Mishegas

Shooting The Messenger

Prominent Left-wing Orthodox blogger DovBear has recently come under attack by an anonymous Right-wing Orthodox blogger calling himself DovWeasel, who has accused DovBear of “serial plagiarism” and denounced him as both a liar and a thief.
Last week, DovWeasel sent an e-mail to roughly 50 Orthodox bloggers pointing to his own blog, which cites 14 instances in which DovBear allegedly lifted text directly from online news sources and presented them as his own writing.
“It may be that DovBear is smart, witty and articulate,” wrote DovWeasel in a follow-up post Saturday, “but to the extent he gets this reputation from his blog it is a result of lying and stealing. It’s that simple.”
DovBear responded to the allegations by outright admitting he had made a mistake, but that his errors were not intentional:

I made a mistake, and I am sorry.
Bottom line: I blog all day long, and sometimes I get lazy in ways large and small. On occasion, thas included omitting to properly attribute sources. Now, DovWeasel has made my sins abundantly clear.
My plan is to carefully review my blog, and to provide proper attribution in every instance. I hope to do this in the coming days and weeks, but I am making my intentions known now, so I won’t be accused of destroying evidence.
Again, I apologize and make no excuses.

He goes on to point out that two out of the 14 instances had been mischaracterized by DovWeasel and could not justly be deemed plagiarism.
Since he first began publishing in October 2004, DovBear has written 3,626 posts (by Blogger.com’s count). Out of those 3,626, DovBear neglected (unintentionally, by his account, which I believe) to provide proper attribution on a grand total of 12 posts. That is .33% (ie., one-third of 1%) of his total entries over the course of two years. Of course, this is hardly anything to squawk about and says nothing whatsoever about DovBear’s credibility.
DovBear makes light of the situation, saying, “In the past, we’ve had a fine time pillorying all sorts of villians [sic] — some large, some small — in the comments of this blog. Now, I suppose it’s my turn. Fair is fair, after all.”
However, I find it rather telling that such self-appointed “guardians” of the Orthodox community are stooping this low to discredit those who present challenges to their world views. Rather than substantially countering the positions which DovBear presents, DovWeasel has sought (and failed rather miserably) to destroy DovBear’s reputation.
It is none too dissimilar — though certainly less threatening and damaging — from the attempts of other Orthodox bloggers and community leaders to destroy the credibility of Un-Orthodox Jew who, earlier this year, outed Rabbi Joel Kolko of Yeshiva Torah Temimah as a serial sexual abuser. Kolko was indicted for his insidious crimes only days after Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon of Agudas Yisroel decried UOJ as a liar who was motivated only by his hatred of G-d and Torah.
Rather than acknowledge that something is desperately wrong in the Orthodox world that needs both attention and fixing, individuals like DovWeasel and Matisyahu Salomon prefer to shoot the messenger.
B”H, DovBear dodged the bullet on this one.
From DovBear “One clarification: I can’t say that the passage lifting was unintentional. Some of those examples are over a year old, and I can’t say with any certainty what I was thinking when I wrote those posts. It could be that I stole intentionally; I can’t rule it out.”

36 thoughts on “Shooting The Messenger

  1. Mobius, it is interesting that you say 12 posts is minimal. Standards for online writing should be just as stringent, in regard to plagiarism, as they are for print. 12 posts are a lot. In fact, plagiarizing a single sentence is grounds for serious action in Academia. If it means half the actual blogging output to cite your sources, it is still worth it. Your reputation is at stake even online.
    DovBear, I commend you for your honesty, and due to that, you have not lost a reader in me. But for everyone, its easier to cite than to rebuild credibility, so make your life easier and just do it.

  2. Mobius, did you actually look at the examples of plagiraism on the site you linked? I can’t see how those could be unintentional. I think this post is either disingenuous or blinded by the ideological kinship you feel with db.
    there is no acceptable level of plagiarism, imho. 12 posts is a lot, imho. no matter how many posts the guy has written.
    i will not stop reading him, but i will always wonder if hes the first to write it every time read a post. Not the end of the world, but certainly a blow to the man’s cred.
    I also don’t think you are correct that this is surely an ideological vendetta.

