{"id":8955,"date":"2017-05-08T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T07:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8955"},"modified":"2017-05-06T10:04:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T17:04:05","slug":"its-been-a-long-time-since-ive-been-plagiarized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8955","title":{"rendered":"It’s Been a Long Time Since I’ve Been Plagiarized"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long time ago, back when books actually sold like hell and people clamored for printed information (e.g., before Google), ripping off my books<\/a> was common. It’s been 20 years.
\n
\nRecently, I received an email from someone. I was unsure of its legitimacy, but the question intrigued me: “I have two C programming books. They are both the same. Which one did you write?”<\/p>\n

Being curious, I looked up the title cited. The author, one “Harry H. Chaudhary,” is a self-proclaimed hacktivist and one of the top programmers blah-blah-blah. He’s quite a character! Out of his many books listed on Amazon, most lacked previews. One C title did. And, lo, I beheld my own text.<\/p>\n

This guy’s book is a direct ripoff of what I wrote. Some of the programs were changed in a clumsy manner. I saw other, minor alterations. My guess is that “Harry H. Chaudhary,” or more likely some book mill overseas, downloaded an illegal copy of my text and self-published it.<\/p>\n

I was more amused than frustrated. Seriously, books don’t sell like they used to. When someone really wants a book, they’ll buy a For Dummies<\/em> title or look for a known author. They won’t buy a self-published title by an unknown author. Further, “Harry” ripped off an older version of my C programming book, one that’s pretty much out-of-print and for a programming language, out-of-date.<\/p>\n

My agent was amused as well. Effectively, what “Harry” is doing is downloading a major motion picture and trying to sell a VHS copy. It’s a sincerely dumb business model.<\/p>\n

The publisher has issued a “C&D” (Cease and Desist) order, which is about all they can do. I asked them to check other titles, because Mr. Chaudhary claims to have written over 100 books in the past 6 years. Some of my online friends claim that he’s been ripping off the O’Reilly books for a few years. In a way, that makes me feel honored.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s been a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some fool has copied my book’s text and published it under his own name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8955"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8962,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955\/revisions\/8962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}