In my last journal I wrote that I had made a long hike in Bukit Kiara with a group of hikers. I joined their Whatsapp group and they know about my interest in waterfalls. Last week a message was posted in this Whatsapp group with a link to Paradise Malaysia Waterfalls . Of course I was interested and I opened the link. Surprise! Hey, it is about me! Here is the opening page (click to enlarge).
The website belongs to the Big Blue Taxi Services and this article has been added to the site in August last year, by ‘bigblue’.
But I have never had any contact with this company, I have never used a Blue Taxi in KL and when I read this: Avoid Blue taxis in KL at ALL cost! , I never will in future, LOL. So, how is it possible that I appear on this site?
Time for some investigative Google search… 🙂 As I suspected copycatting, I did a search for “Dutch enthusiast Jan Stuivenberg” and got this:
Bingo! Big Blue Taxi Services is there, but top of the list is a STAR article “Our Best Waterfalls” dating back to 2009. And yes, that rings a bell…:-)
In 2009 my friend Joe Yap was very active with her Waterfall Survivors group, drawing attention from a STAR reporter, Louisa Lim, resulting in an article about the activities of the WS group titled Fighting for the Falls .Joe told her about me, that I was her “sifu”, I got an email from Louisa and in the same STAR issue a second article was published: Our Best Waterfalls
When you compare the two texts you will see that they are identical, except for one small, but telling detail: in the Big Blue article the word “five“ is omitted, and the title mentions “Top 8 Must Visit Waterfalls” . And indeed, in the Big Blue article 3 more waterfalls have been added.
There are more differences. In the Big Blue article the description of the waterfalls is much more elaborate than in the original STAR article.
For example, about the Jerangkang Falls in Pahang.
Here is the STAR description. Not my words, by the way, they were written by the STAR reporter …:-)
And here is Big Blue (click to enlarge)
The first paragraph is identical. The rest of the text is mine! Copied from the Jerangkang page in my Waterfalls in Malaysia website. Double copycatting..:-). Ok, the pictures are different.
Did Big Blue do all this? No, it is more complicated.
In the Google search there is another hit, the website Holidays in Malaysia . In May 2010, almost five years ago, and six months after the STAR article, a certain Kenny published an article Best Waterfalls In Malaysia on this website. He added one more waterfall to “my” five…:-). The Geruntum fall in Perak. The rest of the text is identical with the STAR article, but he adds a few pictures. Here is Jerangkang again, including a picture
And the Geruntum fall links to a separate page: Splashing Time At The Ulu Geruntum Waterfall , published by Kenny in July 2010. Fair enough, for this article he mentions the STAR as source. It did not take me long to find out that he had copied the content, lock, stock and barrel from Having a splashing time , written for the STAR in 2009 by my waterfall and birding friend Chan Ah Lak !
Do you still follow me…:-)? Because we are not yet there…:-).
The Google Search has another, more recent hit: My Travel Journey September 2012 This is a blog, written by “John” . Here is the opening page
And here is the part about Jerangkang on his site. The first two paragraphs are from the STAR article, the purple part has been copied from my Waterfalls of Malaysia site.
For this waterfall no pictures have been copied, which makes the sentence: “These pictures cover the falls until step 15, so there is still work to be done…!” rather meaningless.
For other waterfalls he copies the pictures too, actually just linking to the pictures on my website (which is considered impolite in Cyberspace!) Here is a part of Lata Kinjang, first as shown on my site
And here is the same part of Lata Kinjang on John’s site. When I check the source code of the page, I see that the whole page has been extracted (using MsOffice Word?) from my site, even including the table structure, leading to misalignment of the lats picture…:-)
In this blog two more waterfalls are added, bringing the total to 8. Why the Bukit Larut (Perak) fall and the Giam Klimau fall (Sarawak!) are selected from my site, is unclear to me. They are not that special.
Far enough, at the end of the page, he writes: For more info can go to http://www.waterfallsofmalaysia.com/index.php………. But of course it is still copycatting.
Now we are almost there, finally…:-) When I compare this My Travel Journey version with the Big Blue one, I find only minor differences. Big Blue does not link to my Waterfalls of Malaysia pictures. They have edited (and improved) the layout of the page and made some textual changes. At the end they mention the Waterfalls of Malaysia site, and also that they used My Travel Journey as their source.
But it still is copycatting, copycatting and copycatting…:-) My Waterfalls of Malaysia site has a contact option and the least they could have done, is to contact me and ask my permission.
Final copycatting reconstruction:
STAR article (2009) > Holidays in Malaysia (2010) > My Travel Journey (2012 > Big Blue Taxi Services (2014)
And one last remark. On all these sites I am introduced as the “Dutch enthusiast Jan Stuivenberg, who has paid a visit to more than 110 of the nation’s 130 waterfalls”
What utterly nonsense about “the nation’s 130 waterfalls“, LOL. When the STAR reporter wrote her article, there were 130 waterfalls described on the Waterfalls of Malaysia site! When you visit the site now, you will see that the present count is 183. And there are hundreds, maybe even thousands more in Malaysia.