Exposed!


dan_edge

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... I very much disagree with you about requesting "that past instances be left rotting, unnoticed, and ultimately abandoned."

Past instances, all of them, are injustices to the people whom he plagiarized. I do not think it's fair to them not to identify their work as having been plagiarized, in cases where the source can be identified.

Ellen,

I could not agree with you more. Those metaphors and presumptions are pure fantasy when dealing with an Internet forum. Many new members (and even some long-standing members) read old threads because OL is a bit like a treasure hunt. There is a mountain of really good writing and interesting information archived on this forum (some of it by you). It is unfair to both new readers and plagiarized authors to have a "rotting, unnoticed, and ultimately abandoned" moral policy governing what is available to read. OL, like all Internet discussion forums, pays nothing for this material. The very least one could expect of us is to present this material under the name of the correct authors and not mutilated by random deletions and words from another person interspersed in the texts.

As regards font size of the plagiary notice, I like it for now. I will have to go through all of those posts one by one to examine them. Not all the plagiarisms were from online sources; I do not have a photographic memory; there are many books and articles I have not read, so the large font is nothing more than good advertising to enlist the aid of those who know what I do not. This task will take some time since I also have a life. After it is done, I will probably make some changes.

Michael

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I think it is time to resurrect this old tech support topic. It's hard to believe that it has been nearly a year since this went up. Although I did not say so at the time, I originally put it up because we were getting so many complaints about -- you guessed it -- Victor, who was making, on average, over 20 posts a day. That is a lot for a forum this size. Although Michael and I saw creativity and a good side to him, he rubbed many people the wrong way.

Putting a user on ignore will hide the contents of his posts, including the signature, although you will still see the avatar and stuff on the left. Using "ignore user" on will hide the disclaimer on Victor's posts as they are in the signature. I know it is not a perfect solution, but bear with us while we clean up the mess. As time goes on and new discussions start up it will not be such an issue.

Kat

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Especially this last. Putting that statement after every post of his suggests that he is an outright liar, or is to be assumed to be one, on everything he's ever said here. Including statements about his professional work and emotional life. Where a minimal courtesy requires that one initially operate as if he isn't misrepresenting the core of his identity. That isn't rationality, it's forcing thousands of posts to bear a scarlet "A," and not even a Pross deserves that.

As the person who suggested that a notice be bulk-inserted into Victor's posts warning readers that his posts might contain plagiarism, I want to say that the purpose of the idea wasn't to punish or stigmatize him, but to find an alternative to strip-mining a lot of valuable threads or dumping them into the "Garbage Pile."

Um, I really don't want to keep stabbing this particular region of the corpse, but from what you've said above, Steve, it seems that you still might not be aware of something despite my having already mentioned it a couple of times. Victor did plagiarize "statements about his professional work." He borrowed Igor Babailov's words about the profession of teaching art.

J

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Here’s more. A couple days ago when Victor said that it was anger at the reception of the “Love in Bloom” thread which had driven his plagiarizing here, I became curious as to how early he’d started submitting articles with plagiarized material. I did a search to find all of his posts and began at the beginning. He joined the list June 23, ’06; on June 26, he posted an article described as an expanded version of something he’d posted earlier on SOLO and titled “LENNY BRUCE: A First Amendment Hero!”

I read that article, for the first time -- I'd been too busy to read it when it was first posted and I'd never caught up to it later. The article is quite well done, professional quality work. Enough of course immediately to arouse suspicion at this stage.

Since I have health problems which limit my computer time, I’ve never learned to find stuff on Google. I asked Jonathan for an assist. He explained that what he’d done in tracking suspicious posts of Victor’s was to type six or seven promising-looking words in (with quote marks surrounding them) and search.

I only needed one try.

I searched on “comedian comdemned for his words”…and found, as the first two hits:

WNYC - Reading Room: The Trials of Lenny Bruce The Fall and Rise ...

He died convicted-a comedian condemned for his words. He was Lenny Bruce. [Cross references and caching info.]

Lenny Bruce: First Amendment Hero! | SOLO - Sense of Life Objectivists

He died convicted—a comedian condemned for his words. His name was Lenny Bruce. He was a legendary comic, social satirist, free-speech crusader and martyr ...[Link and caching info.]

Clicking the first link takes me to:

http://www.wnyc.org/books/6533

The Trials of Lenny Bruce The Fall and Rise of an American Icon

By Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover

Sourcebooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover All right reserved.

ISBN: 1-57071-986-1

Available for purchase at amazon.com

Following is a comparison between parts of the excerpt and the first few paragraphs of the article Victor posted. I'd expect that the rest of the article is similarly lifted from the book itself.

LENNY BRUCE: A First Amendment Hero!

This is an expanded article that was first posted at SOLOPASSION.

