Diary of a Mad Editor

As much as I would like to escape to a spa for a massage, facial and a slimming body wrap, duty calls. Things to write, submissions to read and other nonsense to deal with.

Nonsense, like this blog post I read this morning — "Is it Plagiarism ? or Is it Irresponsible Publishing?". The author, Naavi (Avatar, anyone?)identifies himself as the author of a book called Cyber Laws for Every Netizen in India and claims the a similarly titled book, The Cyberlaw Handbook: for every Netizen is plagiarized from his own.

Certainly, it’s possible. This Naavi and the other book’s author, Vakul Sharma are both citizens of India and both writing about the same subject. However, I doubt it. Why? Well, both books were originally published around the same time period. I’m always skeptical about claims of plagiarism where the works in question were published within a couple of years of each other because it’s likely both authors were writing their books at around the same time, so unless you can prove that one author had direct access to the other’s draft or notes, it’s a dubious claim. Secondly, even if Naavi’s book was published before Sharma’s, Naavi’s book doesn’t seem to have as wide of a distribution, so it’s certainly plausible that Sharma had never heard of it. Thirdly, Sharma is a well-known lawyer and expert on Indian Cyber Law who has written about the subject quite extensively over the years. It’s highly doubtful that he’d require any insights from Naavi, who I suspect is more of a self-educated novice on the subject. Lastly, titles aren’t protected by copyright. So, if the only similarity between the two books is a couple of words in the title and the general subject matter, I’m afraid Naavi has no case.

So his post is, as I say,self-aggrandizing nonsense.