Carlo The Crook

Edit: Carlo has tak­en down his site. I’ve put up a cached ver­sion. Thanks to every­one for the sup­port — goes to show that a voice can count for some­thing on the inter­net.

Carlo, who lives some­where in Metro Manila and some­times, not most of the time, in Pangasinan, Philippines, has stolen from me. There are oth­ers who steal my work, but this is usu­al­ly the pic­tures I take, which they use as back­grounds for their own sites (most com­mon­ly the star­ry sky at Bancroft). I try not to take offence to this; the file sizes are com­mon­ly small, so it does­n’t make much of a dent in my month­ly band­width. There are also peo­ple like Sophia, who has made her pres­ence known to me, and uses my words every so often in her own writ­ing as a flat­ter­ing ges­ture.

Carlo is dif­fer­ent.

He’s tak­en one of my entries and passed it off as his own.
Word for word.

This entry, which I strug­gled days to write, into which I poured my heart, was post­ed on his blog a day after mine. He did change the title, although I think this hard­ly ame­lio­rates his actions. He also used my Petal Game pic­ture (per­haps with­out notic­ing my water­mark in the low­er right-hand cor­ner), as well as a line from my post inspired by Eternal Sunshine, for a dif­fer­ent entry.

It sad­dens me to think not of how eas­i­ly some­one can steal things on the inter­net, but how will­ing they are to do it. I can only won­der how many oth­er peo­ple have stolen from me. Lorelle, who offers some great points on what to do if some­one steals your con­tent, sug­gests open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in com­bi­na­tion with as a let­ter of cease and decist. And while I’m in com­plete agree­ment with this, I felt that for the first time I should write about it instead, to make it pub­lic, so that oth­ers may be aware of their own works. There are peo­ple who will quote with­out ref­er­enc­ing. There are peo­ple who will take with­out return­ing.

Because what’s the point of blog­ging, when one’s words aren’t one’s own?

10 comments

  1. HA
    I due­ly vis­it­ed the creeps site, and left a nasty mes­sage for him
    tee­hee
    that’s crap
    I cant even imag­ine how shal­low this fink is in real life…
    as shal­low as pond scum

  2. hi! thanks for the kind words you left on my blog about good­byes and let­ting go. i have been blog­ging for 3 years now. there’s a huge part of me that feels tired and indif­fer­ent. that’s some­thing i have to deal with for now.… but you were right when you said it’s time to let go. it is.

    let­ting go is some­thing that just hap­pens from with­in. it’s not when you say good­bye to every­body. it’s when you know from with­in that there’s noth­ing to go back to any­more. [okay, i’m bab­bling.]

    and i’m sor­ry about hav­ing had your entries copied. i know that must have been equal­i­ty frus­trat­ing on your part to see some­body pass your thoughts as their own.

  3. Hopefully Carlo will now try and devel­op an iden­ti­ty of his own ;)

  4. Thanks for vis­it­ing my blog.

    Geez. I don’t know what to say. I used to vis­it that blog. Wow. That came as a shock for me. Wow. And I empathized. I feels some­what manip­u­lat­ed. I dun­no. Really am shocked.

  5. The pics were tak­en out­side a curch near a park in Lund in Sweden. Very beau­ti­ful :)

    That’s pret­ty sick of peo­ple to do that. I guess they have no life of their own. They are jeal­ous and they want atten­tion. I’ve alway thought that the best thing to do is to take evi­dence and then make it all pub­lic.

    And I agree with Bean; hope­ful­ly he will try to devel­op an iden­ti­ty of his own. But I doubt he will make it :P

  6. It’s sad­den­ing such peo­ple have to stoop so low as to steal oth­ers’ works, for what­ev­er rea­son (none which are jus­ti­fi­able).

  7. Oh my fuck­ing god!

    Like Jeeper, I used to be an audi­ence of his blog. How could he fool the hell out of us? This is an out­rage.

    Again, oh my fuck­ing god!

  8. Hopefully Carlo won’t be steal­ing any­thing from any­one again. And Amy, your beau­ti­ful, com­ment on his site were per­fect, I could­n’t have said it bet­ter myself.

  9. i dont know what to say… i did check his site and i was shocked… i want to apol­o­gize for him being his “kababayan” but i guess he bet­ter do it him­self…

    im sor­ry it hap­pened to you… good thing u found out.

    i like ur writ­ings very much that i linked u up. i hope u wont mind… but u can always tell me and i’ll glad­ly remove your url from my list.

    thanks…

  10. i was try­ing to open your sitelink from my page but i guess im includ­ed in the list of unau­tho­rized view­ers. it’s ok. i will have to remove the dead­link…

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