December 06, 2016

Russia Today Plagiarizes Moon of Alabama - Which Is The "Russian Propaganda Outlet"?

UPDATED below

This site, Moon of Alabama, gets defamed and falsely accused of being a "Russian propaganda outlet". One would assume that any such outlet would get its leads and orders from Russia or its media. We now find that it is the other way round. An official Russian state outlet is stealing content from us.

On November 28 RT Deutsch, the German TV and web edition of the Russian state financed global news outlet Russia Today, published an opinion piece by one Rainer Rupp. That piece is in its core idea and wide parts a rip-off and translated copy of a piece I wrote and published on Moon of Alabama on November 25.

After a complain Moon of Alabama is now mentioned as a source for specifically one small sentence in the RT Deutsch piece. But the whole idea that is the main theme of the piece if based on the MoA piece. Core paragraphs are nearly verbal (translated) copies. Their original authorship is not in any way marked or mentioned.

The content was simply stolen, including the links I provided, and published under the name of some author I do not even know.

When I, the original author, contacted RT Deutsch I first received no replies at all and only after insisting a promise to check the issue from the Director and editor in chief of RT Deutsch. A week later nothing has happened. Neither was I contacted back nor was a sufficient link or explanation added to the stolen content.

On November 30 the Director of RT Deutsch, Ivan Rodionov tweeted this promotion for a piece published at the RT site:



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His tweet promoted a piece on his RT Deutsch website headlined: Putins "Witz" war todernst – und entlarvt die Halbbildung unserer "intellektuellen Eliten". (Translated: Putin's joke was dead serious - and exposes the superficial knowledge of our "intellectual elites".)



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The piece is authored by one Rainer Rupp and was published as opinion piece at "deutsch.rt.com" on November 28 at 17:00 local time.

The original piece by me was published here on November 25 under the headline: Putin Tutors Euklidean Geometry - Pundits Say "All Greek To Me".

The gist: The "western" media made an "Imperial Putin wants to extend Russia's border" scandal out of a mathematical lecture Putin had given a pupil on public TV:

Putin asked a pupil: "Where do Russia's borders end?" The answer "nowhere" is the (only) mathematically and geographically correct one. The geographic area characterized by a border is limited. The circumferential (border) line is, by mathematical definition, not "limited" in the sense that it has no beginning and no end (it has a length though).

The RT Deutsch is widely based, even verbatim, on the Moon of Alabama piece but MoA is openly referred only in relation to one sentence:

Wie das Onlineportal Moon of Alabama darlegte, stürzten sich vor allem BBC, Newsweek, Daily Mail und Express gierig auf die vermeintliche Skandalisierungsvorlage.

(Translated: "As the online portal Moon of Alabama states, BBC, Newsweek, Daily Mail and Express are avidly jumping onto the assumed scandal." The links underlying "BBC" etc are in taken from my original.)

UPDATE (Dec 7 12:00am CET):

The above reference to MoA was only added after(!) my first complain to RT Deutsch director Ivan Rodinov. There is no editorial note attached to the piece to note or clarify the modification.

Here is a screenshot of a part of the RT Deutsch piece as saved on December 1 2016, 14:37 CET. There was no mentioning of Moon of Alabama in there at all:



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Here is a screenshot of the current version of that same part. Moon of Alabama is now mentioned but only in a very limited sense:



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End-Update

The additionally sneaked in mentioning of Moon of Alabama in the RT Deutsch piece is limited in its meaning to that one proposition it is attached to. But the author goes on to widely copy, with nearly verbatim translations, from the MoA piece. He is even using the links I provided in the original. It is not discernible to the reader that this content is from MoA and not the named author's original thought. Here is the core of the RT Deutsch piece:

Grundsätzlich lautet die Definition einer Grenze: Ein Band oder eine Linie um oder entlang der Kante von etwas. Ein Land, und zwar jedes Land, wird von einem Rand oder einer Linie rund um sein Territorium begrenzt. Diese Linie, die z.B. ein Kreis, ein Oval oder vielförmig sein kann, ist auch als "Grenze" bekannt. Aber ist diese Umfangslinie begrenzt? Wo beginnt die Umfangslinie eines Kreises und wo endet sie? Eine Umfangslinie hat per Definition keinen Anfang und kein Ende! Das ist aber genau das, was Putin gesagt hat: Russlands Grenze - also die Umfangslinie - endet nirgendwo.