** ** **

(“Please don’t lock up these words”)

He was a man with a disquieting sense of humor every step of the way. He entertained America with a disturbing frankness. His words crossed the law and those in it. He became intolerable to people in power. Words were his catalyst to fame…and failure. He tore into the planks of conventional morality like a buzz-saw. His life became a hamstring of censorship, arrests, trials, persecutions, convictions and appeals. When it was over, not even the First Amendment saved him. He died convicted—a comedian condemned for his words.

His name was Lenny Bruce.

He was a man with an unsettling sense of humor. Uncompromising, uncanny, unforgettable, and unapologetic-every outrageous step of the way. He entertained America with disturbing frankness. His words crossed the law and those in it. He became intolerable to people too powerful to ignore. When it was over, not even the First Amendment saved him. He died convicted-a comedian condemned for his words. He was Lenny Bruce.

[….]

Words were his catalyst to fame; to failure, as well. Words were his power, his incomparable gift, his way into the unexplored realms of life and law from which there is seldom safe return. He tore into the planks of conventional morality like a furious buzz-saw:

Sometimes his comedy contained a very simple moral message: “You can’t do anything with anybody’s body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person---you can only do one thing to make it dirty: kill it.”
"My concept? You can’t do anything with anybody’s body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person-you can only do one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty."

[The word's quoted are Lenny Bruce's, but the placement and organization of the thought follows Collins' and Skover's development.]

Lenny Bruce was persecuted by that very same society---because he had the balls to tell them so that they were wrong. (“You need that mad man to stand up and tell you when you’re blowing it, man!”)

It was Lenny Bruce who was killed—driven to an early grave by relentless persecution. The charge: Word crimes. The very idea seems foreign to us. It strikes us a ridiculous farce. He lampooned popes, preachers, politicians, and judges. He wanted to expose “the lie” in life – all of those respectable cover-ups used to hide the dirty truth. His words – comical, critical, and profane – put America’s First-Amendment principle to the test: can offensive speech really be free?

Daring to make public jokes about private matters, he satirically ridiculed hypocritical religious and legal authorities: "Respectability means under the covers," he explained, "I [am] pulling the covers off." His words cost him, in dollars, freedom, and sanity. His words-comical, critical, distasteful-put America’s First Amendment principle to the test: Can offensive speech really be free?

Ellen

___

(Note from MSK: Thank you, Ellen. Duly edited.)

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Ellen and Jonathan,

Thank you for checking the Lenny Bruce article. I was wondering about it, but hadn't googled any phrases from it yet.

Robert Campbell

PS. The same method will usually catch students who have "obtained" their term paper from a term paper site.

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...And are we really supposed to admire him for offering to tell Michael, after heaps of bodies have been discovered, where he buried the rest of the bodies?

Additional "bodies" have already been discovered [ . . . ]

I have sent an email to MSK (site owner of Objectivist Living) offering my assistance to weed out the plagiarized passages [i won't help weed] if the people involved don't meet me half way.

...from here[ . . . ] There's no need to expect, demand, or even request that MSK or Kat "meet him halfway."

What a terrible time to be an Objectivist, when the surgical ethics of Rand are no help at all

Er...um...uh...William, how about withdrawing the sanction of the victim? Specifically, how about withdrawing your attention from this whole mess and focusing on something productive? I mean, it's Michael's and Kat's house, and they are going about the nasty task of cleaning it up after Victor shit all over it. But why roll around in it ourselves? I satisfied myself that he was systemically plagiarizing by picking one of his posts at random and googling it and offering the results to Michael and the rest of you. Thus satisfied, I returned to lurk mode on this topic -- except, now, to urge you all to put your precious time and effort and brainpower to work somewhere else than on this miserable second-hander creep.

REB

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...And are we really supposed to admire him for offering to tell Michael, after heaps of bodies have been discovered, where he buried the rest of the bodies?

Additional "bodies" have already been discovered [ . . . ]

I have sent an email to MSK (site owner of Objectivist Living) offering my assistance to weed out the plagiarized passages [i won't help weed] if the people involved don't meet me half way.

...from here[ . . . ] There's no need to expect, demand, or even request that MSK or Kat "meet him halfway."

What a terrible time to be an Objectivist, when the surgical ethics of Rand are no help at all

Er...um...uh...William...

REB

I usually get a kick out of Scherk, but until Roger posted the above message, I hadn't seen that I had been improperly identified by Scherk as "The moderately Evul Jonathan."

I've been called an "Enemy of Objectivism," a "False Friend of Objectivism" and an "Anti-Objectivist" by most of the hysterical ninnies who like to think of themselves as leaders, defenders, crusaders, promoters, owners, etc. of Objectivism. So I think that should earn me at least "Almost Completely Evul" status.

J

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Roger,

On July 6, after making some weird complaints on Meetup about OL, Pross announced he was taking a full month off from Internet posting (see here).

