ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

I was surprised to find my article - ergative verb (http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/639403 & http://tw.group.knowledge.yahoo.com/english-forum/article/view?aid=11) showing up on someone else's article.  One (http://hi.baidu.com/hdwangqinghua/blog/item/3a9cf533d8849144ad4b5f37.html) referred back to knowledge group where I also published that article, so I wasn't so mad.   But the other person called "eliza123" 旋 using a nickname very similar to my name answering a question at 北大中文论坛 http://www.pkucn.com/viewthread.php?tid=226387 decided to be a copycat and copied every single word I wrote without referring to the source, my article.  

I am still thinking of what to do next.  I know that pirating is very popular in China and the Chinese cares little about copyright.  Maybe I will send a note to 北大中文论坛 to inform them of the copyright issue. 

Anyway, I thought that I might have encountered someone called eliza123 while I was answering questions at yahoo knowledge.  I might be wrong but my faded memory seems to recall that she questioned my usage of "grammar error" and stated that I had committed plenty of grammatical errors when in one occasion I used the word "grammar error" while pointing out a grammatical error made by someone who answered a yahoo knowledge question.  (see http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/639604)  Anyway, if my memory did not play a trick on me, it would be really interesting to see that she decided to be a copycat of my article after criticizing my grammar.  It is even peculiar that she chose to use a nickname so similar to my name while copying the article I wrote.    I cannot stand an imposter like this.  I spent all my valuable time writing articles to provide free English tutoring.  I don’t have to do this since I don’t get any monetary reward out of it.  All this time I spent without asking for any return.  I am frustrated and angry to see someone else just took my article and pretended to be his/her own.   

By the way, how did I find out all of these?  I have counter statistics to thank for.  I signed up for counter statics since I moved my blog from Yahoo to Pixnet for the purpose of understanding how people find my blog.  From the google search someone performed, I found two articles posting exactly the same article as mine, which triggered my curiosity. 

So, stop being a copycat and don't assume that you can always hide in the dark and won't be caught red-handed.  I reserve all my copyrights as someday all of my articles might be reorganized and published in books.  You wouldn’t want some lawyers knocking at your doors someday.  By the way, I do know plenty of lawyers from the nature of the work that I do.          

Last but not least, if I find this (copycat) situation continues, I might stop publishing my grammar tips at all and for free.  I would hate to see that happens.     

--- Updated 12/4/09:

This discovery led me to the decision to reread and update what I wrote previously to provide more clarification and to correct any misconception around the subject of “Ergative Verbs”.  By the way, taking my articles out of context and reposting to another site without referencing back to my articles may result in misrepresentation, as I constantly update my previous articles after discussions with friends and colleagues.