Abstract
33Rockers.com is a website created, written, and developed by Karthik Kastury — or at least that’s what he’d have you believe. His website has risen in the ranks and gained some notoriety since it’s inception due to the quality and insightful articles published online. Turns out that Karthik Kastury has been stealing not only other people’s words, but their blog designs as well.
The following post is written in the spirit of education. By making an example and exposing Karthik Kastury for the plagarising blogger that he is, I hope that others can learn why his actions prove not only unprofitable today, but stupid in the long run due to pagespank as a result of public shaming. I hope other bloggers learn that stealing content and claiming it as your own original work is foolish and possibly detrimental to your future career.
Full Text
Karthik Kastury is a plagiarist. Consider his most recent post, “The Hottest Map Based Mashups” posted on November 2, 2006. Here is a small snippet:
Of late, map mashups, applications based on on-line map services, have gained considerable attention. A map mashup integrates user-data on top of a geographical map pulled from an on-line map service such as Google maps and Yahoo! Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/). Several such applications are being rolled out daily.
Wow. Pretty good stuff. Unfortunately, its been stolen from an article entitled, “Location-enabled webfeed holds promis,” found at www.m-indya.com. The original author is one J. Murali and he posted his article on October 30th, 2006. Here is a snippet from his article:
Of late, map mashups, applications based on on-line map services, have gained considerable attention. A map mashup integrates user-data on top of a geographical map pulled from an on-line map service such as Google maps and Yahoo! Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/). Several such applications are being rolled out daily.
You’ll notice that the two quotes are identical. In fact, the Karthik Kastury (33rockers.com) version of the article is copied word for word from the source without credit. But Karthik Kastury doesn’t stop there — he is a smart dude. Why take one article and copy it when you can take one article and copy it into 3 articles? Karthik Kastury copied the J. Murali post on m-indya.com into 3 posts on his website 33rockers.com. Here are the other two:
- Cool New Services
- Karthik Kastury version
- original (m-indya.com) unattributed
- GeoRSS! Redefining RSS
- Karthik Kastury version
- original (m-indya.com) unattributed
Karthik Kastury also knows how to copy from other sites (including the shady ezine articles link syndication network):
- Get Visitors Returning To Your Site Again & Again
- Karthik Kastury version
- original (ezine article) unattributed
- Create a Job Board For Your Blog
- Karthik Kastury version
- original (tech-buzz) unattributed
However, in a rare case of both plagiarizing content and style, Karthik Kastury has ripped off UtomBox.com’s WordPress theme U4. Utom’s design is a wonderful version of the popular WordPress theme hemmingway. The 33rockers version sports an entirely different footer than the UtomBox version:
Powered by Wordpress and Hemingway. Modified Heavily by Karthik Kastury
Powered by Wordpress and Hemingway. Template designed by Utom
The 33Rockers version claims to be heavily modified. Judge for yourself, here are two screenshots, one from 33rockers, and the other from the Utom Style:
While the two designs certainly appear very similar, image differencing can be used to gauge how identical the two designs are. The figure below displays a screen capture from 33Rockers at the top, U4 in the middle, and then a difference image created by subtracting the two from each other.
Areas of brighter colour indicate a strong difference whereas areas that are black show zero difference. The results indicate that the U4 theme and the 33rockers theme are nearly identical. Analysis shows that there is no difference in the colours, shapes, tone, or texture of the graphics. Most of the differences that are observable are a result of different title text and date.
Here is a direct link to the 33rockers css file. At the top of the file we find:
/*
Theme Name: 4u-Hemingway
Theme URI: http://utombox.com/2006/09/22/4u-style-for-wordpress/
Description: 4u-Hemingway continues to develop <a href="http://warpspire.com/hemingway">Hemingway</a>.
4u style is designed by <a href="http://utombox.com">Utom</a>.
Version: 1.0
Author: Utom
Author URI: http://utombox.com
*/
I did a quick text difference between the Utom’s U4 CSS and 33Rockers CSS and the differences can be categorized as minimal (less than 10% difference between the two files) and pertain mostly to specific CSS classes introduced by 33rockers. Here is what Karthik Kastury said when he changed the 33rockers site theme to the style that looks remarkably like U4 by utom:
So many of you have might noticed that I have got a new design up and running on 33′rockers. Past few days I have spent on debugging and optimizing the code for faster load times and cross broswer rendering. I think for the first time in my life I have got a design that looks perfect in both IE and Firefox.
Nowhere does he mention Utom or the U4 theme. Although Karthik Kastury claims to have “modified heavily” his 33rockers theme, a simple visual comparison, an image difference, and a quick comparison of the two CSS files all indicate that modifications are minimal at best. Also, if you modified heavily a WordPress theme, then posted (boasted) all about how you optimized the code and so forth, wouldn’t you change the CSS authorship information? Perhaps this was an ill-attempted pass at creditng the source. More likely, simply laziness.
