A Hard Fall From Grace
After a hard day’s work Filip Miucin probably went home and had a nice cold beer to celebrate his hard work and eventually tucked himself into bed to start it all again the next day however, what he didn’t realise was the internet mob preparing their pitchforks and torches. Upon waking up in the morning to his phone buzzing he realises today is not gonna be what he thinks it will.
Plagiarism, the bane of all students writing essays and the destroyer of any career if your caught. For those who don’t know Plagiarism is the act of copying someone else’s work/ material without giving credit, now this sounds a lot like copyright, and it is very similar however Plagiarism more covers works that are made from ideas and facts which mean it isn’t copyright. With plagiarism comes major ethical issues in copying others work and not quoting the original. Plagiarising someone else’s work can really damage your own reputation and possibly destroy your opportunity to work in a particular field.
Now your probably thinking, why was Filip Miucin targeted by people on the internet? What did he do? Where is he now? Well I’m about to tell you. Way back in on the 24th of July 2018, youtuber Boomstick gaming uploaded a video which was a review for the recent released Dead Cells which brought in a decent amount of views for the small channel at the time but its what happened around a week later when IGN’s Nintendo editor Filip Miucin posted his review of the same game. While watching fillips review Boomstick gaming noticed some… similarities between his review and fillips reviews of dead cells. Boomstick then created another video giving evidence to the plagiarism that had taken place and the YouTube community went wild. Upon the claim of plagiarism IGN removed the review and claimed they would be investigating the matter, unfortunately for Filip Miucin IGN seemed to agree that the review was plagiarised and fired Filip the day after the allegation, from here it went even further downhill as Filip decided to upload an apology video where he apologised to everyone but Boomstick gaming which lead to some criticisms from his old co-workers, he further went on to challenge people by encouraging them to find more of his works that were plagiarised and surprise they did. It turns out that Filip had indeed plagiarised a number of other video game reviews and other content from a variety of sources such as Nintendo life, Polygon and engadget just to name a few. it even came to light that he plagiarised his own resume. Now it doesn’t need to be said how plagiarism is a major ethical issue especially for journalists who can rise in popularity by simply copying someone else’s work however a majority of the time if they are caught their own career and be destroyed in seconds.
In a similar case that was taken to court was the H3H3 productions v Matt Hosseinzadeh (Hoss). After creating a video featuring content from a video created by Matt Hoss, He decided to sue Ethan and Hila Klein (H3H3). Claiming that they had taken a large majority of Matt Hoss’ video however H3H3 had been sure to use small clips and have more of a focus on commentary in order to comply with copyright laws in America
Now as this case does originate in America its relation to specific codes of ethics aren’t exactly the same, For example the Society of Professional journalists (SPJ) has code of ethics that they follow in America. Filip Miucin didn’t follow a variety of these codes, for example “Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible” and “Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.” For these two codes not only did Filip Miucin fail to identify the source he used as a basis of his review he also failed to take responsibility for his actions against Boomstick gaming (accuracy) and didn’t correctly verify his work to make sure that it wouldn’t be taken as plagiarism.
In the last year or so Filip Miucin has largely stayed quiet on the internet. After the initial plagiarism was brought to light and the subsequent discovery of others he vanished from the internet however two months or so he reappeared posting videos on his main YouTube channel, posting short videos about accessories for the Nintendo switch clearly trying to get back into the swing of YouTube however it is clear his viewer base has decreased since the initial incident. Furthermore in April of 2019 after nearly a year he posted an official apology wherein he apologizes to Boomstick Gaming and the variety of other companies and reviewers he plagiarised. With this upload he is getting mixed reactions from people with some praising him for doing it and others saying its 8 months too late.
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