  3. “However, I find it rather telling that such self-appointed “guardians” of the Orthodox community are stooping this low to discredit those who present challenges to their world views. Rather than substantially countering the positions which DovBear presents, DovWeasel has sought (and failed rather miserably) to destroy DovBear’s reputation.”
    Puhleeze! Guardians of the orthodox community? Is this for real. There is no conspiratorial movement to dethrone DB. There is no cabal of white bearded rabbis rubbing their hands in glee that their evil plan to pin a plagiarism rap on DB. The hopes and fears of greater Orthodoxy hardly stands on a campaign to discredit DB.
    This post makes it sound as if the broader Orthodox community tried, and valiantly so, but were foiled a la Dr. Evil by the leftist forces of good against the conniving orthodox. It sounds either paranoid or simply naive. Phooey!

  4. Did Dovweasel embarrass Dovbear rather than bringing the allegations to him in private? Also he apparently assembled 53 email addresses and spent quite a bit of time on this. I hope he thought it was worth it.

  5. yirmiyahu: Mobius, it is interesting that you say 12 posts is minimal. Standards for online writing should be just as stringent, in regard to plagiarism, as they are for print.
    he’s an anonymous blogger, not the ny times. he has no obligation to journalistic standards.
    gadi: Mobius, did you actually look at the examples of plagiraism on the site you linked? I can’t see how those could be unintentional. I think this post is either disingenuous or blinded by the ideological kinship you feel with db.
    i read them all quite carefully. all you need to do is insert two blockquote tags to make all the difference in the world.
    there is no acceptable level of plagiarism, imho. 12 posts is a lot, imho. no matter how many posts the guy has written.
    stop using imho — there’s nothing humble about the opinion you’re stating.
    I also don’t think you are correct that this is surely an ideological vendetta.
    oh so there’s just some staunch orthodox defender of copyright spending hours going through dovbear’s posts and searching for plagiarism and emailing the results to 50 other orthodox bloggers because he cares so much about authors’ publishing rights.
    riiiiight…
    sw: Puhleeze! Guardians of the orthodox community? Is this for real. There is no conspiratorial movement to dethrone DB. There is no cabal of white bearded rabbis rubbing their hands in glee that their evil plan to pin a plagiarism rap on DB. The hopes and fears of greater Orthodoxy hardly stands on a campaign to discredit DB.
    what part of “self-appointed” was the part that went over your head? was it the part that implied “acting alone”?
    This post makes it sound as if the broader Orthodox community tried, and valiantly so, but were foiled a la Dr. Evil by the leftist forces of good against the conniving orthodox. It sounds either paranoid or simply naive. Phooey!
    uh, no. that’s how YOU make it sound, as you exemplify PRECISELY what it means to be a self-appointed guardian of the orthodox community.

  6. Mobius – Why the assumption that DovWeasel is a “right-wing Orthodox blogger”? Do you have any basis for this, or the ideological claims?
    Also, I’m not sure why you feel people shouldn’t held to some kind of standard, even if not journalistic [or if you do, what is that standard?] – students would be expelled and others fired from their jobs for any one of the cases DW cites.

  7. mobius —
    point # 1: where you use the plural “guardians”
    point #2: would you care to shed light on your, at this point, rather thin assertion about my precise exemplification of ‘self appointed guardian … “

