Tourism chief warns employees vs plagiarism

Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez on Thursday issued a warning about plagiarism to the agency’s employees, a day after a food blogger accused the department of copying his article word for word for a write-up posted on its website. “Please always be circumspect and exercise due diligence in the drafting or writing of DOT (Department of Tourism) articles, communications, write-ups and the like either on the internet or on hard copy," Jimenez said in a memorandum to all of the department’s offices. He reminded the department’s employees of sanctions for plagiarism and copyright infringement as stipulated in Republic Act 8293 or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines. “[Please] ensure that all written materials coming from or identified with the DOT are originally written and they contain proper citation or attribution of source," Jimenez said. Jimenez also directed heads of offices to conduct a “complete and thorough" inventory of all articles and write-ups to check if they are originally written and contains proper attribution. On Wednesday, a food blogger who uses the online name “Marketman" posted on his website an article claiming that the DOT “possibly" stole his intellectual property by copying a similar article he wrote in 2006. The same article was posted on the DOT website in December 2008, with a certain “trinadelro" as its author. June Garduque, officer-in-charge of the DOT Information Technology division, however, said the write-up had long been taken down and only posted online as part of test runs conducted by the department while developing the website in 2008. Last year, the DOT also faced criticism for copying the scrapped “Pilipinas Kay Ganda" logo from the Polish tourism logo. Officials of the DOT at that time denied this allegation. - Andreo C. Calonzo/KBK, GMA News