Dirty Little Secrets III

Ray doesn't plagiarise everything from the same source. Not everything is Kasparov: not everything is My Great Predecessors. And not everything in The Times Little Book Of Chess Plagiarism (Harper Collins, 2013) is, either.

Take for instance the third position in the book. It's from the second game of the 1908 world championship match.

The notes weren't written by Kasparov. Nor, for that matter, were they written by the alleged author, Ray Keene.

They were written by Viktor Korchnoi, in Learn from The Grandmasters (Batsford, 1975) from which source Ray has plagiarised them.

If this sounds famiilar it's because the same notes were plagiarised by Ray in his Times column for 3 June 2013, which formed the subject for a piece on this blog on 20 November. That volume was also the source of notes twice plagiarised for the Spectator, just as it was the source of work (this time, his own notes) recycled through another book and the Sunday Times. Not of course that on any of these occasions, previous publication of the notes was mentioned.

Just a quick skip through, then. Here's the original Korchnoi from 1975:

which is identical, word-for-word, to the text in the Little Book of Chess Plagiarism

and to the text in the Times for 3 June 2013.

That was the first note: what of the second? Though it's been cut down from Korchnoi's annotation

every word of the second note in the Little Book is taken from the original

and what remains is identical to what appeared in the Times.

No mention, in the Little Book, of the earlier publication in the Times: no mention, in the Little Book, or the Times, of Learn from the Grandmasters, or the fact that these notes aren't Ray Keene's but Viktor Korchnoi's.

Just that copyright claim again.

First three positions in the book: all three, plagiarism and copyright theft. It's not ten in a row, but it's not bad, is it?

[Thanks to Angus French, Andrew Farthing, John Cox and Pablo Byrne]

[Dirty Little Secrets I]

[Dirty Little Secrets II]

[Dirty Little Secrets in the Eye]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]

[Plagiarised by Ray Keene index]

[Ray copies Ray index]

[Ray Keene index]

[Keenipedia]