  8. Why the assumption that DovWeasel is a “right-wing Orthodox blogger”? Do you have any basis for this, or the ideological claims?
    firstly, a person who agrees with dovbear’s positions would not have gone to so much trouble to defame him. secondly, as far as i understand, the list of bloggers to whom dovweasel reported were of the right-wing persuasion. thirdly, the first people to comment on dovweasel’s blog were right-wingers making defamatory generalizations about liberals.
    Also, I’m not sure why you feel people shouldn’t held to some kind of standard, even if not journalistic [or if you do, what is that standard?] – students would be expelled and others fired from their jobs for any one of the cases DW cites.
    dovbear is neither in the employ of a corporation nor a student at a university. ie., neither a company nor a university has a reputation to risk on his writing. neither is he is he significantly profiting from said plagiarism. ie., he is not earning a living from stealing other people’s work. what has he made, a few hundred dollars from blogads? fine–have him give it to tzedakah. it’s still not significant. he hasn’t stolen from the mouths of the authors of those works.
    if your plagiarism is damaging to others in a quantifiable way, then you’ve done something wrong. if it’s done for the sake of shared mission with the authors, and not out of interest of advancing one’s own career — which would be difficult for dovbear consider he’s entirely anonymous — then there’s nothing quantifiably wrong with it. no one was hurt. crimes which do not have victims are not crimes.
    point # 1: where you use the plural “guardians”
    yes, guardians. as in, there are multiple individuals throughout the blogosphere who have made this a full-time hobby of theirs.
    point #2: would you care to shed light on your, at this point, rather thin assertion about my precise exemplification of ’self appointed guardian … “
    i think your words pretty much stand for themselves. you perceived of an attack on orthodoxy and raced in to say, “oh please! what rubbish!”

  9. “thirdly, the first people to comment on dovweasel’s blog were right-wingers making defamatory generalizations about liberals.”
    DovBear is not exactly kind to conservatives on his blog (or should I say that the people he plagiarizes are not kind to conservatives?).
    “no one was hurt. crimes which do not have victims are not crimes.”
    I don’t think that anyone is suggesting criminal prosecution. It’s a question of credibility and respect. When you say something like
    “Some of those examples are over a year old, and I can’t say with any certainty what I was thinking when I wrote those posts. It could be that I stole intentionally; I can’t rule it out”
    -let’s just say that your ability to criticize others diminishes.

  10. firstly, a person who agrees with dovbear’s positions would not have gone to so much trouble to defame him.
    That’s likely true, but that could be of any type. RW Orthodox, RW politically, or just someone who doesn’t like him for whatever reason. Even so, it could be that someone who sometimes agrees with him, or often does, but was troubled by his actions. Notice that the blog was not written with anger or cynicism – it’s very straightforward.
    secondly, as far as i understand, the list of bloggers to whom dovweasel reported were of the right-wing persuasion.
    I was on that list, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I can’t claim to know everyone’s positions or that I really looked at the list thoroughly. I also don’t know what you consider RW – any Orthodox? I’d guess that most of the people on the list were Orthodox.
    thirdly, the first people to comment on dovweasel’s blog were right-wingers making defamatory generalizations about liberals.
    That’s unsurprising, but that has nothing to do with DovWeasel.
    In the sum, I think you made your assertion with no basis whatsoever; you should not have presented it as fact, but rather your opinion.
    dovbear is neither in the employ of a corporation nor a student at a university.
    That could be, but that’s not the point. The point is that there’s a reason such places have standards, even though they are not journalists.
    neither is he is he significantly profiting from said plagiarism. ie., he is not earning a living from stealing other people’s work. what has he made, a few hundred dollars from blogads? fine–have him give it to tzedakah. it’s still not significant. he hasn’t stolen from the mouths of the authors of those works.
    Again, completely not the point. Firstly, any amount is significant, even if you don’t think a few hundred dollars is. Second, whether he profited or not is not the point; nobody needs to be hurt for it to be a – very serious – problem. To say “nobody got hurt” seems to be a very juvenile response.
    crimes which do not have victims are not crimes.
    That’s ridiculous, especially in terms of what we’re talking about.