On July 11 (today), it started again (see here). His month seems to mean 5 days. Just like "I will attribute all sources" promised to me meant "I will attribute all sources for a few posts, then go back to plagiarizing."

I had taken some time off from the clean-up because it was stressing me out in addition to the health problems I am having right now (not too serious, but extremely bothersome).

Back to business...

Michael

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Tomorrow I am going to resume my cleanup of the plagiarisms. Before getting to that, I want to write a post here that I am going to copy in The Garbage Pile where I intend to put facts and miscellaneous comments about this issue—when I find such pertinent.

Over on Meetup, there is a silly little thread Pross made on July 6 called Belittlement at OL. He complained that this post (No. 262) of mine on OL caused him so much pain and suffering from the belittlement he received that he started plagiarizing as some kind of lashing out at OL.

Here are the facts.

Pross's plagiarism started on Solo Passion way before he came to OL. (This is what I can point to. I suspect the habit of plagiary started much earlier.) The reason Pross left Solo Passion was over a spat about his plagiarizing an article by Joe Rowlands (which I even excused at the time). I know of at least one other plagiarism there, an article about Lenny Bruce, because it was repeated here (see the post by Ellen Stuttle here and the article here on OL).

While on Solo Passion, Pross lashed out repeatedly at OL without any provocation. He didn't need any "belittlement" in order to do that. Barbara Branden made a post in July 2006 giving a selection of the obnoxious hostile phrases he had written gratuitously about her (see here). I received an equal measure of insults back then and so did OL. (I don't have the time to look them up right now, but they are there for anyone who wishes to research them.) There were plenty of "slaps at OL" (Pross's phrase) and me before he even became a member of OL or really knew who I was.

The photo that supposedly caused this guy so much outrage and pain was one where I gave him a humorous Dali mustache that tied in on several levels comedy-wise with what we were discussing (especially Dada art). Instead of mental anguish, his immediate reaction was to chime in the banter. He liked the photo so much that he repeated it in the following post (No. 263) with the text below:

Now that is a work of art. :laugh:

Why the laughing smiley if he took offense? That happened in January 2007. In May, Pross's fancy for that photo was such that he copied it again and included a much more humorous text (to Kori) and even cooed at Angie. See the text below from Post 6 on a thread in the humor section of OL:

GOD EXISTS AFTER ALL! Tootsie, an extraordinary event has occurred! Remember the ugly monstrosity that I once was? Well look at me now! I’m restored! Touched by the hand of God and reinstated to my youthful beauty! And now I have an artist mustache too boot! Oh, Angie is going to have a good time with that! ;]

Does this sound like someone who is offended with the photo?

Pross wasn't offended in January (and our off-line relationship at the time was such that he would have complained if he were), and he wasn't offended in May. But now in July, he is offended? I simply can't take that as a serious complaint.

I only mention this because there are some people actually falling for the belittlement on OL nonsense and believe that Pross's plagiarisms are a reaction to that. All this proves is that people will believe anything if you repeat it long enough. Well, the facts are here for those who are genuinely curious, and more facts on plagiarisms will be presented each day starting tomorrow. Let the gullible believe what they will.

Incidentally, Dragonfly has hilariously disfigured photos of Kat and me before as banter. See here. I even discussed this with Pross back then since he is a caricaturist.

EDIT: This guy is unbelievable. He has just edited his belittlement post on Meetup to tone down the whining and admit that he joined in the banter as if this came from him spontaneously, as per the time stamp of July 12. Anything goes with him to rewrite reality.

EDIT on July 15, 2007: I found another couple of posts where another image of Pross was distorted as banter by William Scherk and he chimed in the banter. See here and here. See the quotes below from those posts:

Will, I love it! We have a satire artist here, do we? ;] (Okay, sorry for being a snot in that one post). Oh, this is a thing of beauty! Wait till Angie gets a load of how I really look! :laugh:
It is rather ironic that a caricature artist--who used his art to cut others down to size--would find himself caricatured! Of course, as I have said, caricature art can be used as a tool for biting satire or playful benevolence. This photoshop executed distortion (I hesitate to call it ‘caricature’) was perhaps intended as satire--to cut me down--but I got a real kick out of it instead. :turned:

Michael

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I've been called an "Enemy of Objectivism," a "False Friend of Objectivism" and an "Anti-Objectivist" by most of the hysterical ninnies who like to think of themselves as leaders, defenders, crusaders, promoters, owners, etc. of Objectivism. So I think that should earn me at least "Almost Completely Evul" status.

You are correct, dang! -- and I can't go back to put the phrase to rights in the now week-old post.

Accept my apologies, please, or I will call you Reasonable and Intelligent and a Good Guy to Have Around in a Discussion, and then I will give your name and dossier to the Monks of Mount Ari.

