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The reply
I have finally received a reply concerning the article in question. Well, as often is the case with the copyright in the Intenet, this is still unsolved. Moreover, there have been some not very nice attacks by Mr. Miller:
Dear Julia, Here is Alexei's response. It seems reasonable to me. If you want to ask any questions, I suggest you contact their media director listed below. Waters can not determine who wrote their article first. Also, many of the arguments about outsourcing to Russia or the Ukraine could be applied to Viet Nam, China, Poland and even Northern Ireland. Best regards, Phil Albinus Editor Waters Dear Mr. Albinus, Thank you for forwarding this request. I had no idea that this Metasoft White Paper existed. In fact, despite being active in eastern european outsourcing community and contributing to many vendor reviews, I was not familiar with this company at all. I wrote this OP article myself - all ideas and texts are DataArt's. Of course, in the process, some are based or were modified based on my colleague's comments, some - on external sources such as Forrester Research, which are given proper credit. Frankly, I do not find mine and Ms. Lukianova's texts similar. I believe it makes sense to expect an article focused on myths of outsourcing to comment on political stability, language barrier, security and other issues which Ms. Lukianova's claims to have pioneered. Many writers discussed these topics while covering other outsourcing destinations, such as India or China. As far as catchy title, I must disappoint Ms. Lukianova again - Google search for "outsourcing myth" returns roughly 200,000 webpages. I have copied here our VP of Corporate Communications, Vica Vinogradova. Her comment was that this is a not-so-nice attempt on Ms. Lukianova's behalf to PR her company and perhaps earn a coverage in Waters. Should Ms. Lukianova have any further questions on this matter, she should speak with Ms. Vinogradova directly. Finally, facts will probably speak better than my comments - my original text was submitted by Vica Vinogradova to Rob Daly on April 1st, 2005 - obviously well ahead of May 13th, when Ms. Lukianova set off on her writing endeavor. Let me assure you that DataArt's strong corporate culture would never allow plagiarism, which our many partners can attest to. Similarly, DataArt's corporate culture would not allow us to publicize such email exchange until the situation was fully clarified. Sadly, this is exactly what Ms. Lukianova is doing: http://www.metasoft.com.ua/weblog/weblog.html. We will request that this false accusation of both Waters and DataArt is removed from their website as soon as possible. I appreciate your attention to this matter.
Best regards,
Alexei Miller EVP, Project Management DataArt
An Update: Waters Editor Reply
Today, I have received an email from Mr. Albinus, the editor of Waters, the magazine that has published the ripped article. Waters asks for Open Platforms (OPs) from industry experts and we always ask them to make them interesting. One suggestion I often make is "please debunk some myths about your topic." With Mr. Miller, we asked him to take on the top five myths in outsourcing to Russia, after he presented us with an OP proposal.
We had no idea that the Metasoft White Paper existed. In fact, there is a very good chance that Mr. Miller did not as well. That is up to him to answer.
Alexei, can you please answer this important question for us? I will expect an answer by the end of the day.
Thanking you in advance,
Phil Albinus
Editor
Waters What will the author of the alleged article say? We're waiting for his reply...
Attention - Copyright Infringement!
We have discovered recently that our review of Ukraine IT Outsourcing Myths has been shamelessly ripped! An executive vice president of project management of a certain Russian IT company which we are not going to do a favour to by advertising it here has used our material to produce an article of his own, which he even got published by a respected American financial magazine! Of course, we took due measures, and upon discovery of this sad fact I have immediately emailed the editor of the Waters magazine, Mr. Phil Albinus. Here is an extract of my email:
Dear Mr. Albinus,
In the June issue of Waters magazine you have published an article titled “The Russian Myth”, the online version of which can be found at http://db.riskwaters.com/public/showPage.html?page=281129 . Unfortunately, the author of the article, Alexei Miller, did not contribute a 100% original article to you, but instead ripped an idea and scheme first developed by me, without any reference to the original material or permission to use it.
In early May, I have written a review of myths about IT outsourcing to Ukraine for my company’s site, www.metasoft.com.ua , titled “Ukraine IT Outsourcing Myths Dispersed”, and also made a PDF version of this review as a whitepaper for further distribution as a press release to any interested sites. The PDF version is available here: http://www.metasoft.com.ua/eng/whitepapers/Ukraine%20IT%20Myths%20Dispersed.pdf , and the online html version can be found here: http://www.metasoft.com.ua/eng/outsourcing/ukraine-it-myths.html . To further prove that my version of this idea appeared earlier than the article submitted to your magazine, I can refer you to the IT Outsourcing Comments blog that published extracts of this review as found on Metasoft web site starting from May 13, 2005: http://it-outsourcing-comments.blogspot.com/2005/05/ukraine-it-outsourcing-myths.html . I have also submitted my review in the form of an article to Ezine Articles and, as a press release, to several press release sites.
If you follow the structure of my article and Mr. Miller’s article published in your magazine, you can’t fail to notice the common patterns and logical arrangement, starting from the catchy title that I was the first one to coin and throughout the whole content. He analyses the same issues of a country’s political stability, software piracy, sensitive information security, language barrier that are analysed in my review, without adding any original ideas but only exploiting mine and fitting the facts concerning Russia instead of those related to Ukraine.
Mr. Albinus, I do realize that the World Wide Web is too large for anyone to be able to keep track of everything that’s happening in its every corner, and the copyright issues in the Internet are very often painful and problematic ones, but a respected publication as yours should be more careful when choosing content for its issues. I am sure you value your intellectual property and the intellectual efforts invested into its creation – but I also value mine and can’t let them be shamelessly ripped by anybody. This is not only the problem of one unscrupulous contributor (to say the least) from a country whose stance on copyright laws seems very dubious at the moment, this is a stain on your magazine’s reputation. Please take measures to fix this situation. I understand that it is not possible to remove the article in question from the issue that has already been published, but my company and I will appreciate it if you remove the online version of the article and publish a clarification for your readers both in the next printed issue and as soon as possible – on the magazine web site. I believe an institution like yours values its readers enough to protect them from any misleading information.
I hope for your understanding and cooperation on this issue for our mutual benefit and satisfaction.
We are now awaiting a reply from this respected publication, and will post updates on the outcome of this story.
What's really sad here, besides the fact that our material has been stolen and used without our permission, is how bad the situation must be in the Russian IT sector. The company in question is from St. Petersbough, a city that once boasted a highly developed scientific infrastructure and some of the best IT specialists in the former USSR. Where have all these specialists gone that their heirs cannot do any better but to rip somebody else's ideas?
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