I hope by now it is obvious that Karthik Kastury is a plagiarist, someone who steals the words and idea’s of others and claims them as their own. I’m not the first to bring this up, and won’t be the last seeing as how Kathik hasn’t learned yet. After 5thirtyone.com revealed that 33rockers had stolen content and posted it online with accrediting the source, Karthik claimed that it was his assistant who did the evil deed:
I’ll tell you what derek. I had no intention of scrapping your content. It was my asssistant who was doing all this. I know this sounds pretty ridiculous but i am really sorry for that.
Maybe I should give a public apology.. [source]
Nowhere on his site does he mention his “assistant.” Under the about page at 33rockers Karthik has written, “…33rockers is the personal playground of Karthik Kastury.” Could Karthik be a liar too?
Karthik Kastury of 33rockers.com is a content thief and plagiariser. His actions and attitude need to be exposed. He hasn’t learned one of the most important rules taught at school, play nice. Cite your sources, give credit where credit is due, and don’t steal from others.
As I wrote previously, there are a lot of ways to stop content theft and plagiarism. My personal favourite thing to do is to go after a plagiarists source of money. If you stop them earning then they cannot profit from their shady activities.
It could be concluded that since there are no Adsense ads on his site, enough people complained to Adsense to get his account removed. While I cannot verify this, there are no Adsense ads on his site at this time. Currently, the only form of monetization I observe on his site comes from the performancing partners advertising network. Since using the copyrighted works of others appears to violate Performancing’s TOS, I’m sure it won’t be long until even that avenue of revenue is gone.
There are no Internet police so the only thing content creators can do to protect themselves from the content thieves is attack their source of income, their hosting, and then publicly shame them for their actions. With repeat offenders this shaming is especially warranted and becomes that much more effective with time as the Google pagespank factor is uncontrollable. Future employers, friends, family members, anyone that searches for the name of the shamed on the Internet may find themselves at a page designed to humiliate the plagiarist. This shaming is an acute example of how a person’s online activities can translate into consequences in the real world. And long into the future as well.
The text of this post (and this post alone on maxpower) may be republished without express written permission of the author provided a link to the original is made.
03 Nov 06
3:36 am
OK, Lets award him with the spammer of the year. He stole handful of my articles, have a look at this and read the comments that follow.
03 Nov 06
5:21 am
he stole my “how to fix google reader in opera post!” *&%*(#&*(&49
and he didnt even leave a trackback. jus direct cut copy paste.bleh
03 Nov 06
5:28 am
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Save_your_blog_content_from_plagarist_like_Karthik_of_33orckers_com
DIGG ALLL
03 Nov 06
6:00 am
33rockers.com is no more.. I accept my defeat.. I hope to be back with a new blog pretty soon and I swear I am not going to plagiaries stuff anymore..
Thanks for all the insult.. I accept defeat — http://33rockers.com
03 Nov 06
6:50 am
If you want the respect from others, please respect the fruits of their labors.
03 Nov 06
1:15 pm
@Karthik? Your WP Installation is still in place just that it gives a Database Error?
Wouldn’t it have been correct to issue an apology in public on your site?
03 Nov 06
3:27 pm
what a twat. First posting the content then coming here and “accepts defeat”. Idiot.
03 Nov 06
4:09 pm
It takes a big man to admit wrong doing. Has the guy learned a lesson? Maybe. I suspect that he’ll do what many do when faced with this situation. Close up shop and open it again somewhere else under a different name but with the same MO. At least 33rockers appears to be dead now.
04 Nov 06
6:17 am
for all those people.. Here is what I plan to do.. 33rockers will be back and I plan to release some useful stuff thats original and instead of them linking it to me I’ll be linking to the people like thilak, derek, utom etc..
Do remember to keep visiting 33rockers because it will be back..
04 Nov 06
11:11 am
And 33rockers is back with everything intact with an added post…. interesting!
04 Nov 06
5:14 pm
What we’ve learned is plagiarists, like most criminals, will say anything to get away with their crime. Note the fake “you got me” posts. He’s hoping you’ll just go away.
Frankly, I don’t think this will apply any pressure. Maybe you should notify his ISP, but why should they care?
04 Nov 06
5:20 pm
Actually he seams to have deleted the sorry post so its back and exactly the same.
07 Nov 06
11:16 am
[...] Social Bookmarking « What bloggers can learn from plagiarist Karthik Kastury of 33Rockers.com [...]
09 Nov 06
1:50 pm
This story caught my eye… Karthik sounds like he is about 10 years old?
