It's just simple courtesy afterall. ¶ 4:18 AM
