Philippines: PCIJ’s Plagiarism · Global Voices
Jose Manuel Tesoro

The problem of people packaging content created by bloggers for profit is becoming a serious one.  The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) published and sold a book lifting comics drawn by blogger Happy Vergara.  Happy asked another blogger, the Sassy Lawyer, for advice.  PCIJ apologized (but not on its blog).  Happy asks, “If anyone is conceited and haphazard enough to re-publish original work from the web and make a buck off of it without permission, and get away with a slap on the wrist (as this appears), then what defense do bloggers ultimately have?”  One Filipino blogger, Divergent Poles, who has since dropped PCIJ from his links, wonders: “At the end of the day, how should we ensure that incidences like this do not occur?”