  11. The marketplace of ideas, like any marketplace, is fit only for looting.
    We have all been taught from our youth that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Whenever a child has an exciting idea, an older person is quick to point out either that this idea has been tried before and didn’t work, or that someone else not only has already had the idea but also has developed and expounded upon it to greater lengths than the child ever could. “Learn and choose from the ideas and beliefs already in circulation, rather than seeking to develop and arrange your own,” seems to be the message, and this message is sent clearly by the methods of “instruction” used in both public and private schools throughout the West.
    Despite this common attitude, or perhaps because of it, we are very possessive of our ideas. The concept of “intellectual property” is ingrained in the collective psychosis much deeper than the concept of material property. Plenty of thinkers have appeared who have asserted that “property is theft” in regard to real estate and other physical capital, but few have dared to make similar statements about their own ideas. Even the most notoriously “radical” thinkers have still proudly claimed their ideas as, first and foremost, their ideas.
    Consequently, little distinction is made between the thinkers and their thoughts. Students of philosophy will study the philosophy of Descartes, students of economics will study Marx-ism, students of art will study the paintings of Dali. At worst, the cult of personality that develops around famous thinkers prevents any useful consideration of their ideas or artwork; hero-worshipping partisans will swear allegiance to a thinker and all his thoughts, while others who have some justified or unjustified objection to the conceiver of the ideas will generally have a difficult time not being prejudiced against the ideas themselves. At best, this emphasis upon the “author-owner” in the consideration of propositions or artwork is merely irrelevant to the worth of the actual propositions or artwork, even if the stories about the individual in question are interesting and can encourage creative thinking by themselves.
    The very assumptions behind the concept of “intellectual property” require more attention than we have given them. The factors that affect the words and deeds of an individual are many and varied, not the least of them being her social-cultural climate and the input of other individuals. To say that any idea has its sole origins in the being of one individual man or woman is to grossly oversimplify. But we are so accustomed to claiming items and objects for ourselves, and to being forced to accept similar claims from others, in the cutthroat competition to acquire and dominate (before we are acquired and dominated) that is life in a market economy, that it seems natural to do the same with ideas. Certainly there must be other ways of thinking about the origins and ownership of ideas that warrant consideration. . . for our present approach does more than merely distract from the ideas.
    Our tradition of recognizing “intellectual property rights” is dangerous in that it results in the deification of the publicly recognized “thinker” and “artist” at the expense of everyone else. When ideas are always associated with proper names (and always the same proper names, in point of fact), this suggests that thinking and creating are special skills that belong to a select few individuals. For example, the glorification of the “artist” in our culture, which includes the stereotyping of artists as eccentric “visionaries” who exist at the edge (the “avant garde”) of society, encourages people to believe that artists are significantly and fundamentally different from other human beings. Actually, anyone can be an artist, and everyone is, to some extent; being able to act creatively is a crucial element of human happiness. But when we are led to believe that being creative and thinking critically are talents which only a few individuals possess, those of us who are not fortunate enough to be christened “artists” or “philosophers” by our communities will not make much effort to develop these abilities. Consequently we will be dependent upon others for many of our ideas, and will have to be content as spectators of the creative work of others—and we will feel alienated and unsatisfied.
    Another incidental drawback of our association of ideas with specific individuals is that it promotes the acceptance of these ideas in their original form. The students who learn the philosophy of Descartes are encouraged to learn it in its orthodox form, rather than learning the parts which they find relevant to their own lives and interests and combining these parts with ideas from other sources. Out of deference to the original thinker, deified as he is in our tradition, his texts and theories are to be preserved as-is, without ever being put into new forms or contexts which might reveal new insights. Mummified as they are, many theories become completely irrelevant to modern existence, when they could have been given a new lease on life by being treated with a little less reverence.
    So we can see that our acceptance of the tradition of “intellectual property” has negative effects upon our endeavors to think critically and learn from our artistic and philosophical heritage. What can we do to address this problem? One of the possible solutions is plagiarism.
    Plagiarism is an especially effective method of appropriating and reorganizing ideas, and as such it can be a useful tool for a young man or woman looking to encourage new and exciting thinking in others. And it is a method that is revolutionary in that it does not recognize “intellectual property” rights but rather strikes out against them and all of the negative effects that recognizing them can have.
    Plagiarism focuses attention on content and away from incidental issues, by making the genuine origins of the material impossible to ascertain. Besides, as suggested above, it could be argued that the genuine origins of the contents of most inspirations and propositions are impossible to determine anyway. By signing a new name, or no name at all, to a text, the plagiarizer puts the material in an entirely new context, and this may generate new perspectives and new thinking about the subject that have not appeared before. Plagiarism also makes it possible to combine the best or most relevant parts of a number of texts, thus creating a new text with many of the virtues of the older ones—and some new virtues, as well, since the combination of material from different sources is bound to result in unforeseeable effects and might well result in the unlocking of hidden meanings or possibilities that have been dormant in the texts for years. Finally, above all, plagiarism is the reappropriation of ideas: when an individual plagiarizes a text which those who believe in intellectual property would have held “sacred,” she denies that there is a difference in rank between herself and the thinker she takes from. She takes the thinker’s ideas for herself, to express them as she sees fit, rather than treating the thinker as an authority whose work she is duty-bound to preserve as he intended. She denies, in fact, that there is a fundamental difference between the thinker and the rest of humanity, by appropriating the thinker’s material as the property of humanity.
    After all, a good idea should be available to everyone—should belong to everyone—if it really is a good idea. In a society organized with human happiness as the objective, copyright infringement laws and similar restrictions would not hinder the distribution and recombination of ideas. These impediments only make it more difficult for individuals who are looking for challenging and inspiring material to come upon it and share it with others.
    So, if there truly is “nothing new under the sun,” take them at their word, and act accordingly. Take what seems relevant to your life and your needs from the theories and doctrines prepared by those who came before you. Don’t be afraid to reproduce word for word those texts which seem perfect to you, so you can share them with others who might also benefit from them. And at the same time, don’t be afraid to plunder ideas from different sources and rearrange them in ways that you find more useful and exciting, more relevant to your own needs and experiences. Seek to create a personally constructed body of critical and creative thought, with elements gathered from as many sources as possible, rather than choosing from one of the prefabricated ideologies that are offered to you. After all, do we have ideas, or do they have us?

