THE DARK SIDE
OF PLAGIARISM

current count: 235 confirmed thefts
total wordage: over a hundred thousand words--and counting!

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Allan Bryce's explanations have generally adapted to the discoveries made public on the Latarnia message board thread dedicated to THE DARK SIDE plagiarism.  At first, in e-mail contact with a couple of aggrieved writers, he blamed a "recent" writer, then, when pressed, he named this new writer as "Gordon Booker."  When thefts were uncovered in DVD WORLD, another Bryce-edited publication, dating back three years, Bryce altered his explanation to include a three-year period in which "Booker" had been submitting work.  Later it was uncovered that a "Gordon Booker" was credited with an interview/article in a 1995 issue of VIDEO WORLD, an earlier publication edited by, you guessed it, Allan Bryce. This caused Bryce to adapt to the discovery by blaming a "mate" from his VIDEO WORLD days. Al, the webmaster of the British site Sex Gore Mutants, provided this information in his editorial regarding the plagiarism at THE DARK SIDE and Allan Bryce: "In his last email correspondence to me following my concern around the situation he did ask me to apologise to SGM's readers about the events (though worryingly not to the writers harmed by the uncredited unpaid theft of their work) with some explanation around events: 'the guy who brought this down on my head is a best mate from my VIDEO WORLD days and I have booted him out never to darken my door again.'"  Incidentally, no one in the horror film genre writing community has ever come across any real person named "Gordon Booker."  If you have, please drop us a note.

In a 5/23/05 posting on DVD Maniacs, Marc Morris wrote that he had spoken to Bryce about the plagiarism and that Bryce stated that he wouldn't seek damages from the plagiarist who had been submitting other people's work as his own because the plagiarist was "just a student with little or no money anyway."

"We have had a problem recently with one writer who is no longer working for us," Allan Bryce quoted in The Press Gazette website in response to the plagiarism accusations, 6/9/2005

This "new writer" explanation was used previously, several years ago, in 2000, when Vince Bonavoglia, webmaster and writer for the DVD review website, Media Unleashed, discovered that his work was being used in THE DARK SIDE. In a post on DVD Maniacs, that forum's head honcho, Edwin Samuelson, explained: "My friend Vince Bonavoglia, who ran Media Unleashed, was also ripped off by Dark Side a few years back. A few of his reviews from his site were published verbatim in an issue of the zine. When Vince confronted Allan, he claimed they were submitted by new writer who ripped off his work and passed it as his own. He said it would fire the person in question and make sure it wouldn't happen again. He then made a deal with Vince to purchase the rights to use a few reviews from his site for use in the magazine."  This scenario was the exact same one repeated with the newly discovered plagiarism and the original writers.  The writers were told by Bryce that the plagiarism was the result of a new writer, that he had been instantly fired once the plagiarism was discovered, that the stolen reviews would be paid for and the original writers were asked to work for the magazine. 

BRYCE'S EDITORIAL ON THE PLAGIARISM CHARGES

The October/November 2005 issue contained Allan Bryce's first comments in his magazine about the plagiarism that's been going on at THE DARK SIDE. He devoted merely 2 out of 5 paragraphs in his editorial to address this scandal. Part of his commentary: "As many of you may be aware, we had a few problems recently regarding material published that turned out to have been 'cribbed' from internet sources. We've taken steps to ensure that this doesn't happen again, and of course would like to apologize to any writers whose material has been published in error--although our investigations did reveal the disturbing fact that many of the so-called 'ripped off' reviews can be found on a number of different sites under a number of different names . . . showing that there's plenty of this sort of thing going on among the netheads!"

As one can read, Bryce is back to his comforting explanation that this plagiarism was recent, when we have, in fact, documented a steady pattern of plagiarism going back to at least 1997. He minimizes hundreds of stolen reviews by stating that there have only been "a few problems."  His insulting implication that "netheads" do the same thing is blatantly, and purposefully, deceitful. No such thing happens among the "netheads." DVD FILE, which was most egregiously stolen from by THE DARK SIDE, authorizes its reviews to appear on another site. Full credit to the original author and DVD FILE is given. Bryce's THE DARK SIDE made no such gesture to approach DVD FILE or credit the original reviewer. DVD DRIVE-IN, the party with the second greatest claim on being ripped off, does not have duplicates of its reviews on the net anywhere.

In a letter column in the same issue, Bryce amplified a bit, while contradicting his editorial in places: "As I already explained, we accept material from many, many sources, and it is impossible to check the provenance of everything received. The extensive DVD review section in particular has always been compiled by a number of freelancers, and at times in the past we have actually paid to use materials from websites." Again, Bryce is misleading his reading public, if not outright lying to them. Yes, he did pay for use on website material--back in 2000 when his magazine was caught by Vince Bonavoglia of the Media Unleashed website using the reviews from that website without authorization. Bryce made a deal with Bonavoglia, employing him temporarily to do reviews for THE DARK SIDE. Bryce also doesn't address the fact that he used to sign his name to these reviews, knowingly using other people's work to promote himself as a skilled writer and knowledgeable authority on the films "he" was reviewing. Of course, he contradicts previous statements (remember Gordon Booker? remember that "mate" from his VIDEO WORLD days?) by now stating that "a number of freelancers" were responsible for the DVD review section. So what is it? One freelancer--or a number of them?  And has this been happening for years or just "recently"? Oh, and who is "Gordon Booker"?

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