Tracking down a plagiarized bio...

UPDATE: Photographer Craig Cowling claims he did not knowingly plagiarize Breslin's work. He says he's innocent, and shares copies of emails that suggest he was duped by a person who identified himself as Tim Clark, a Barcelona-based freelance writer-- who swiped Breslin's work, received payment for it, and claimed it as his own.

One of the MS Word files Cowling shared, which he says was authored by this Tim Clark, includes a reference to "Hotshoe" in the document properties. A quick google reveals that one Tim Clark is (or has been) a contributor to the photography magazine Hotshoe International. Whoever Tim Clark is, he may have some 'splainin' to do.

Screengrabs of that correspondence after the jump. At any rate, the plagiarized work has been taken offline now.

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BB pal Susannah Breslin spotted her work plagiarized for the vanity site bio of a former Nerve.com contributor -- word for word:

Yesterday, my photographer friend Clayton Cubitt, aka Nerve blogger Siege, sent me an email. The subject header read: "Any of this sound familiar?" There was a link to the website of Craig Cowling, aka former Nerve blogger Naughty James. The "sound familiar" was directed at Cowling's bio. I began reading it and thought, this does sound familiar. Because it was plagiarized from an introduction I wrote for an interview I did with Cubitt for the photography magazine Eyemazing in 2005 and attributed to one "Tim Clark." Siege emailed James and requested he remove it. For now, it's still online.

Compare the texts, side by side, and decide for yourself: Link.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Chi

Before this post was edited, it accused Cowling of plagiarizing the article himself and made up the “Tim Clark” persona. Before even contacting him or perhaps presenting the fact that Tim Clark is a person and a plagiarist? Isn’t this site about, oh I don’t know, listening to both sides of the story and against attacking people when there’s not much evidence they did anything wrong?

I guess Boing Boing is just as fair and balanced as FOX News.
jimh

Plagiarized, and not even well. Breslin’s is well crafted, while the stolen copy feels pasted together. It’s also riddled with syntax and tense errors that weren’t present in the original. I wonder if he thought he “fixed” them, or if he just isn’t a very careful copyist? I guess someone who has to steal their own bio isn’t so very bright in the first place.
Anonymous

If you want to read some of NJ’s responses on a forum site:

yayhooray.com/thread/128728/Naughty-James-a-plagarist
calanan

He claims the same:

http://1095.naughtyjames.com/?date=2007-10-09
Anonymous

“Cowling says he’s innocent, and so far attempts to confirm the existence of any “Tim Clark” who wrote this have been unsuccessful.”

eh, there is a tim clark @ the photography magazine he claims the guy came from. i’m withholding the link, as to avoid the magazine being bombarded, but i’m sure NJ could provide you the info if he wants.
vertigo25

So… out of curiosity, did Xeni even contact Craig before posting this, or did she just assume that there was no way a friend of hers could ever be wrong about something?
jim.cowling

Because I’m paranoid and have a longstanding net.presence, I want to let it be known that I am neither Craig Cowling nor “Naughty James”, even though my given name is James Cowling and I am naughty.

Thanks for sullying the family rep, shitstain.
Anonymous

Hmm…not like those screenshots would be hard to fake.
Xeni Jardin

@vertigo25, in fact I did. You’ll see the update trail in this post, also.
Anonymous

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Anonymous

that naughty james guy is known around a lot of message boards for being a real arrogant jerk. not only is his photography uninspired, but so is his shitty website. nice work dude!
Anonymous

Whoh!! I had to do a double take when I saw his alias. My name is TIM CLARK. Apparently he stole it from me.. I’ve written a few articles that have been published online, but jeez, this is pretty funny.
Anonymous

@#10:

Maybe some other dude stole it for you, but your grammar, syntax, and spelling closely match the embarrassment to English that is your plagiarized bio.
vertigo25

@22 Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation (Jed Hartman, April 1998): “Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.”

Try this:

Maybe some other dude stole it for you; but your grammar, syntax, and spelling closely match the embarrassment to English which is your plagiarized bio.

At any rate…

From my understanding, Craig has sent Xeni and Sarah the actual Word documents as well as a PDF of one of “Tim’s” articles. At this point, it’s pretty much been proven that he’s telling the truth.

Craig has a lot of issues and has been an ass in the past, but I think Boing Boing owes him an apology and a full retraction with regards to this article. Two wrongs don’t make a right (even on the internet).
Anonymous

not the first time this has happened (if in fact, he is responsible for the above)…

On Jan 25, 2005, at 10:26 PM, Craig Cowling-Thomson wrote:

Im sorry for ripping your site when i was young and nieve, damn thats not even spelt right is it.

Anyway, please accept this appology for taking your design for purpastoe, i was stupid, i love your style i guess.

respect

Craig.

(craig point blank, naughtyjames…)

- Jemma
Anonymous

He’s pulled it down now.

This was a guy who also got busted for selling PS2′s on ebay and then never shipping them.
Anonymous

Oh crap! As with #3, I’m also James Cowling, just perhaps not so “naughty”.

First google page for “James Cowling” is mostly me except this dude – I’m always worried people are going to confuse me for the guy who takes photos of scantily-clad girls spitting milk on themselves (see #7 in his portfolio).

Could be worse, at least my name isn’t Osama.
Anonymous

Yep — I concur with tensegrity — *DON’T CLICK ON THAT LINK.* My virus software seems to have zapped whatever kaka tried to plop itself (also twice) on my hard drive but some of you might not be so lucky.
Anonymous

this is slander.
i’m innocent of any crime, I was duped by a journalist who was claiming he was writing an article about me. He even interviewed by email.

Today it was brought to my attention he had stolen the article, which was a complete shock and supprise to me.

please remove this post.

Craig @ naughtyjames.com
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Tim Clark (#6), are you the same guy Cowling is blaming for the plagiarism? What’s up with that?

Vertigo (23), I don’t know that anything’s been proven.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

He plagiarized a bio?
Anonymous

google cache: Link
Xeni Jardin

@Teresa, yeah. Either the photographer, Mr. Cowling, plagiarized his own bio, or “Tim Clark” > The Tooth Fairy, and Tim Clark plagiarized the bio. Cowling says he’s innocent, and so far attempts to confirm the existence of any “Tim Clark” who wrote this have been unsuccessful.
Tensegrity

I clicked to the naughtyjames site and my virus software alerted me that it had blocked a trogan script. WFT. I reloaded the page and lo and behold it happened again. Not only a douchebag, but a spreader of badware.
Anonymous

Here’s some feedback from one of Craig “Naughty James” Cowling’s ebay accounts:

http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=craigpointblank&ftab=AllFeedback

Says it all really.
jimh

Well, it’s certainly NOT slander.
It MIGHT be libel.

I’m sure it’s possible that a journalist could happen to steal a bio from a photographer who was a contributor to Nerve just like Mr. Cowling was. But then, as Xeni points out, there is no money underneath my pillow AGAIN today.

Also, the text in question, aside from the parts stolen from Ms. Breslin, does not have the quality usually associated with a “writer”. So.