  12. Mobius, your staunch defense of plagiarism is astonishing. You are losing credibility in my eyes, and undoubtedly many others as well each time you post this nonsense. DovBear clearly does not need the help of those opposed to his ideology to destroy his reputation. He did that himself, and on second thought, he has lost a reader, I don’t need someone who is intellectually dishonest to give me something to read. I can read the guy he was gonna steal from anyway.
    Whoever DB stole from has a right to his own intellectual output. Whether he makes money from it is irrelevant. These are not DBs own thoughts, and your claim that there is nothing new under the sun is also lame. If you don’t think you are saying something new or in a new way, why the hell do you bother blogging anyway?
    Your claim that he is responsible to no one is naive. What about himself? what about you, a colleague who is ready to defend him? what about G-d? these are all people that he is responsible to. Even if you don’t care about his responsibility to his readers, these people matter too.
    Plagiarism is not a light matter in college, or for professionals, and it is also just as dishonest and disgraceful in what you seem to deem the childish, dishonest, irrelevant, anything-goes world of blogging.
    Perhaps you SHOULD care more about the standards that blogging should be held to as well. After all it is part of what you yourself do and it all rubs off on you, is what I’m trying to get at. But if you don’t care about this, then by all means continue defending palagiarists.

  13. Somehow I doubt that DovBear is going to want to use that as a defense. And somewhere in the back of my head, I seem to recall that the proprietor of a certain website was none too pleased, and even threatened legal action, when the name and logo of his site was infringed.
    Off topic, but wouldn’t the following be of interest to a wider audience?
    HaRav Yaakov Yisrael de Haan
    lays gasping in a pool of blood
    that spills forth from his heart
    into the streets of Mea Shearim
    his Zionist assassin standing over him
    bearing a smoking pistol
    looking down with the same contempt
    we now cast upon
    the Guardians of the City
    for their shared crime
    of seeking Yishmael’s forgiveness
    Certainly a novel version of what the crime of the “Guardians” actually is. This is one idea in the marketplace few of us will be trying to take home.