Then you will be in trouble with the Law of Identity, young feller.

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...And are we really supposed to admire him for offering to tell Michael, after heaps of bodies have been discovered, where he buried the rest of the bodies?

Additional "bodies" have already been discovered [ . . . ]

I have sent an email to MSK (site owner of Objectivist Living) offering my assistance to weed out the plagiarized passages [i won't help weed] if the people involved don't meet me half way.

...from here[ . . . ] There's no need to expect, demand, or even request that MSK or Kat "meet him halfway."

What a terrible time to be an Objectivist, when the surgical ethics of Rand are no help at all

Er...um...uh...William...

REB

I've been called an "Enemy of Objectivism," a "False Friend of Objectivism" and an "Anti-Objectivist" by most of the hysterical ninnies who like to think of themselves as leaders, defenders, crusaders, promoters, owners, etc. of Objectivism. So I think that should earn me at least "Almost Completely Evul" status.

You are correct, dang! -- and I can't go back to put the phrase to rights in the now week-old post.

Accept my apologies, please, or I will call you Reasonable and Intelligent and a Good Guy to Have Around in a Discussion, and then I will give your name and dossier to the Monks of Mount Ari.

Then you will be in trouble with the Law of Identity, young feller.

Okay, enough with the threats! I accept your apologies already!

Btw, it really irritates me when people don't quote enough of the history of the thread to which they are responding, and, therefore, they neglect to provide sufficient context for those who may not have been following along. So notice that I've re-established the context of this thread above. Please do the same in the future, or I'll scold you harshly and repeatedly.

J

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On that meetup thread, Victor wrote

Does this look like a man who is morally outraged? I remember when reading this my mouth dropped to the floor. I desperately wanted to leave what I had come to refer as a 'snake pit.' But I was lulled back in. (Such is the nature of compulsiveness).

This was in response to a sincere email from MSK. This is just getting disgusting, now Victor is blaming MSK for his own plagairism because MSK and OL did not do enough to stop it.

Suck it up Victor, take some god damn resposibility for your actions, stop being a immature fool. The only person you have to blame is *yourself*

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Michael,

It's getting bad on Meetup. Pross is starting to publish emails not only from me, but from others friendly to him. He isn't citing their names yet because he is testing the water to see if he can get away with it. I want to say this guy has no concept whatsoever of intellectual property and doesn't care to learn, but from what I see, this is not correct. He knows perfectly well what intellectual property is. He likes copyright infringement, he likes to steal the words of others for his own use, he likes to think he is outsmarting others, and he wants to do as much of this as he can and get away with it.

For a caricaturist, he seems to have difficulty discerning tongue-in-cheek remarks, but that is not a crime.

Let's take him at his word on something much more serious. He was blaming us here on OL (and me in particular) for not doing the job he was too much of a coward to do and throw him off the site. Well, I hear another similar message loud and clear. He wants someone to do the job of fully exposing him—on Solo Passion, on OL and even in other places—since he is too much of a coward to admit the extent of his wrongdoing.

OK.

I won't to guilty a second time of the sin of omission.

I'll do the job.

Look here, for instance, where he plagiarized Perigo to his face (opening a thread) on Solo Passion before he came to OL.

Michael

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Incidentally, Pross partially quoted an email from me incorrectly dated July 18 (it was July 17) and tried to put a spin on it. I am very much against publishing the emails of others without authorization since that is both immoral and illegal. But this case gives a very good example of how this guy uses the texts of others. Pross quoted me here:

Just so you know, I have started getting in touch with Barbara about all this. [Regarding my joining OL after Solo]. Her heart is pretty softened up by now (and that wasn't as easy as I thought it would be - I simply "sold" you) (How's that for backstage manipulating?)

Actually, what we were discussing was his apology to Barbara for all the insults he published on Solo Passion, which he was claiming to me that he regretted but was concerned about the possibility of being able to disagree with her in intellectual issues, not simply "joining OL after Solo." She was royally furious at him with all due right. If I was going to allow him to continue on OL, he had to apologize to her. And I had to do some mighty convincing back then. (That is now seasoning on my crow barbecue.) Here is what I really wrote to Pross with the omitted parts now included.

Just so you know, I have started getting in touch with Barbara about all this. Her heart is pretty softened up by now (and that wasn't as easy as I thought it would be - I simply "sold" you). I don't know how long a soft heart lasts, though.

So now is the time.

(How's that for backstage manipulating? :) )

Actually, the way this is playing out, your public image and hers are not being denigrated at all. On the contrary, they are being strengthened.

Once this is over, I will be very interested in seeing you two interact. I am sure your disagreements with her will not offend her in the least and some very good discussions will ensue.

The smiley I used on the Yahoo! email is a big toothy grin. but I don't have that one here.

NOTE: Meetup has removed the thread. A public thanks to Meetup.

Michael

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