Plagiarism Today Celebrates 20 Years

On August 2, 2005, I published a post on this site entitled “We’re Live, Baby.” It was the first post on plagiarismtoday.com, and it announced the official launch of the site.

To be clear, I had been publishing posts for several months before that. The goal was to create a backlog of content for readers to access. The actual first post was on June 13, 2005, and discussed the now-defunct blogging site GreatestJournal.com.

However, August 2nd was when the site first went public. Looking back at that original post, the last line stands out to me: “After all, the hard part is already done.” If I could reach back in time and smack 24-year-old me for saying this, I absolutely would.

That version of me had no idea what was ahead. He had no idea that this would become a multi-decade project, that it would become a full-time job or that it would lead to a slew of wild events that, almost certainly, would never have happened otherwise.

So, for August, I’m using the Thursday post (the last post of the week) to talk about some of the site’s history and maybe bring back a few old favorites that haven’t been around in a while.

For today, I want to focus on a general overview of the site’s history, including how it got started and some of its highlights (and lowlights).

Before Plagiarism Today

I first began publishing websites on the internet in 1994. Needless to say, it was a very different internet. This included various projects, such as a fantasy wrestling league, creating a website for my high school newspaper, and eventually, a site named Raven’s Rants, where I began posting my literature.

It was because of Raven’s Rants that I first became involved with plagiarism. In April 2002, I discovered that another site had copied and pasted nearly all the content I had uploaded, which represented over 5 years of work, and published it under a different name. I covered that story in more detail in May 2006.

However, after resolving that first issue, my partner, Crystal, asked if others had done the same. A few simple searches determined that many had. What followed over the next four years was a never-ending treadmill of plagiarists. In total, over 700 individual cases were addressed, some dealing with dozens or hundreds of works.

In 2005, RSS readers were becoming increasingly common, and I sought out a source for news about plagiarism and related news. However, such a source didn’t exist. Once again, Crystal provided the key inspiration and said I should create one.

That was the genesis of Plagiarism Today.

The First Few Years

The first few years of Plagiarism Today were very rough, both personally and professionally.

Launching in early August 2005 turned out to be terrible timing. Hurricane Katrina would hit New Orleans, my hometown, just 27 days after the launch of the site. I would remain evacuated and with limited internet access for three weeks. I threw myself into writing content for the site, mainly as a distraction from the uncertainty.

Fortunately, my home was spared, but the next few months saw me working 72-hour weeks at a day job and generally struggling to help the city and make ends meet myself. Still, I managed to keep the site active and, by February 2006, it began to attract media attention.

However, the first media mentions were far from glowing. The popular tech podcast This Week in Tech covered the site but did so in a mocking way. It was disheartening to hear celebrities I respected mock the project I had invested so much time in. Fortunately, attitudes did change as, in early 2009, I was a semi-regular guest on This Week in Law, a sister show to This Week in Tech.

However, in May 2006, it was Maura Welch at the Boston Globe (archived version) who would give the site its first positive coverage. This opened up a lot of doors for me. Soon, I was being asked to consult on new anti-plagiarism technology and even perform analyses in court cases. At this point, it was still very much part-time, but it became a growing part of my income over the next few years.

I also began speaking at various conferences, including three separate International Plagiarism Conferences and three SXSW conferences. Speaking would continue to be a significant part of my life for the next decade, until 2020 and the start of the pandemic.

The Middle Years

Early 2010 was a disastrous time for me both personally and professionally. Months prior, I had joined CopyByte.com as its only employee. I had put my broader consulting practice on hold for this supposedly full-time job.

However, after just a few months of operation, the parent company decided to shutter CopyByte. I was given the option of taking a severance package or the CopyByte branding. I took the intellectual property. I launched CopyByte as my consulting site in February 2010.

Note: I discussed this story in more detail as part of the My Favorite Mistake Podcast with Mark Graban. It’s well worth a listen.

The years that followed that involved a lot of rebuilding. It was a slog and took much longer than the first time. However, I was very fortunate to have a great support structure at home and great clients.

Things slowly improved, and, in many ways, these years would be defined by outside issues. These included the SOPA/PIPA debate, Journalism’s Summer of Sin and the Aereo decision, to name a few.

By 2015, things had improved drastically. I was speaking at the European Medical Writers’ Association in Budapest, and Crystal and I had begun our life with our then-new partner, Elli. Both personally and professionally, this was a high-water mark.

However, for the site, July 2016 was another pivot point. Though political plagiarism cases existed before then and many were covered here, the Melania Trump plagiarism scandal of July 2016 was in a league of its own.

I gave dozens of interviews related to it and appeared on Dr. Drew’s Headline News to discuss the case. It began a cycle of political (and even weaponized) plagiarism that has continued to this day.

However, even I couldn’t imagine what was on the horizon.

The Latter Years

As one might expect, the pandemic defined much of the early 2020s. Concerns about academic integrity while students were learning remotely dominated much of the conversation. Overall, interest began to wane in this site.

Though this never really impacted the business side, traffic to the site began to fall sharply. Though it seems to be rebounding now, Plagiarism Today lost over 80% of its traffic during the early 2020s.

However, this time also had some of the more memorable moments. This included the Jumi Bello story, which saw an article on Plagiarism Today plagiarized as part of a plagiarism atonement essay. Because of that story, I made an appearance on the NPR program Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me.

Strangely, this brought me full circle with the original TWiT mention, with the commentators shocked that such a site would even exist (let alone for two decades). Still, this was a significantly more positive experience and one meant in good humor.

In December 2023, Hbomberguy released his video essay calling out various YouTube plagiarists. Though it didn’t mention Plagiarism Today directly, it generated a lot of new interest in the site, and my response video got over a quarter of a million views.

But it was a moment between those events that has defined the recent years. In November 2022, OpenAI made ChatGPT publicly available, kicking off the AI boom.

That, in turn, is where we are today. Generative AI is changing the discussion around authorship, plagiarism and copyright in ways we are only beginning to feel. Needless to say, there’s going to be a lot to talk about for many years to come.

Bottom Line

Through all of these ups and downs, I owe a tremendous debt to my partners. Crystal, who was literally the inspiration for this site 20 years ago and continues to be my rock today, and Elli, who has seen the ups and downs of the past decade and provided constant input and advice.

Without them, this site would never be possible. As I said in 2005, this is very much a “we” endeavor, not an “I” endeavor.

Plagiarism Today will always be a niche site. However, I think it’s an important niche. Authorship, integrity, plagiarism and transparency are important issues, especially today.

When I started this site, I told my friends in private that I was going to do this until I reached the bottom of the rabbit hole and felt that I had explored everything there was to discuss. Twenty years later, I think I’m further from that goal than when I started.

Still, I’m grateful for the opportunities and even the challenges this site and this path have brought me. I never imagined it would be a 20-year project, but I am happy it’s become that.

I honestly don’t know if there are another 20 years in this. But I know that I’m looking forward to finding out.