Jason Unger

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A representative for 4SquareMedia, the Australian company owned by mass plagiarist David Richards, has admitted to Richards' theft of content, despite his "ghost hacker" excuses.

In an email sent to me, Nicole Bence, a "director" at 4SquareMedia, has the audacity to ask if they can use content from CE Pro — after I asked them AGAIN to remove a story they stole from us (emphasis is mine).

Hi Jason,

My name is Nicole Bence and I am a Director at 4Square Media. I understand David has put up some of your stories in the past without permission. Obviously with web content stories are shared on a daily basis and I was hoping to get some feedback from you in regards to our sites. We have removed this story, but we would like to be able to push our readers to your content when necessary. Is this a possibility and if so what are your guidelines for ensuring CE Pro are given the correct reference.

Thanks Jason – appreciate your help.

Regards,

Nicole

The number of comments and emails I've received from people who have worked for David Richards is constantly growing, and they all have one theme: how horrible it was.

At this point, it's pretty obvious he is not going to change (even if he is exposed all over Australian TV).

For anything to happen, his advertisers need to stop supporting him. But from rumblings I've heard, he doesn't make it easy for them to do that.

Honestly, I'm sick and tired of dealing with this guy.

(BTW - this admission started after SmartHouse copied an article from CE Pro with no permission to do so, despite giving "CE Pro" the byline. I emailed them, and Bence's response followed.)

Image via The Funny Bone

David Richards, the mass plagiarist with the worst excuse ever, has posted an update to his "security" problem with utter bullshit.

SmartHouse is set to call in a Sydney based security Company who specialise in detecting the IP address of hackers. The move follows the detection of changes to code and the accessing of a proprietary 4Square Media content engine by unknown individuals. We have also identified one of the journalists who gave information to Media Watch in an effort to discredit SmartHouse.

Honestly, everything he says in this piece is complete nonsense.

To be accused of plagiarising stories in the way that Media Watch outlined is akin to robbing a store, and then with a huge name plaque standing outside that store for the police to arrive.

What a joke. As I've been covering this story, I've received a number of emails and comments from people who worked for Richards, all of which say he's a scumbag. (No surprise, there.)

One email gives a specific example to a rumor I'd heard about — that Richards basically extorted Hitachi, making them advertise with his company or face bad press.

It's really pathetic.

On the Media Watch message boards, once poster brings up a glaring hole in Richards' story:

Those items were also put in the Smarthouse daily newsletters, which I imagine are compiled and edited each issue. For two years no-one noticed that stories were being spliced into the content engine, or had bylines changed?

As I've pointed out, I have correspondence from Richards that proves he knew about the plagiarized stories before the February date he says he found out. Big fat lie right there.

From the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation's "Media Watch" (original here)

The leading plagiarist in technology media, SmartHouse's David Richards, has been exposed on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Media Watch" program for the fraud he is.

In a story broadcast Monday, Richards' plagiarism of numerous technology stories (including my own) was highlighted as a "Phantom of the Internet."

What? No forthright accusation of plagiarism?

Richards, of course, claims he didn't do it. Instead, "hackers" got into his site, he says.

An investigation by 4Squatre Media has revealed that over a period of more than 24 months the content engine used to supply stories to web sites such as SmartHouse, SmartHouse News, ChannelNews and Smart Office has been illegally accessed and in several cases content changed. Code has also been hacked.

Please note that Richards DID mis-spell the name of his own company "4Squatre Media" — really professional, right? (And I've got the PDF saved for when he changes it and claims I lied.)

Beyond the absurdity of his excuse, here's why there's no chance it is true.

Richards claims he was "alerted" to the "hacker's posts" (my quotes, not his) in early February. That's impossible.

I have an email from Richards dated 12/19/2007, when he claims to have removed a story he stole from CE Pro written by Lee Distad.

Richards, not surprisingly, had not removed the article when he said he did. It took another email to him and his staff to get it down.

So, if you're the publisher of a Web site, wouldn't you be curious if a story showed up online that you hadn't published? I know I would be.

Richards is a hack job. His excuse is pathetic, and his arrogance is even worse.

