The Strangest Thing to Happen to Mattisblogging

Plagiarism. That’s right, plagiarism. I was thankfully alerted to this about a half an hour ago from Matthew Zellman (of Zehl Steen Think Pound fame), who “googles” his group 20 minutes after every waking hour (J/K!). He pointed out that the blog “I’m finally rockin!” copied my November 14th review of the Zehl Steen Think Pound show…WORD FROM WORD!

See my post @ http://mattisblogging.wordpress.com/2008/11/14/review-zehlsteen-think-pound-102808/

See their “post” @ http://im-finally-rockin.blogspot.com/2008/11/review-zehlsteen-think-pound-102808.html

Now, I am experiencing numerous emotions right now. First off, I am flattered that someone liked my work enough to steal it from me. Mattisblogging must be doing something right to be cited by a famous comedian (Mike Birbiglia) and be plagiarized from.

I am also very confused: why take this post? Are you trying to pretend that you were there? Are you using my blog as an alibi that you couldn’t be somewhere else that night (i.e., a date?). It’s just such a strange post to take. There are so many other post, that discuss much more mainstream, well-known topics. To take a review about a regional sketch comedy group? I don’t know…

But I am mostly outraged! Who does this man, James, think he is? Well I’ll answer that question for him as bluntly as I can (in a 4th-grade dialect)…he’s a copy cat! I was at that Zehl Steen Think Pound Show, and as my review noted, there were only about 10 people in the audience (and I knew five of them). I did not see James there. When I asked Matthew Zellman if he knew who he was, he could not recall knowing him.

Not only did he take my blog post, he also feigned on the fact that he attended the show! Zehl Stein Think Pound is a burgeoning group, they don’t need invisible fans, they need real fans! They need real tukoses in the seats, not people pretending they were there! Although, Zehl Steen is probably happy with the additionally free publicity, so I will leave that point at that.

My crack research team (aka: Jack @ http://notaplumber.blogspot.com) has also pointed out three more examples of plagiarism. Here’s one of them.

Original Post: http://djcnor.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/difference-and-sensitivity-to-it/

James’ “Post”: http://im-finally-rockin.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=15

Hat tip to Jack for doing the work!

However, I am not jumping to conclusions yet. There may be a perfectly good reason that James has used my review in his blog. Perhaps he just really liked the post. Maybe he really is a fan of Zehl Steen Think Pound and wanted to get the word out about the group. However, he was too lazy to create his own review or copy the videos. Or maybe his blog revolves around showcasing other blogs that he likes (but doesn’t tell the reader that).

Ironically, I have a had conversation just today about copyright. I learned that a musician can use a “poor-man-copyright” technique by putting their music on a CD and mail it to themselves and never open the envelope. At that point, whatever is on that CD is considered a copyright piece of work. What do blogs have to do copyright their work. Should I email the blog to myself and never open the email? I will have to consult my lawyer on this.

I will contact James now to inquire about the reason for which he made his blog look identical to mine. I will encourage all my loyal readers to also leave comments on James blog http://im-finally-rocking.blogspot.com to explain himself.