09 Nov 06
2:08 pm
Maybe emotionally 10, but he claims to be attending University (undergrad in Engineering). Who knows for sure. For all those who have had their work stolen, he uses a US host so he is ‘vulnerable’ to DMCA.
13 Nov 06
10:57 am
I can’t get over this. So far, all of my site themes have been designed by others. I usually change the colors and images, sometimes a lot. I also put elements in a different place but don’t often change the original concept. This is the case for my site’s present incarnation. I think that it looks great and I know that the only thing that looks the same as Fresh is the way its laid out. So, of course, I left the links in the footer and even changed the wording of the “title” attribute on the links to better reflect the journey of this design, since it was originally ported by Bartelme. This did not take any real amount of extra effort on my part and I am happy to let others know what I started with because its a great design. And, honestly, I don’t think that two extra links in the footer take away from the appearance. I think that this small courtesy shows that I know a good thing when I see it.
When I announced the changes, I also ensured that it was clear that I didn’t start from scratch but used someone else’s design. I don’t feel lesser for it. The announcement is on Nov 1, entitled “Theme Change as Promised”, if anyone wants to check out the announcement (not linking as I’ve used up my two).
Why can’t others take a second and show when they use someone else’s work? In my mind, it only lends credibility to your own.
17 Nov 06
1:20 am
There is another splog called digitalnewsflash.com, which is stealing each and every post that I publish in blog. How do I tackle it, any advice would be greatly appreciated. It steals content from popular blogs like CrunchGear also.
17 Nov 06
7:35 am
Karthik is now ripping each sentence of similar stores posted on other blog on the similar topic. When will he ever learn ?
@Shivaranjan: Go file a DMCA report against him
01 Dec 06
1:03 am
My oh my.
It seems another “I’m shutting down” message has appeared… but this time he’s trying to sell his (worthless) domain name for $350.
dugg.
01 Dec 06
1:50 am
[...] For more information, see the very detailed expose on Kirk Montgomery’s excellent MaxPower. [...]
05 Dec 06
5:07 pm
Hi all-
I am the new owner of 33rockers.com.
I asked Karthik to clean up the posts before turning the site over to me - but if there are more “issues” please feel free to contact me and I wil remedy the situation asap.
Peace out.
Warren
05 Dec 06
5:27 pm
warren you might want to just take an american nuke to that site and start again. Any did you really pay $350 for a domain assosiated around one various places for scamming people?
05 Dec 06
6:50 pm
I didn’t know there were so many issues until I started checking the logs and google.
If everyone can help me clean up the mess (if there still is one) - and maybe edit your negative posts about Karthik by saying that there is a new owner for 33rockers.com - that would help me greatly.
thnx for your help.
warren
05 Dec 06
7:03 pm
[...] This post made by the previous owner of 33rockers.com. In fact, as maxpower.ca points out, the “V2 design” (now in transition to a new design by me), was actually an uncredited template: Utom - U4 Theme [...]
05 Dec 06
7:09 pm
I have just editted this post about the “design” fiasco…
33 Rockers
-Warren
12 Dec 06
12:13 pm
[...] As the number of viewership grew, readers began to realize obvious similarities in the site’s entries to that of other sites, thus sparking an outrage when he was subsequently exposed as both site and owner received a fair amount of negative press. [...]
08 Jan 07
6:21 am
I wouldn’t doubt that ‘Karthik’ is possibly not a first name and that the real birth name is Warren.
12 Jan 07
11:43 pm
The links for me lead to ezinearticles, those articles are free to republish as long as you leave the authors information as he has. So in that sense its a-ok. but its kind of a let down.
13 Jan 07
1:26 pm
Unfortunaly it is a popular way of self-expression in our days… But cloning is illegal by default, a simple rule of nature.
13 Jan 07
5:18 pm
Nathan-
I assure you that Warren is my real name and is totally unrelated to “Karthik”, the previous owner of the site.
We are 2 different people
Warren
30 Jan 07
9:01 am
[...] MaxPower [...]
30 Jan 07
9:01 am
[...] MaxPower [...]
14 Feb 07
3:46 pm
Ok assuming that’s true, how much did you pay for the site?
12 May 07
10:56 am
[...] What Bloggers can learn from a plagiarist [...]
27 Jul 07
9:35 am
[...] MaxPower [...]
28 Jul 07
8:56 pm
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
28 Nov 07
10:53 pm
backseat bangers backseatbangers…
hottest backseat bangers backseatbangers…
03 Mar 08
9:23 am
yes they are the biggest fools ive ever seen my whole website theme was stolen even the contents and tracking scripts i think they need to get a life sad twats they are
21 Mar 09
5:29 pm
[...] What bloggers can learn from plagiarist Karthik Kastury of … [...]
15 Jan 10
8:16 am
Karthik Kastury….a gem of NMAMIT, NITTE.
keep it up…my friend.