It Gets Weirder: Did He Submit the Story to Digg?

A commenter on my original story pointed me to the YouTube video below, which was uploaded by … "DavidRichardsAU."

His profile says he's 47 years old and located in Australia.

What? How bizarre is that?

The story is also on Digg, where it was submitted by "davidrichards," "A 52 year-old male from Sydney, Australia (AU) who joined Digg on March 3rd, 2008."

I don't know if this is him or not, but the image on his profile looks a LOT like the one I could find online.

Would he seriously try and promote his own plagiarism? (It totally could be him, especially considering the spelling of "plagiarizm.")

That's just weird.

The Media Watch Video

Check out the Media Watch video here.

You may have never heard of David Richards, but if you're writing anything in the technology sector, he's probably familiar with your work.

Richards, seen here on the right (via)

You see, Richards is the biggest plagiarist in technology journalism today, consistently stealing content from Web sites and re-publishing under his own byline.

Richards is in management at SmartHouseNews, an Australian Web site owned by publishing house 4SquareMedia. Oddly, 4SquareMedia has no Web site, as its official domain is a parked hosting page, and its .net equivalent reveals that "this is a test."

Phil Sim at Squash has an excellent background on Richards, who wrote a questionable story on 60% of Windows Vista needing to be re-written.

Without a doubt, Richards is the most notorious and controversial technology journalist in Australia and it won't surprise anyone down under in the tech media or IT industries that he's managed to get himself embroiled in this kind of saga.

First things, first. Richards is a real, bona fide journalist. He's not an amateur blogger. He's not a techie, who took up a writing. He's got a Fleet Street background and was responsible for one of the most, important investigative journalism works ever published in Australia when his expose on the Painters and Dockers union uncovered extensive corruption and sparked a historical Royal Commission.

Richards is also a successful entrepreneur. He started a PR company, Weston Communications, which he built up and sold and following that he founded a publishing company DWR Media, which he flogged to US publisher Penton Media for up to $US8 million (Penton would about 2 years later offload the division for a pittance).

Along the way, though, he's ticked a lot of people off. He's brash, pushy and thrives on controversy. He always seems to be suing someone, or else being sued. In the past few months, he's been accused on plagiarism, attacked for conflicts of interest and laid a big, steelcapped boot into one of the world's biggest PR companies.

I was first tipped off to Richards' plagiarism by Lee Distad, a contributor to CE Pro, who saw that a story he wrote ("How the Format War Affects Custom Shops") appeared on SmartHouseNews.com.au.

The article, given a new title of "Are You Making Money Out of the Format War?", has Richards as the lead writer in the byline, with Lee given second billing. The two stories are nearly identical.

We gave him no permission to publish the story, and given that Lee wrote the story, Richards' byline is completely unwarranted.

It's straight-up plagiarism.

Richards has plagiarized other stories from CE Pro, including at least one that I wrote. At least two of the stories (originals here and here) have his sole byline (copies here and here).

When I contacted Richards to remove Lee's story from his site, he ignored my email, even though I said I wanted to keep it civil. One week later, I re-sent the email, CC'ing the contacts of SmartHouseNews's Web site, including sales, marketing and editorial.

Richards replied, saying, "This was removed a week ago."

But it wasn't. And, as of this writing, it's still there.

It isn't just CE Pro that Richards plagiarizes.

He's plagiarized TWICE (his version here), Big Picture Big Sound, BusinessWeek (original and copy) and The Hollywood Reporter (original and copy).

He's republished stories from Residential Systems (original and copy) and Stereophile (original and copy).

He's even republished feature stories from CE Pro as from a "US Wire Service" (original and copy).

I could keep on going on about stories he's copied, his continued acts of plagiarism and his general disregard for other's work, but I would be here all night.

Richards is a disgrace to journalism and should be shunned by the technology industry — journalists, manufacturers and marketing folks alike. I agree with Robert Scoble, who called for Richards to be fired after his Vista-rewrite story. Can him.

On SmartHouseNews's site right now, there are advertisements from Pioneer and Mitsubishi. You are decent companies, but you shouldn't support publications based in plagiarism. Please consider dropping your advertising.