Well, honestly, sometimes I do suffer from self-delusional beliefs that whatever I write in my blogspace is of prime importance, if not for the few surviving readers of mine, then atleast for me! Why else would I want to write about it?!! But there are certain occurrences that even defy the limits of this egoistic belief of mine, and validate it!! In simple words, it surprises me when some people actually give too much worth to what I write.
And that is what happened, when one fine day last month, I received an email from a wonderful friend of mine, telling me that my blog post was blatantly copied and posted in another blog by I guess a fellow ‘blogger’… and I felt the first pang of being plagiarised hit me. Honestly, it was surprise that first took hold of me. I felt rather weird that someone would find the content worth copying and associating their name with it! But that is done already!
http://nimmaadiga.blogspot.com/2009/06/favorite-poetic-numbers-in-kannada.html
http://nimmaadiga.blogspot.com/2009/06/bhaavageete-soulful-songs.html
In the second post link, I haven’t included the lyrics of the song in my original post. However, the content for both the posts have been completely lifted from this blogspace. The original posts have been mentioned below for the reference of my discerning readers:
http://allformusic.blogspot.com/2005/12/favorite-kannada-poetic-numbers-in.html
http://allformusic.blogspot.com/2006/02/bhaavageete-soulful-songs-for-hearfelt.html
Well, what is to be said for this?!! I dunno! I wrote an email politely asking him to take the posts off, or atleast mention the original source, but no action has been taken so far towards either of these steps. You know, its really flattering to think that someone will enmasse copy my words given that imitation is the best form of flattery. But I am not sure, if I am really happy about it. A lot of what I have written here, given that it is pertaining to music, is not entirely original. I have written about songs, meanings of these lyrics/compositions, and music personalities. Anybody can write about these, and I wouldn’t claim these to be my sole ideas, but my feelings about these songs are mine. The emotions that I feel and I relate to through these songs, are mine. I am not so sure if someone can just copy them and claim them to be his own. May be am being too picky, or maybe I am being justified in my slight indignation about such behaviors. But the fact is that I do feel it is insensitive on a person’s part to blatantly copy someone else’s work (no matter how pedestrian it may be) and post it as his own.
I have no idea how many people take blogs seriously. Maybe none, or maybe negligibly few! Or if its someone like the Who’s who of entertainment industry or politics, then maybe a lot of them would! I am just a small fish in this colossal school! But I take time to think about what I write about the songs that touch me, that move me, inspire me and prod me to write about them. And its just effin’ irritatin’ that a person can spend a bare minimum 5-6 minutes in copying the contents, and posting it on his blog and rudely ignore polite requests to pull it down!
Am I being a cry baby?!! Oh well who cares!
Btw. Sush.. a wonderful friend of mine and an even more chronic music buff.. introduced me to a wonderful song from the upcoming movie Ishqiya…. “Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji”… penned by Gulzar… thatz what is coming up next!! Thanks a lot for patiently listening to my rants …. if u have made it so far.. I guess u can stick around! Cheerio!!
You say-I say