h/t to Isaac Butler who retweeted a somewhat horrifying thread written by author Brendan Koerner recounting how one of his Atlantic articles, two of his books and a WIRED piece he authored have been ripped off by podcasters.
This podcast series is a shameless rip-off of my @TheAtlantic story from last April. No credit is given and the creator did zero original reporting. He even mispronounces the main character's name through all 8 episodes. (It's "kuh-SEE," not "KEY-see.") 🧵 https://t.co/X19tHnSUXF
— Brendan I. Koerner (@brendankoerner) April 11, 2022
Koerner recounts how the person who created a podcast based on his Atlantic article blatantly told him he was going to rip it off.
What’s truly wild is that the creator emailed me last fall and was candid about his plans to steal my work. He asked me to help him rip off my own story in exchange for, uh, free publicity. I ignored him, figuring he’d never move forward with such a shady project. I was wrong. pic.twitter.com/NxjlNFaFjQ
— Brendan I. Koerner (@brendankoerner) April 11, 2022
A couple people Koerner confronts do give some cursory acknowledgements. He feels it is insufficient, but doesn’t have the energy to fight all these battles.
Given the ever broadening proliferation of podcasts, this is going to be something to which to pay attention. People want to jump on the wave but if they don’t have original material to share, apparently they don’t have many scruples about stealing it.
I suspect we are going to see people getting paid speaking engagements or interest in developing expanded work based on their podcasts only to find there are credible claims of plagiarism and theft.
But even if it goes no further than podcast episodes, as Koerner points out, people are creating ad revenue supported episodes that compete with his books and spoil the plot twists in his writing.