My original:

The basic definition of a border is: A part that forms the outer edge of something. A country, any country, is defined by a limited area (or areas) with an area characterized by an outer edge and a circumferential line known as "a border". Does the circumferential line of, ideally, a circle have a limit? Does it have a beginning or an end? This is exactly what Putin asked the kid.

That paragraph - the explaining core of the piece - was translated sentence by sentence, nearly word one to one. It even repeated the link from the original to the English(!) definition of "border" in the German version.

The paragraph following the above about the "müde Publikum" (transl: "tired audience") in the copy is also obviously taken from the next paragraph about the "tired evening audience" in the original piece. And so on ...

It is evident that the RT Deutsch piece - its central idea and core paragraphs - was copied from my piece. It is obvious plagiarism. The only mentioning of Moon of Alabama is as a source to one specific sentence that is not relevant to the core idea. That is in no way enough. Rapp and RT Deutsch are selling a content as their original intellectual creation even as the core idea and sentences of that content are direct copies from my piece.

On December 1, when I first noted the copy, I publicly challenged RT Deutsch director Rodionov on Twitter to at least provide a more explicit link to my original piece. There was no response from Rodionov.

I then requested a statement from Rodionov via (private) Direct Message and offered to send a bill for providing that content to RT Deutsch. Later that day, December 1, Rodninov responded that he would "check the issue". A reference to MoA was silently added in relation to one single sentence of the piece.

Late on Friday, December 2, I gave Rodionov notice that I would write and eventually publish this piece. I have since heard neither from Rodionov nor from anyone else at RT.

This is not the first time Russia Today (ab)uses content from Moon of Alabama. On September 20 I wrote about the U.S. air attack on Syrian soldiers in Deir Ezzor and how this would possibly lead to "Salafist principality". Two days later RT English published a piece by author Pepe Escobar about the same issue that very heavily borrowed from my piece. Escobar explicitly writes that central ideas of his piece originate from my Moon of Alabama piece. Thanks, but it is still my content and without it that Escobar piece would have had nothing. (Esobar has copied from me for his pieces on several occasions. He mentioned MoA as his source in only some of these.)

But even if mentioned as source I am not happy with RT Deutsch or RT English publishing pieces that are essentially based on stuff I have created, researched and written for this site. Russia Today is financed by the Russian Federation. They have a not-so-small budget. If they publish and pay authors that take their essential stuff from me I also expect to get paid. I today make zero money from these writings but put a lot of effort into them. This site depends on charity from the readers to keep the equipment and this site running (and for more).

If the original stuff is so good why not contact me directly, publish (modified) content from MoA when it is timely and fresh and pay me for it instead of people who just copy or even plagiarize it days later?

The defamation and censorship organization ProPornOT.com, strongly promoted by the Washington Post, has listed Moon of Alabama as a "Russian propaganda outlet". It repeated that claim on Twitter:

Neither this site nor its proprietor and main author have ever received anything from Russia or any associated organization. What gets written at this site is based on personal research, values and opinion independent of any country. (For the record: In my view Russia under Putin is way too capitalistic and urgently needs to go back to a more socialist position.) We have no resources to fight the defamation by ProPornOT and the Washington Post. (A big thank you to Yves at Naked Capitalism and to Truth Dig for exemplary taking up that burden.)

It is quite ironic - and sad - then that this financially defenseless site gets defamed as "Russian propaganda outlet" while a legitimate Russian state propaganda organization, Russia Today, is stealing our content without proper attribution and without any compensation.

Posted by b on December 6, 2016 at 19:26 UTC | Permalink

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