Japan Cinema .net and the Art of Plagiarism

It was about three weeks ago that I was reading a review on Japan Cinema (japancinema.net) and said to myself “wow, this review really echoes my own opinions”. A moment later I realized exactly why it was so. Their reviewer, called Benjamin, had copied about 50% of his text from my review on my blog. As for the remaining 50%… let’s just say you could clearly see the reviewer has never seen the movie.

The review in question was Gun Woman, for which he copied his headline, first sentence, positives and negatives, and the entire last third of the review from my blog.

After realizing this, I sent Japan Cinema feedback. I assumed it had been the work of one unethical reviewer whose conduct had passed through their quality control. Two weeks later I had not received a reply, but instead Benjamin had posted another review, this time for the American movie Precious Find. That review was a compilation of bits and pieces from reviews by A.V. Club and several IMDb users.

I still believed it was just Mr. Benjamin who likes stealing other people’s reviews, until today I ran into their Profound Desires of the Gods review, posted four years ago by Japan Cinema’s top reviewer Marcello. This review was created by stealing from Electric Sheep Magazine, Cine Outsider, Game FAQ’s forum, and probably some other sources as well.

A few weeks ago the same guy, Marcello, reviewed the Hong Kong movie The White Storm.I don’t think even need to tell you how it was created by editing together several different IMDb user reviews.

On Japan Cinema’s About page they describe themselves as an engagingly written life style project. Engagingly written perhaps, but by who?

Of course I never received reply to the two emails I sent or the two review comments I left.

Well done Japan Cinema, well done.