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Rant of the Day: Thou Shall Not Steal!

Thou Shall Not Steal!

Let me get one thing out in the open. Copying someone’s work, and then pasting it into your own work without due acknowledgement is content theft. It’s highly unethical!

I’m getting seriously, seriously disgruntled with some of the online cosmetics retailers at the moment. I’m talking about these not-so-little online beauty retailers that are asking me to promote them in one hand whilst stealing my work with the other. Everything you read on RatzillaCosme are written by me — I personally translate each ingredient list and write the product descriptions since 2009! There are literally thousands of products in this site, most have absolutely no English information available at the time of posting. This takes a lot of time and effort, and I do not get paid to do this. So I’m very protective of my work, rightly or wrongly.

Over the years, I’ve seen my work pop up everywhere online — I have never granted permission, although I have never once been asked either. (My product info posts are written in a specific style format that is recognisable. Read a few and you will quickly notice a pattern.) I’ve confronted a select few (I pick my battles) and most pleaded ignorance (then delete)… Really? They can’t see the terms that appear on top of every product info post?!

And then we come to the international online beauty retailer who won’t be named here. I’ll give you a clue and say that it sounds and looks a bit like “sasha”… Anyway, they have copied and pasted my work to their own newer product listings — uncaught typos and grammar mistakes and all! I contacted them and they told me that these are official English press releases given to them by the brands so they have full permission! Funny, I was the one who wrote them (solely for my site) and actually kept close contacts with these brands (only Japanese press releases are available)! Lies annoy me more than anything, especially when their marketing team has been trying to get me to promote them on my site!

What annoys me most, I think, is the fact that this particular company are attracting a myriad of customers with reputation. Because, surely an international company with a huge physical store at seemingly every other street corner in a certain world city would be trustworthy, right?  If they will steal and blatantly lie about something so petty, I wonder what else they will lie about. Are they really obtaining their products legally? Are their products as genuine as they claim to be?

The “sounds-and-looks-a-bit-like-sasha” beauty retailer were in the news for allegedly selling expired products in stores by changing expiration dates by relabelling, exchanging old outer packaging for new ones, and bundling them in gift sets! (They, of course, venomously denied these allegations.) Somehow I’m completely unsurprised.

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