The German edition of the Russia Today website, RT Deutsch, evidently plagiarized a piece I had written for and published on this site.
I have since communicated with the director of RT Deutsch, Ivan Rodionov, via Twitter. The responses were slow and uncommitted. Today Rodionov, as well as the author of the piece, Mr. Rupp, contacted me and denied that the obvious plagiarism has happened at all.
Meanwhile I have been contacted by other authors who claim to have also been plagiarized or ripped off by RT English and/or RT Deutsch. The authors in question are, like me, generally positive towards Russia and RT.
Indeed this site has been labeled a "Russian propaganda outlet" by U.S. media and by the Ukrainian-American fascists behind the censorship advocates at ProPornOT.
This issue thereby obviously not an "anti-Russian" action but simple concern of serious authors about their rights.
I will write about the other authors cases' in a later piece.
The plagiarizing issue with RT is likely to escalate. I decided to publish all relevant communication on this blog to keep the readers informed and to be able to let others know how RT in general, and RT Deutsch especially, is handling such issues.
Mr Ivan Rodionov contacted me on public Twitter today. Here is the whole public thread including his tweets, my responses and the relevant context:
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA
ICYMI – MoA:
Russia Today (@rt_deutsch) Plagiarizes Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) piece. Unresponsive to complains
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/12/falsely-defamed-russian-propaganda-outlet-gets-plagarized-by-russian-state-tv.html …
6:03 AM – 7 Dec 2016
—–
Barbara McKenzie @BarbaraMcK42 19h19 hours ago
@MoonofA Your article was well-written, and made its point succinctly. There's no excuse for hijacking it @RT_Deutsch @IvanRodionov_
—–
Ivan Rodionov @IvanRodionov_ 1h1 hour ago
@BarbaraMcK42 @MoonofA @RT_Deutsch Our contributor provided information supporting his claim of independent authorship which i believe 1/3
Ivan Rodionov @IvanRodionov_ 1h1 hour ago
@BarbaraMcK42 @MoonofA @RT_Deutsch conclusive. I see no reasons to distrust him. His reply was AFAIK shared with you. If you see it 2/3
Ivan Rodionov @IvanRodionov_ 1h1 hour ago
@BarbaraMcK42 @MoonofA it diferently pls feel free to use legal ways. Respectfully. 3/3
—–
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA 33m33 minutes ago
@IvanRodionov_ Mr Rapp's "explanation"via email is a sorry excuse and evidently factually untrue in at least 3 points. @BarbaraMcK42 1/2
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA 29m29 minutes ago
@IvanRodionov_ Legal ways cost money-not yet ready to spend. Will escalate via my contacts w/ RT Moscow and German media @BarbaraMcK42 2/2
(For timemarks – the alternative Twitter view of the last tweet ("29m29 minutes ago") is marked (in Pacific Time) as 9:09 AM – 8 Dec 2016)
In the above exchange Mr Rodionov mentioned a response from the RT author who had plagiarized my text. That response had arrived via email.
Here is a copy (email addresses withheld) followed by a copy of my reply.
From: Mr. Rupp
Subject: Putin's joke
To: MoonofA
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 12:28:45 +0100Hallo Bernard,
You are certainly aware of the fact, that Newton and Leibniz developed a very similar theory of calculus at the same time in history, apparently completely independent of each other.
I use this famous example to illustrate, that you were not the only person with mathematical knowledge to spot the mathematical issue behind Putin's "joke". By way of excluding a translation mistake as well as the possibility that Putin would have made such a silly chauvinist comment, especially on public TV, it was quite clear what the Russian president had really meant when he said, that Russia's borders do not end anywhere. Only the kid as well as a large part of the audience did not understand and applauded for the wrong reason. Thus Putin had to save the situation somehow, declaring it a joke but one could see on his face, he did not feel comfortable doing it.
Unfortunately at the time I was working on another project that I had to finish first. So I could not react immediately to this matter, which made headline in Western news. Somewhat belatedly I could turn to the subject, as by then some German media had also begun to slander Putin for his "joke". First I scanned the internet to see, if anyone else had come to the same conclusion as me, namely that Putin had referred to the definition of a border as an uninterrupted line running along the edge of a surface that does not have a beginning or an end. My search also took me to your site, which I read and liked very much.
This may have unknowingly influenced my approach to the subjects. But I did in no way translate line by line from your piece. What you declare as proof for your claim, namely the definition of a border, I have taken from the German "Duden". And translated it is the same in English. But for a Definition that should not come as a surprise.
