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Sean Olesiuk
Sean Olesiuk, also known as Seanie B or smolesiuk, is a video blogger and prominent Lost reviewer.
Hailing from Mission Viego, California, Olesiuk is most famous for his half-hour video recaps on YouTube. Olesiuk created his own website and also began working for TV Guide. In April 2009, DocArzt accused Olesiuk of plagiarizing content from the blog LongLiveLocke, written by Erika Olson after Erika alerted him to the issue due to Olesiuk's denial of any wrongdoing. It was further discovered that Vozzek69 who has written for the DarkUFO website, had also had content used from his blog postings since the End of Season 4 without accreditation. Olesiuk has not yet responded to these claims, instead, removing video content from his YouTube and Vimeo accounts, and his own website. His YouTube account was subsequently suspended due to copyright infringement claims.
Plagiarism Accusations
On April 10, 2009, blogger Jon Lachonis, better known as DocArzt, posted a blog entry on his website which accused Olesiuk of plagiarizing blogger Erika Olson, who posted episode recaps on her blog, LongLiveLocke. Lachonis posted a video that showed several similarities between Olson's blog and Olesiuk's videos. The videos, which had been posted after the blog; many of Olesiuk's lines were identical to Olson's own, in both style, prose, and delivery. Olson claimed that she had attempted to contact Olesiuk, but that he had simply brushed her off, claiming co-incidence, then placing the blame on his viewers and fans for copy and pasting the material to him.
Searching by Lostpedia administrators revealed that Erika Olson was not the only victim of Olesiuk's plagiarizing; significant portions of his Smoke Monster video had been copied word-for-word from the Lostpedia article about the smoke monster.
Lachonis' blog spread throughout the fan community, with reactions being mixed. The general population of users believed that Olesiuk's actions were wrong and clearly plagiarism, while a small group of users either saw no problem with Olesiuk's videos or didn't care.
Further, it was discovered that Sean had also used content, word for word, from DarkUFO writer Vozzek69 throughout all of his Season Five videos.
Olesiuk's Response
Olesiuk responded to these accusations by responding on his forums on Sunday, April 12th 2009: "Going to write the response tomorrow still. I'm not going to write anything to Docartz or whatever the name is. He has nothing to do with it, just trying to name names to get people to head over to his site, which is working. This is between Erika and myself, and my fans and myself. I have already apologized to Erika 2 days ago, which I'll talk about later... I have been literally called the next Hitler by thousands of people the past 2 days, which I really didn't care about at first, but, as you can imagine, it's just getting old now. If you've noticed, I closed my YouTube channel comments section for now, and it will remain closed until things settle down. I'll talk more about this and other things tomorrow." [1] That response never came, and any response directly from Olesiuk is still forthcoming.
Root Admin for Olesiuk's website "Russell" responded on Wednesday, April 15th 2009: "As most of you are aware Seanie B’s YouTube channel has been suspended due to the copyright allegations and I’ve removed the videos from the main part of the website. I’ve spoken to Seanie B and he says that he will continue to make the “Lost Secrets and Recap” videos. But currently, he is taking a little break. Seanie B will be making an announcement soon within the next few days; please don’t moan that it should have been sooner, he has been very busy as you can imagine." [2]