  14. re: the plagiarism defense. i didn’t write it. i plagiarized it. and merely to add another perspective to the conversation.
    re: the poem. j — why do you troll my websites? you clearly disagree with everything everyone on jewschool ever says. so why do you lurk here? what is your purpose? haven’t you a better use of your time?

  15. “i think your words pretty much stand for themselves. you perceived of an attack on orthodoxy and raced in to say, “oh please! what rubbish!”
    mobius, you’re letting your paranoia show. I think your silly knee-jerk reaction painted you into an ideological corner and you know it.

  16. when you catch me passing off someone else’s work as my own, you can tell me i’m committing professional suicide.
    sw — i’m paranoid? tell that to paul mendlowitz, who was outed as UOJ — despite not being UOJ — and subsequently had his life and the lives of his wife and children threatened.

  17. DovBear is not exactly kind to conservatives on his blog (or should I say that the people he plagiarizes are not kind to conservatives?).
    The twelve example of plagiarism are not example of anti-Conservative writing. DovBear did all of that himself. It’s all his writing.

  18. I don’t really find this to be an enormously big deal. I’m not a great fan of Dovbear as I find much of his political doctrine to be, well… doctrinaire. If he made a mistake then he made a mistake, and I really hope that for his own sake he’ll be much more cautious in the future even if that means reducing the quantity of his output. That said: My God! Are we really going to defend plaigiarism here?!!! It is nothing less than theft through and through. One would think that in the modern age in which essentially all valuable property is a form of intellectual propoerty any former modicum of tolerance for plaigarism which once existed would have rapidly decayed.
    Instead (in a Jewish forum of all places!) you’re going to try and defend nothing less than the hijacking and repackaging of somebody else’s labor?! How is that different than stealing a piano out of somebody’s house and re-selling it? You wouldn’t defend the thief of a piano…but you’ll defend the theft of the musical scores written for it?! I find it outrageous. (Pirkei Avot for its part states that proper source citation is something that brings redemption to the world! Amazing, and a practice that is ubiquitous (sometimes distractingly so!) throughout the Talmud).
    Anyway one thing I don’t get about Dovbear’s post is that he’s “not sure” whether or not he stole the outside pieces intentionally. Really?! Come on. I would think that he would know his own character well enough to know whether or not he intentionally stole and misrepresented other people’s work. That is an important issue. There’s a real difference between misrepresenting outside work because of ignorance, pressure or some other mistake vs. knowingly stealing somebody’s work and intentionally deceiving your readers. That’s important and Mr. Bear should know himself well enough to tell the difference immeidately.

  19. I have a mixed opinion on this. I think it is wrong to plagiarize, even on an anonymous blog. I always try to give credit if I saw something elsewhere before I post, though it is possible I mihght have slipped here or there. However, DovBear, while wrong for not giving credit, is only an indication of what is goign on all over. I see posts on many blogs where things looks clearly plagiarized with no credit given. It seems that people feel it is not necessary on blogs.

  20. “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”
    -Paul Gauguin
    That being said, what type of art is Dovbear’s?
    Here’s an upside tho, I’ll be reading dovbear more, just because of all this crap. I mean the opinion spouted in this post is bs, but controversy fills seats, so this may be the best thing that ever happened to him.
    Side note:
    ‘The concept of “intellectual property” is ingrained in the collective psychosis much deeper than the concept of material property.’
    One word – Rosebud. I don’t know what collective psychosis you live in, but leggo my eggo!!!
    The rest of comment 15 seems long winded and off kilter compared to the fact that this guy fucked up. He even admitted to it.
    So the real question, IMO, is where’s Dovbear in all of this?
    Oh SNAP!!! That’s right, he’s reading through his archive trying to figure out all the people he ripped off.

