I need to vent. I wrote this essay in the spring of 2000, after my high school graduation (Alief Elsik). Recently I found this VALEDICTORIAN address by some proclaimed 30 year old soldier in Iraq: Son Tao's Valedictory address . I am PISSED. He has been on the that BBS for four years, and serves as a staff member. He writes messages on that site about his position in Iraq. Now, I know he is a soldier. I respect his sacrifices. But c'mon, this is freakin' blatant. I submitted a post on the firing squad forum asking him to acknowledge me and i got: "If you have a private problem with any member of our forum, please take it up with them in private. Your "Calling out..." thread has been removed from the public boards. Currently, Son Tao is somewhere in the vicinity of Samarra, Iraq. He is only able to access the Internet occasionally, when AK-47 rounds aren't whizzing by his head. If you would like to accuse him of plagarism, I would suggest that you patiently wait for him to return from defending your freedom to do so." Please - tell me I should be steaming. Who knows what kind of nutcase this man is? He could be pretending to be a soldier for all i know.
If true, that's pretty messed up. I would feel violated if someone blatantly stole my work like that.
Wow. I would be absolutely livid right now if I were you. And the assumption that this kid's plagiarism is somehow acceptable because he's off "defending freedom" and having bullets whiz by his head... Just unbelievable.
he's well-loved on the firing line. He posts updates on his journeys to Iraq and the members send him care packages.
As a Vietnamese-American, I'm...well, as a semi-decent human, I understand your anger and side with you. You can email him for an apology. Otherwise, it just depends on what you want to do. How pissed off are you? Do you need for him to repent to you? Do you want to forgive him? Can you just let it go? Being a soldier does not make a person infallable. We are all creatures of sin. Don't let that attitude of him being better than you displayed by the guy who emailed you...don't let it bother you. My best friend is an Marine Officer in charge of 50 people, sometimes hundreds. Enlisted people fukk up all the time. Not to say that officers don't or that there aren't great enlistees. But soldiers mess up, and some mess up a lot. Some are just idiots. Plagarism is not honorable, and could be an honor violation. If you really want to, you could take this up with his commanding officer and he would be punished. Of course, you'd have to know who he is. But it is true, if a soldier does wrong (and plagarism is wrong), his officer will punish him. Being a soldier does not give you a carte blanche. Actually, I know that Marines are held to a higher standard in terms of moral conduct. It is not just not breaking the law. You can do something legal, but dishonorable, and be severly punished in the Marine Corps.
Honestly, I wouldn't want to ruin the guy's career or anything. I just want him to apologize and remove any mention of the essay. I don't think that's asking too much.
Without having read the essays. I'm assuming this is straight up plaigerism. My take on that is the following. If someone uses your words I'm ok with it. I take it as a compliment as long as they change something somewhere. As long as they do something to make it better. I'm ok with it. I love that slogan, "We don't make the thing you use, we make the thing you use better." The world basically runs on that assumption. It's ok to copy and mimic, just make some kind of modification. Even if you copy whole sentences or papragraphs I think it's ok. As long as you make some improvements or attempt to make some improvements. So I actually believe that plaigerism on that level is good. That being said, if it is verbatim then he has done nothing for anybody. And that is wrong. This really comes back to copyright law. Which in my opinion, is changing, and will have to change. Charles Dickens fought plaigerism to his death. Henry Fielding praised it. Both are great writers.
You need to send him an email that says something like the following: In the Spring of 2000 I wrote an essay that you have since co-opted and used as your own work. That was a very difficult essay for me to write and although we share similar backgrounds, I am deeply offended that you chose to pass MY work off as your own. I demand that you post an immediate apology on the forums that you have posted MY essay. If not, I will forced to send proof of your plagiarism to MIT (or wherever he got accepted) so they can see what a good student they have accepted.
This sounds like the best idea, though I may "threaten" him with something more public - it could be a good human interest story for some news show or something.
Man, I'd be LIVID. And I understand how mad you are, as I've had someone attempt to steal my intellectual property before. Honestly, since he's publically taking credit for something you wrote, the vengeful side of me says you should demand a public apology. Let the punishment fit the crime. If he refuses, I'd contact the school where he gave the valedectory address AND the school he's going to, which I'm SURE has an honor code. It wouldn't make you feel better, but it would teach this guy not to steal/plagerize.
What a crappy position. I don't think you should have called him out publically though, not yet anyway. You should have emailed him until he responded. If after a while, he didn't, then you should of emailed a moderator on there. It kind of sucks the way they're playing the "protecting your freedom" card. Nobody is perfect, even our soldiers can be douche bags. This guy may have the character to serve, but that doesn't give him free pass to steal other people's intellectual property and claim it as his own to his fellow gun buddies. How did you come accross this btw?
That REALLY sucks. I'm not sure what is worse, the plagarism or the fact that you got told to piss off because the guy who stole your stuff is a soldier in the war.
Yeah, I emailed him. I doubt he'll ever respond. Ha - I have to be honest about how I found this. Every person googles himself when they get bored right? I found it through one of the "similar pages" link.
