Plagiarized paper?

Plagiarized paper?

As an Indonesian living in an increasingly global world, I
applaud my country's initiative in allowing international
conferences to be staged here.

One such conference, entitled Communications, Culture, and
Development, sponsored by Asian Mass Media Communications
Research and Information, headquartered in Singapore, is
scheduled for June 22 to June 24, 1995, at the Hotel Indonesia,
Jakarta.

As I am very interested in the conference, I obtained a copy
of its program. I noticed that on Friday, June 23, between 14.00
and 15.30 hours, a session will be presented entitled Virtual
Classroom: Distance Learning in the Information Age, presented by
Mr David Murphy, from the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong.

Most interesting, I thought.

However, as it happens, I have just acquired a copy of a text
by the title In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an
Information Society by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham.

This book, published by Routledge, in London, and New York,
hits the market this month, and has been internationally
acclaimed.

I understand that the conference to be held at the Hotel
Indonesia will not publish the proceedings. This makes me rather
suspicious.

As an amateur, albeit an interested and (I hope) enlightened
one, I smell a rat! Is the above mentioned paper a reproduction
of the salient features already contained within the said book,
which is an excellent exposition of the subject?

If not, will the author of the paper do us a favor by
adequately and honestly sourcing his paper? Or will we,
Indonesians, be presented with a plagiarized version of the said
publication by John Tiffin and Lalita Rajasingham?

I don't think we Indonesians need to have the wool pulled over
our eyes.

MS SOETAMI KOESTOMO

Bogor, West Java