  21. *yawn*
    Mountain, molehill, whatever. DB made a few mistakes, admitted to them, and is moving forward with an honest apology. I think he needs to be much, much more careful about his sources and giving credit where it’s necessary, but given the volume of writing he produces, it doesn’t surprise me that he’d periodically forget to include the block quotes, or unintentionally rewrite something he’d read. For goodness’ sakes, he admitted he’d done something wrong and has apologized for it and is working to correct it. What else can anyone ask? Forgiveness, people, forgiveness.

  22. Mobius- you’re going out on a limb for someone that doesn’t need your defense. First of all, he admitted his wrongdoing for the most part, so let him shoulder the blame for a bit. Second, his examples of plagiarism are indefensable. This isn’t the case of “forgetting” to cite a source for facts or a news scoop–this is cutting and pasting entire articles as though it were his own words! And what’s this got anything in the world to do with an orthodox cabel against him? Give me a break!!!
    Let’s see your logic: DB plagiarized, the orthodox exposed him (all unverified speculation, by the way), but the orthodox supposedly hate him and are happy to see him go down… so it’s a wash? That doesn’t so work so well!
    Even if you don’t care about the actual plagiarism, how do you justify to yourself that an otherwise smart and prolific blogger would do something so psychotic? Who in their right mind would plagiarize on the internet (from other articles on the internet)? You’d have to be an absolute idiot (which I don’t DB is) to think that noone (not evey those plagiarism search engines) will come across both articles on the web and pick up on the similarities! It just doesn’t make sense. You’re telling us that your opinion of DB has not changed a bit since this was exposed?
    It’s like that kid in ‘the squid and the whale’ who plays pink floyd’s ‘hey you’ for the school talent show, claiming to have written it. Ofcourse he is caught, but while noone in the audience hates him or wants to see him humiliated and hung out to dry, everyone comes away with the feeling that the kid’s got some MAJOR issues (and mostly they pity him). Same here. I don’t think there’s a need to crucify DB, and chances are this noteriety wont slow his traffic down, but he’ll just never be the same person to anyone. IMHO, that’s a fair reaction.

  23. Mobius asks:
    “j — why do you troll my websites? you clearly disagree with everything everyone on jewschool ever says. so why do you lurk here? what is your purpose? haven’t you a better use of your time?”
    I’m a bit surprised to be asked that question after all this discussion about the free flow of ideas. Why should we assume that it’s best if people with the same ideas cluster into their own groups (and magazines, blogs, etc.) and not deal with their opponents? Do you restrict yourself to preaching only to the choir?
    As for your last question, I’m sure we all have better uses of our time. But here we are.
    If you find your ideas so brittle that they can’t withstand attack, maybe it’s time to change your ideas.

  24. “sw — i’m paranoid? tell that to paul mendlowitz, who was outed as UOJ — despite not being UOJ — and subsequently had his life and the lives of his wife and children threatened.”
    …you think this is the first shot in an effort to out DB?

  25. i don’t think db is big enough of a firecracker to warrant that
    i just think that these are people who find his ideas dangerous to their lifestyle trying to take him down a notch

  26. j — you didn’t even state a challenge to the view i portrayed of neturei karta, you just said, “that’s an unpopular idea.”
    don’t worry — i’m working on a big post about nk.

  27. Mobius-
    I think the events of the last couple of weeks alone are enough of an argument against Neturei Karta, and my challenge to your view won’t be anything we haven’t seen recently over the j-blogosphere. But I guess we’ll deal with it when your post comes out.

  28. one brief comment about someone saying that DovBear’s actions are only indicative of what is going on in the world of blogging. To think that that makes it ANY more acceptable is ridiculous. Just replace “plagiarism” with “anti-semitism” and my point is made.
    As for the rest of it, I think that for the most part people agree that plagiarism is a big deal, and unacceptable. period. There are no “buts,” plagiarism=bad. As for Mobius defending plagiarism I think he has made a mistake. But I also think that Mobius has been backed into a corner for his defense of DB, and I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the Talmud there is something against public humiliation. So let’s say that the plagiarism point has been made for the time being and that there is no need to beat the horse.

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