STEEM Whistleblower - Third Edition:

High Reputation Account Caught Plagiarizing!

This is a "Calls It As I Sees It" article and in no way should be taken as fact or fiction, merely observations. Absolutely NO intention of personal attack, slander, fear mongering is meant to be present in this article. Please do your own research before you make your own decisions.

Although premonitions of this very thing happening have vividly crossed my mind in the past few weeks I did not foresee this happening so quickly.. The community over at #steemitabuse-classic have uncovered what seems to be the most highly reputed content thief yet!

The Steemit user caught plagiarizing ? @jpiper20 (67)

(Empty cupboards, copious amounts of crappy wine and a "rasta" necklace...)

The post he was caught plagiarizing on:

"Newest Illustration: Gorrilaborg"

His initial submission of this post to the STEEM block-chain was as follows:

(image screencapped from https://steemd.com - click image above to view page)Thank you to @anyx for pointing me in the direction of the editing

As clearly seen by his initial submission of the post to the blockchain @jpiper20 fully intended to pass this work on as his own. Many changes to the post were made after he was called out on his thievery attempts including adding the true artists name (but not even linking him) even after he'd taken credit for the artwork in the comments as clearly viewed in the screencaps below:

(Thanks to @pfunk for these beautiful screencaps - bottom one is my "fave")

What is the worst part about all of this?

Not only have we seemingly lost another great original content creator to laziness and greed but now we've also as a community got a far large problem on our hands.. How do we get rid of such high reputation level bad actors with the current voting system in place? Very few accounts exist on the network that even hold the power to give @jpiper20 a proper slap on the wrist so that he'd even feel it.

As an added cherry to top the cake when user @walden (the person who initially looked into and found out of the thievery) called @jpiper20 out on his plagiarism he was met with a revenge flag which harmed his reputation.. I commend @walden for calling out @jpiper20 at the expnse of his own reputation. This sort of selflessness is what is needed to properly combat plagurism on the STEEM network but also brings in to light the need for changes in the way the reputation system works perhaps..

Conclusion

We've got users farming reputation with good posting only to turn around and spit in the communities face by trying to pass off stolen content. This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion and one must consider down flagging accounts such as the one spotlighted in today's post that have such high reputation in order to minimize the amount of damage they can do not only to the legitimacy of our platform but also to respectable STEEM users.

UPDATE on the Situation!

In an effort to do right @jpiper20 has agreed to pay out his earnings on the Steemit posts to the artists work he based his work on. I'm glad he's decided to do this and I honestly hope in the future he maintains a push to create and share his original work with our community.

@jpiper20 Apology Post Link: An apology for the plagiarizing I have done

BONUS: Fresh New Post!

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