Hi everyone. Although it is with a heavy heart, I have decided to temporarily stop writing in my blog or anywhere for that matter at least for the next few weeks or maybe even permanently. A few days ago, I found out that someone from Egypt has been copy-pasting all the contents of my blog to his blog. He edits it to remove all reference to me as well as any links that will identify me as the author. In other words, he has passed off my works as his. What is so funny is that he copy pasted even my emoticons and did not even bother to change the title, just the author. Other people have copy-pasted my work to their forums or blogs, but they have taken the time to at least ask for my permission or attribute it to askdoc. I have no objection to people distributing my work or copy-pasting them, but I believe it is unethical and profound disrespect to strip my work of any attribution to me and claim authorship of my hard work.
The blog is at usmle.egmedicine.com. The domain is registered under the ff. name
Fouad Fakhreldeen, Dr Mohamed fouad.fakhr@gmail.com
almahalla
almahalla alkobra, algharbia 31911
Egypt
0107232377
It is registered with godaddy.com and hosted with dreamhost.com. I have engaged the help of a copyright attorney (he is my brother’s classmate) and will be writing to both godaddy.com and dreamhost.com on copyright infrigement under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Everything I wrote is free. It was so easy for him to just either ask me permission or attribute authorship to me by writing a small byline, “by askdoc”. Instead not only did he edited out all links, he even assumed authorship. I have stopped writing the ten part “How to create a Study plan for the USMLE” at Part 6. If he thinks he can do it, he can finish part 7 to 10 himself.
For the past month, I’ve also been busy rewriting my outline Notes for Step 1 and Step 2 with the intent of publishing it in my blog. I had thought that it would help a lot of people to know what they should master and know for the USMLE. But I guess that too is up in the air. I shudder to think what this guy would do next. Maybe strip out the authors of original research work and put in his own name. Maybe he’ll even get a Nobel Prize. (sarcasm intended) I don’t know, maybe he’s the type of person who sells people CD that he claim will get you a 99. Or one of those guys sneaking into forums selling DVD’s of Kaplan Lectures or even Kaplan Lecture notes. It sure calls into question his moral and ethical fiber and qualification to be in the medical profession.
Dear askdoc,
What this chap has done reflects very badly on him, though he prolly doesn’t care. What irks me, as it irks you, is the absolute lack of credit to your effort. But, that’s the way it is sometimes. Life evens it all out though, eventually.
I’m really glad though, that you’ll soon be back, and I, we, look forward to more posts from you.
With all my support,
Paheli
I just had a look at his stupid site. Many of “his” posts are stolen. There are several well know articles copy/pasted there. I am going to start bothering him. Lets see what he has to say about it.
He has copy-pasted from prep4usmle extensively. That’s what I cannot understand, if he just gave attribution, saying he is sharing the posts in the interest of helping others, no one would fault him even the authors. But to copy paste, then remove credit and edit out any reference that would indicate he is not the author is unethical at best and reflects his character. He just deleted all my post in his site, except one and even attempted to post here using an alias to claim that I was pointing to a non-existent site. I caught him because he was using the same IP address as another person that was referred to my site from the admin section of the egmedicine site. Apparently, he is not a webmaster, since he does not realize that all webservers record ip address and referring site in their logs.
I tried commenting there and pointing out several copy-pasted articles (by you, Sharvil, and others). But it seems that commenting is disabled over there at the moment, so I sent him a small email instead. I am eager to hear what he has to say!
Dearest AskDoc: Wish I knew your name…
Please do not lose heart. You would have faced this somewhere in your career/ research life.
Take it from me- sitting in the high level (global) meetings and coming across colleagues who call themselves MDs who stoop so low as to be in the rat race. And some of the learned ones at universities are not far behind either. They were US MDs and from EU and all other countries including the Indian subcontinent and China. Seen them all.
You already have attained a higher level of thinking, going by your writings in the blogs. See this event esoterically and just do the damage control. You have an amazing, outstanding creative mind coupled with a selfless talent to make this page happen. I could not have done it 15 years back even if I had the know-hows of the exam process.
I had your website saved to come back to- months back and happened to stumble into it today. I am trying to quit the rat race and get into private practice. And so testing the waters at your website in 2009 about these exams.
An Old FMGEMS veteran
Hi Mari,
Thanks for the encouragement. I am back writing. Feel free to take what you need and apply to your own prep. May you achieve your aspirations.
Askdoc
P.S. My name is in my Score Report, published somewhere in my blog.