Free to Speak not Free to Use.

It is said imitation is a form of flattery and plagiarism is piracy. Now I may be a little egotistical about feeling a little good about myself when something from my blog is quoted in a national newspaper like The Lakbima, especially when it's in my favour, but in the grand scheme of things and in all fairness to the blogger community which I have grown to respect highly whatever the topic and whoever the person, I must protest.

I have, for the last 7 years written artcles as a freelancer for many locally produced and printed publications and every publication has a set of rules and regulations that need to be followed to keep in line with legalities and content and without fail every set of guidelines is very strict about plagiarism. Which is why I'm suprised that the management of Lakbima themselves engage in the worst crime against word scribes, blatently.

To me blogging is about personal opinons, and in a country where people cannot under any circumstances take criticism in any form, it is dangerous to force the public to read personal opinions. When someone reads a blog and finds it offensive to themselves, they have the ability to close the window and never look it again or they can express their views directly to the writer and clear up any misgivings they may have, with a newspaper, it is one sided to the reader which makes it biased to the writer, it is read with the understanding that the writer is an authority on the subject which more often that not they are not because they write about their feelings and opinoins in a personal manner which makes the article purely subjective, true there are bloggers who research and study the topic before saying anything but not all and not all the time, do public readers know this, no. Which means any newspaper that were to plagiarise a blog would be in effect publishing an unbalanced view and possibly unfactual information for the public thus further propogating the reputation newspapers have "Don't belive everything you read"

The other issue is a political one. In Sri Lanka newspapers are divided into two categories, one is for the government and the other is against no middle ground no grey area. In the world of blogging everything is grey and therefore the opinons and views of bloggers are unabashed in the secure environment of cyberspace where freedom of speech is still free and censorship is left up to an individual and not to a group of individuals who feel the need to laud it over everyone else. Now in a country that thrives on shameless censorship, if someones opinion wasn't politacally correct would it be fair to put that inncoent persons life at risk just to raise readership and sales or have a slight at the government, when all that person was doing was just making an opininated statement to fellow bloggers who understand what blogging is all about not public newspaper readers who still have a long way to go before opening their minds to free speech and constructive criticism.

In the end bloggers can't stop plagiarism in Sri Lanka specially because there is no hard and fast law against it. Or even if there is the lengthy court process makes it seem pointless. Unless you have contacts and family members who are high powered lawyers or unless all the bloggers in Sri Lanka unite (and I mean bloggers from Jaffna to Galle) against plagiarism and as one unit sue tha pants off anyone who uses a persons creativity as their own, we bloggers have to hope and pray that newspapers, journalists and editors find some ethics in the way they find and publish articles, sometimes just asking if the article can be used is more than enough.

Isn't it more fulfilling to see your own words in print as opposed to somebodyelse'.