Plagiarism: Twitter apology and fake comments
By Techgirl

SpiceJet’s inflight magazine ‘SpiceRoute’ promotes the carrier, its travel destinations and everything its customers would be interested in.  Unfortunately for SpiceJet,  its Aug, 2009 issue has an article ‘What’s in Your Khomcha?’ which has been plagiarized from material published by popular Delhi blog and Orkut community Eating Out In Delhi (aka EOID).

On August 20, we had reported on how this plagiarism by chef and author, Hirak Gautam, was making waves in the Indian online world.

Hirak preferred to Twitter an apology rather than ring or/and meet in person.

Now Eating Out In Delhi (EOID) is reporting that fake comments have been planted in the blog to attack its founder Hemanshu Kumar who protested the online theft.

When EOID first blogged about being the victim of plagiarism, many members of the foodie community and general public wrote in expressing support and offering advice.  Then the fake comments starting coming in. Samples of the fake comments are

“
Shekhar Virmani #37 God! Hemanshu (With a E) (a spelling mistake in a writer’s name) you really have a lot wella time…….I started reading this blog that it may be interesting but it seems the main agenda is commercial and not expression. Shitty Blog………
 
Rohit Sharma #38 Wow! Guys, can we please not encourage such profit driven activities. Blogs are for free expressions and not to be used for commercial reasons or personal for that matter. People should come directly to a blog instead of mass-emails. That now becomes for-profit. Not cool guys. I hope that all the comments are not in-house generated (few guys sitting in same room and writing comments). GREAT JOB HEMANSHU.

Himanshu Sharma #39 Is it true…all the comments are generated by Hemanshu’s employees or friends?????????????? Or any one real???
“

Only problem?  Shekhar, Rohit and Himanshu Sharma attacking EOID are the same person.  EOID founder Hemanshu Kumar looked up his computer records to tell his readers: “It might be of interest to those who are following this thread that “Roshini Vadera”, “Himanshu Sharma”, “Rohit Sharma” and “Shekhar Virmani” are all posting from the exact same IP address: 122.162.114.183.Please ignore trolls. This thread will [continue to] be moderated for trolling.”

Most net savvy people in India know that such fake comments are used to push political, economic, cultural and personal agendas on sites.

EOID has met lawyers in an attempt to legally resolve this plagiarism.
 

(Techgoss had published the following story on August 20, 2009)

SpiceJet plagiarism: Twitter apology
By Techgirl

Low cost airline SpiceJet inflight magazine ‘SpiceRoute’ promotes the carrier, its travel destinations and everything its customers would be interested in.  Unfortunately for SpiceJet,  its Aug, 2009 issue has an article ‘What’s in Your Khomcha?’ which has been plagiarized from material published by popular Delhi blog and Orkut community Eating Out In Delhi (aka EOID).

And now this plagiarism by chef and author, Hirak Gautam, is making waves in the Indian online world.

Food forum Eating Out In Delhi (EOID) was started by Hemanshu Kumar who lecturers at the Delhi School of Economics. It is popular and has been profiled by national media like Hindustan Times and India Today.  So, it was just a question of time before material plagiarized from this foodie blog would be detected.

On August 19, EOID founder Hemanshu Kumar blogged about how the SpiceJet magazine had published content from his site without any attribution. Within 24 hours, it is been reported in national blogs like Desipundit.

Normally, when someone is caught plagiarizing, he/she are best advised to stand up and publicly apologize for the mistake.  A sincere apology and an attempt to make amends will pacify most people.

But Hirak Gautam who wrote the article for the SpiceJet magazine (with unattributed help from EOID) wanted to kill two birds with one stone.  He first set up a brand new account on micro blogging tool Twitter and then twittered an apology to EOID.

“
@hemanshukumar Hey! Didn’t mean to plagiarize. Ws rning on a ddline n jst usd ur blg as a bkgrnd rscrch material. Sry if I offended u.Peace!
”

Obviously, a Twitter apology was not sufficient.  The magazine publisher Prakash Johari of Maxposure Media Group has emailed in offering “our sincere apologies to all who we have offended inadvertently. The article was contributed by a freelance writer, who is a chef with a hotel in Delhi. We are in touch with him and we assure you that strict action will be taken on this issue.”

I think the Twitter apology harmed him more than helped in making amends.  What do you think?

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com