Recently I caught word that there was a poster over at Sputnikmusic posting my reviews and using an identical screen name to the one I use here (and elsewhere).

He's posting the full text which he copied from this site (you can tell because he sigs them like I do here) as opposed to my original blog, and even copied my favorite bands list from my profile here. If it was a band just posting a review over there for visibility, it wouldn't have been a problem. But that does not appear to be the case.

At any rate, this only started a few days ago and I've notified the Sputnik staff, who will hopefully remove them in short order. I wanted to mention it to you all just in case. Perhaps similar things have happened to you before, but I know you guys work hard writing your reviews, so I figured I'd drop a warning here. Who knows if this person will do it again.

Best to you,
auto

UPDATE: They've been removed, whether by the staff or the poster.

Wow really? I like Sputnik its pretty good for reviews. I would rather come here for metal reviews but for other stuff I go there.

I've seen some of my reviews up on different sites lately. Luckily, most of them have been credited to my username (which I think is cool, since I have my writing in circulation somewhat), but it still worries me that someone is plagiarizing my work. Though I know I'm not writing Don Quijote or anything really worth plagiarizing, it's annoying to know that something I've worked on is just copy/paste fodder for some lifeless asshole behind a keyboard to steal.

I just saw one of my reviews up on some distro I was just searching through. It was posted as the info/review thing when you clicked on more info. They did not credit me and for that I thank them, because it is my earliest review and it sucks. I should either re-write it or delete it.

People selling albums on eBay often use Archives reviews to make it more likely for their items to sell. It's happened to me before, multiple times.

A lot of review readers will check your work for plagarism too. Years ago I wrote book reviews on multiple sites, and one that I posted was criticized as "plagarism" within a day of posting it. It was actually my own review that I had posted on both sites, but still... it's very simple to copy/paste a sentence into Google and find out if someone lifted the review from elsewhere. The Mods here do it all the time I'm sure.

I forget the site, but I've seen my Grave: Back From The Grave review reposted on some random site's page for purchasing that album. This was years ago, so I don't know if it's still there.

I tend to avoid reviews now (and I used to write them by the ton), simply because they're just glorified opinions. And I've learned that way too many people have differing opinions than myself for me to actually judge an album based on a review.

Life is all about opinions and perspectives, it doesn't hurt to throw in your two cents and enjoy doing so. Writing reviews has helped me grow as a writer so much in the past couple of years. It's something I'll always be proud of.

The purpose of a review isn't to form your opinion for you, it's to see what other people think about things. Geezuz.

I'm aware of this, that's not what I was saying. Perhaps I should've said "too many people write stark-raving mad reviews that, while sometimes entertaining, are more often than not highly disagreeable with my own opinions. Hence, I've decided to save my sanity by avoiding them." Nothing wrong with that. And actually - if you're writing a review of a promo before it's released that a label has sent you (which is what I did): you actually are writing to affect the public's opinion, to give like-minded individuals or fans of a particular artist, an idea of whether they'd like it or not. I didn't write retroactive reviews or anything like, not like they do here. Hope that clarifies what I was trying to say a bit. "Geezuz"