Hall of Shame. This page is dedicated to immortalizing the individuals and the lengths an individual will go to in order to appear to be able to think for his or her own self. In reality, these individuals appear to boost their own self image by stealing from the brilliant mind of hipstomp, who at no cost to himself, and to the benefit of the Internet community, has provided an avid following of readers a source of amusement and insight, and a scathingly witty perspective of the world we live within.

'Fair Use' versus 'Infringement'. People like to believe that "fair use" entitles them to use the material without attribution. For anyone that is under the impression, please refer to the section of copyright law regarding "fair use".

Episode 2. Eric Tang: Merrill Lynch intern, USC student, plagiarizer and all-purpose scumbag

This individual, without an original thought in his tiny head decided to steal posts from hipstomp, which were posted to his own journal as if they were a reflection on his own life experience. These words may have mirrored his own experience, but the words themselves were not his own.

Example 1: The best is when you and a stranger are waiting for an elevator, but then two elevators come and you each get your own. This happened to me today and it was the highlight in an otherwise torturous day of educational drudgery.

Example 2: I always welcome the chance to center a big American highway in my windshield and blare escapist music, but in order to really enjoy this you.ve got to be alone. If you.re traveling in a convoy it.s no fun because you have to maintain pace, and if you.re carrying passengers it.s considered impolite to crank the volume up to 10 because you don.t feel like talking about John Kerry or movies or carbs or whatever.

These experiences were lifted word-for-word from hipstomp's original posts of Day 191 and Day 195.

Please compare these posts to his original writing style. Here is a sample.

To his credit, he posted an apology on his website:

I took it off, I put it on there a while ago, not understanding about copyright infringement. The pages are gone now, just please understand that it was a misunderstanding.

Thats nice Eric, but what's done is done.

Episode 1. Ryan Miller: just say the code phrase--"Ryan's a douchebag"--and I'll buy you a cup of coffee.

The one who started it all, Ryan Miller , mister tighty-whitey, amazes us with vivid descriptions of dining at New York City diners, yet lives 16 hours away from NYC where he attends Oswego University (for crying out loud, he could throw a stone and hit Lake Ontario).

Example 1: Writer's trick #1. you're more in tune with your subconscious when you first wake up, you know that? very close to the dream state, far closer than you would be around, say, lunchtime. anyway i managed to squeeze out some strings of character dialogue but i still haven't found the crux.

i need the crux, where is the crux. sometimes it's at the bottom of a can of diet coke, or between a pair of headphones, or lying on the sidewalk somewhere between water street and w 8th (the home of greene's..mmm wings). but I couldn't find it today.

Ryan has provided us with thought provoking insight into the authoring process, the method of a writer. If only Ryan understood Writer's trick #0: writing your material based on your own thoughts!

Example 2: I hate going into restaurants where the dishes have ridiculous names and you have to order them as such, i.e. "I.ll have Bob's Big Bitchin' Bacon Bomb Cheeseburger."

Apparently, words are not all that Ryan feels compelled to steal. Experiences, too, are fair game:

Example 3: Posting random pictures of NYC with witty captions.

Apparently copying interesting pictures to your weblog isn't enough. One must attribute a witty caption inspired by your experience in viewing the subject which compelled you to take a photograph of the subject. The only problem Ryan, this wasn't your experience.

Ryan has since updated his page and removed the offending material (and a bit more than that). Unfortunately, the internet never forgets. Perhaps the title of his page should be from hipstomp's mind to the world.

These experiences were lifted word-for-word from hipstomp's original posts of Day 157 and Day 183. The pictures and assosciated captions referenced were scattered throughout hipstomp's journal