And what you call the core issue, i.e. Putin's mathematical lecture, that was not there for you alone to spot. You do not have sole ownership of the recognition of a simple and well known mathematical problem for 5th graders.
Moreover I did make a reference to the MofA source in my manuscript but certainly not with respect to the core issue.
As to my person, I am a political writer. For most of the last 20 years I worked for one or the other of the two remaining left wing daily papers which have survived in Germany. On RT-Deutsch I publish since Spring this year.
The reason I reacted so late to your complaint is simple. Only last night I got the e-mail from Mr. Rodionov – who had been out of the country for a few days – informing me about the matter and asking me, to clean it up. As I am a freelance writer my articles are my sole responsibility and neither RT-deutsch nor Mr. Rodionow carry any blame.
As I do not feel guilty for the things you accuse me of, I cannot apologize for them. But I do not want to hide myself either. If you are still angry enough to sue someone, you have to sue me. If you want to do that, please let me know and I will find a lawyer and forward his address to you for further legal action.
My honorarium for the article in question was 200 Euro. I can provide you a copy of the Honorarium. It is not much to fight about in court. But I can transfer you a share of it, if this helps to sooth your anger. This would not be recognition of any guilt but it would safe me a lot of paper work.
Certainly I did not want to offend or hurt you. After all, I did like your article and it probably did help and influenced my writing.
I would appreciate, if you treat this letter as personal and not for publication.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Rainer Rupp
P.S. Now that we are actually in contact with each other I just had an idea, how we could turn this annoying situation into something good for both of us. You have produced some very good pieces of research, which would certainly find also a German readership. May be we could come to an arrangement, whereby I would translate occasionally an up to date piece of your research for publication in Germany under your name and with a split honorarium for both of us?
My reply:
From: MoonofA
Subject: Re: Putin's Joke
To: Mr. Rupp
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2016 18:15:13 +0100
Your statements, Mr. Rupp, about the plagiarism of my text are -at least- misleading.
Some of your claims with which you try to prove that you did not copy and translated my text, which you did, can evidently not be true:
"My search also took me to your site, which I read and liked very much. This may have unknowingly influenced my approach to the subjects. But I did in no way translate line by line from your piece."
You translated the core paragraph of my piece sentence by sentence – line by line, nearly word by word! My post on the subject sets these texts next to each other. It is obvious to anyone who can read that your paragraph is a translation of my text.
See: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/12/falsely-defamed-…-tv.html
It is inexplicable that you would "unknowingly influenced" structure that paragraph sentence by sentence in your copy exactly as I did in the original.
"Moreover I did make a reference to the MofA source in my manuscript but certainly not with respect to the core issue."
No, you did not!
When I read your copied piece first on Nov 30/Dec 1, after having noticed it through Mr. Rodinov's promotional tweet, I immediately saved the whole HTML page to a local disk. There was NO REFERENCE to MoA anywhere in there. MoA was only inserted as a source for a minor statement AFTER I later complained to Mr. Rodionov. The firsts saved version and the current one are now displayed in the updated post at my site and can be easily compared.
"What you declare as proof for your claim, namely the definition of a border, I have taken from the German „Duden“. And translated it is the same in English."
So, Mr. Rapp, you want to tell me that you hear Putin in Russian on a TV show and while writing about it in German for a German language news outlet you first look up the German version in the Duden but then -just by chance of course- insert the same link to the English freedictionary.com definition of "border" that I used in my text?!? Why would you use the English definition link for the word border in a German text at all? Why not use the German definition link from the Duden and insert that?
In your text you write the definition of border as "*Ein Band oder eine Linie um oder entlang der Kante von etwas."*
That**is no way consistent with any version in the Duden that you have claimed to have looked up. There is no "Kante" in any of those Duden definitions.
Please compare here: http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Grenze
Indeed what you used in the RT text is a (bad) translation of the English freedictionary definition I used: "A part that forms the outer edge of something."
Your response is obviously not serious but pure obfuscation behind which you want to hide the plagiarism of my piece.
RT Deutsch is the publisher of the website where the text appeared as part of its regular content. It is as such fully responsible for the texts on that site. I will continue to correspond with RT Deutsch and RT central in Moscow about the issue and expect them to take the appropriate measures.
Bernhard
PS: Reading that sorry explanation for your plagiarism and then the "offer" in your PS: paragraph my mind flashed with the word "extortion"!
So far the current communication between Moon of Alabama/Bernhard, Russia Today Deutsch and the plagiarizing author.
I will leave it to the readers and commentators here to judge.