I have an eye disease called keratoconus. Back in 1997, I had a corneal transplant for my right eye due to this condition. Because the disease is not real common, I’ve learned a lot about the disease from reading about the experiences that other folks have had with the disease. I thought I would contribute toward that knowledge base by adding a web page to my site about my experience with kc, as well as links to other relevant pages.
I included a diary of my transplant experience on that page, and provided links to pages of other people who have had the same disease. I try to keep this site relativelu updated…so I do occasional web searches on the topic to see what’s out there. A recent search brought me to the site of California Transplant Services…what appears to be an eye and tissue bank. More specifically, I found a page on their site with information about transplant patient diaries. OK…so far, so good. Then I scroll down the page (below the section on Hank Wirtz), and damn near shit my pants.
Compare the bottom of this page with the section on my page titled “personal experiences”. Notice anything…ummm…unusual?
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
No, it’s not as if they ripped off a great article, or insightful commentary that I wrote. They were too damn lazy to do their own html, and too damn inconsiderate to drop me an email.
I’d let their administration know (using snail mail rather than sending something to the webmaster that might get “lost”–If you’re using IE 5 or above, you can capture the whole series of pages on disk so that if they do a quick elimination of your pirated material, you can still demonstrate that they had stolen it).
I’d be really curious who put their page together. It appears that it was an in-house design rather than a professionally purchased service, so it could have been put together by an enthusiastic kid who simply needs to have some ethics pointed out to them. (See the current Doonesbury© comics for the general attitudes of kids who are not interested in intellectual property.)
If it turns out that a professional provider did the work, I’d make scary sounds about lawsuits.
What are you talking about? I don’t see anything on the CTS’ site about any ‘Julia Mosely.’ This is obviously a completely different page.
All kidding aside, that’s horrible. I mean, I knew Californians can get pretty lazy, but this is just totally out of bounds. Did you say anything? I think you should write them a scathing email. I mean, you just can’t go around taking other people’s hard work and pretending like you did it. This is starting to make me mad.
For those wondering “WTF?” when you compare the pages…I did e-mail the webmaster and administrative contacts at this place, as well as their web hosting provider. Apparently they have since erased the plagiarzed text from that page…but of course did not have the courtesy to write an apology back to me.
Assholes.
:mad:
That really blows.
It’s the little things in life that really show you just how fucked up and stupid people are.