There is no doubt about what has captured the attention of many Peruvian bloggers these past two weeks: the plagiarism of a local blog's content by the daily newspaper, La República [ES]. Though this isn't the first time such a thing has happened, this time we find much more repercussion. We covered the topic immediately in the Global Links, but now that it has reached an almost satisfactory conclusion, it's worth the trouble to take another look. The case has two parts: first is the plagiarism found in the column El Ofidio, which reviews denouncements and news in the sphere of local politics, of a post from the blog Desde el Tercer Piso [ES] (“From the Third Floor”), a blog that took it upon itself to, this time, denounce the paper: Agradezco mucho que La República haya recogido parte de los datos que presenté en el informe Elección Constitucional, pero, la próxima vez, please, muchachos de Camaná, citen la fuente. This denouncement was echoed quickly in various blogs, among them a post of Silvio's in Gran Combo Club is suggested as a main source of information for being apparently the most complete in terms of coverage, references, and chronology of what happened. After boiling around in a few local blogs, the rectification was made by La República. It seemed like the impasse was overcome, although with the reservation articulated by Fer of Pospost: Esta aclaración se enturbia ya que al tiempo de ponderar la información de José Alejandro Godoy, se da a los lectores una información falsa de la ubicación del mismo. La dirección es http://desdeeltercerpiso.blogspot.com/ y no desdeeltercerpiso.com, como señala Ofidio. The second part of this episode is the nearly veiled reference made by Mirko Lauer, also of La República, to another of Silvio's post, which curiously, had been mentioned in previous post here. What Lauer said was: “With a more playful spirit however, some blogs interested in the subject have begun to play with a hypothesis of war. As if it were a Playstation game”. Obviously, and surprisingly, Lauer did not completely understand the intention of post, or what it covered. As Silvio says: Creo que los periodistas peruanos tienen que aprender a respetar un poco más a la blogósfera. He visto algunos ataques gratuitos y maltratos que son difíciles de racionalizar. En otros países algunos importantes medios como CNN, CBS, Reuters, Los Angeles Times fueron pillados por los blogs mintiendo groseramente, tergiversando fotografías, inventandose noticias, etc. Estos medios tuvieron que reconocer su mala práctica y hasta algunas cabezas rodaron …. ¿Podría ocurrir algo así en el Perú? However, unlike the plagiarism from Desde el Tercer Piso by the Ofidio column, this time there was no clarification or anything of the sort. Strangely, the following day Lauer mentioned a foreign article in his column and did include the source and even the URL, which brings up Silvio's point about mainstream media not considering national blogs important or worthy of credit. But don't think that plagiarism is limited only to the scope of media and blogs. This last week the spotlight focused on an instance of plagiarism perpetrated by the well-known writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique of a text by ambassador Oswaldo de Rivero. Roberto Bustamante, of Blog del Morsa was the first one to write about it in the Peruvian blogosphere in his post: “Literature: Alfredo Bryce Attacks Again.” Soon, several more posts looked at the topic, the most recent of which is “Literature: Bryce, Complete Plagiarism”. From “Literature: the alfredo bryce affair,” I extract this paragraph which, coincidentally, was cited by someone we mentioned above: En medio de todo este enredo, alguna voz quiere confundir más las cosas echándole la culpa a Internet y relativizando la falta. Si el asunto es de por sí vergonzoso, los argumentos de Lauer lo son más todavía: Que sea muy facil copiar sin poner la fuente no significa que todos vayamos a hacerlo. Una regla en los blogs (no siempre cumplida, como toda regla) es anotar las referencias y linkear a los originales. En los medios escritos la fuerza de la costumbre parece impedir que se haga lo mismo, aunque es obvio que casi todas las columnas que leemos son por lo menos inspiradas en lecturas de sus autores (imagino que buena parte de ellas en internet, fácilmente referenciables para que los lectores contrasten por sí mismos). No se trata de hacer aquí ni un escarnio, ni como se dice “hacer leña del árbol caído”.