Apr 14 2009
Plagiarism
Photo courtesy of www.leadingessays.com
Plagiarism is rampant across the Internet. When it happens to you it seems as though you are the only one experiencing it however you are not alone. With so many websites and blogs saturating the Internet it is likely at some point and time you will be plagiarized.
Plagiarism is simply the stealing of another person’s ideas and words then passing them off as your own. As writers, when we research stories it is necessary that we use citation on photos, quotes, sentences etc… For photos I always like to just mention the website and sometimes with a clickable link to the site.
On Sunday, as I always do, I began preparing some writing for the next day. I also do my advertising on that day and all the incidentals that go along with writing a blog. One of the things I always do is go to Copyscape (just Google it to bring up the site) and check all my blogs and websites. I do this because I was plagiarized once before on Poetry.com so I regularly check that site. While checking my A Poet’s View blog to my horror I found two separate blogs which had almost all of my recent posts copied and altered on each blog to include photos and the affiliate links that I post with my blogs. These blogs which copied my content are: http://duhos.info and http://davbyrne.info
Take a look at my A Poets View blog then take a look at each of the blogs I’ve mentioned and you can clearly see what they have done.
They’ve copied my content and altered the phrasing which basically was smart on their part because by doing so if there were any legal action taken I would have to prove that the original content was mine. What they obviously do not know is that I can easily prove this content to be mine just for the fact alone that I have affiliate links on the posts which are only available to me just as with all of your blogs they are only available to you. So, this is also a good lesson on getting those affiliate links on each of your posts.
Of course I was infuriated and as I always mention on this blog act with your heart and not your ego, well I did not take my own advice. I basically wrote a firm and threatening letter to the email address associated with these two blogs and basically told them to get the posts down or I’d contact my attorney.
Back to the lessons on plagiarism. It is a crime and is punishable by legal action. The first thing you should do when someone blatantly steals your content is write to them and nicely ask them to take the content down. Of course in my case, I was not nice at all and I do not intend to be in the future. Give them a reasonable time to take the content off the site which could be one to two weeks. Again, I told them ASAP which means NOW! If they do not remove the content you can either ask them to cite you, the original author as the source or you can write to the host server and report that your work was plagiarized. I passed on all of these and went for the kill. If none of these actions work then you talk to an attorney. Exactly what I did. I have many friends who are attorneys. Here are a couple of links which are very informative in copyright law and the inner workings of plagiarism. Copyright Law and Plagiarism Website .
The next thing to do is check out the Whois site where you can type in the domain name of the plagiarist site and find out who and where they are. If they are in your neighborhood you can easily go buy rolls of toilet paper at Safeway, write PLAGIARIST all over the toilet paper then toilet paper their house. See I’m covering my behind again using affiliate links in my post. If you do not have a Safeway near you click the link below.
In my case, the domain name was registered to someone in Russia so I guess the toilet papering is out. The Whois site gives you all sorts of information including addresses and phone numbers. With this information you can contact them directly. Again, in my case I’m not calling Russia though I am close to Alaska so I may give S. Palin a call and see if she could deliver a message for me. I’m being sarcastic to hide the anger here.
In any case I will keep you updated on what happens with this situation and I also wanted to mention that a few of the posts on both of these sites looked familiar to me so you may want to check them out thoroughly.
I will be really interested to see if this post shows up on their sites. So far all my posts have so this should be interesting.
Two things I’d like to mention here:
First - Being angry doesn’t solve anything. Remember you can choose your reaction to situations good or bad.
Second - I guess I should be flattered. The fact that they would want to steal my writing only shows they have good taste though they are not very intelligent. My personal suggestion to the plagiarist - Learn how to spell and use correct grammar so that when you are caught you may be able to get away with this crime. Yes, it is a crime.
Subtle product placement for the win!
Seriously though, these people are just common thieves. It’s cyber theft, I tell ya!
Some people are shameless and without creativity.
I modded at a fanfiction site for years and had the sudden eerie feeling of familiarity while reading over someone else’s story for approval. After a bit, I asked someone else who had read my work, “Does this seem an awful lot like ________ to you?”
She read it and said, “Nah, seems more like a second-generation knockoff of _________ to me.”
“I have second-generation knockoffs?”
Yes, someone who had reviewed my story had then turned around and written basically the same story, then submitted it to be moderated by me. *headdesk* I sent a tactfully worded rejection letter to the effect that it seemed “a bit familiar.”
Thanks for the useful sites!
hindy - Yep, I agree.
Justin - Great post and link. Very informative and helpful, thanks.
S. - I totally agree.
tracker - OMG - either ignorant or extremely ballsy? What we have to put up with!!!
wow, this is an eye opener for me Jo, I never knew someone can do that almost exactly the way you did, even the pictures, huh? I will follow this up and maybe will try to do what you did to find if someone also plagiarized one of my posts. thanks for letting us know.
betchai - It is a problem all over the internet. You just have to make sure that you can prove your posts are your own. Although I included a funny affiliate link, it’s a good idea to do that on all your posts on today.com so that it proves these are your own posts.
Joanne–I’m sorry to hear about it, but as you know it happened often. My own article on personal experiences had been copied and pasted on my blogs also..
I did exactly what you’ve mention here, and some blog owners did take it down, others won’t..
Thank you for the information on copyscape. I had not heard of it before. I hope that you’re able to get the content removed or at least credited.
I have to say, the link to the toilet paper is ingenious!
This has happened to me in the past too. The worst thing was my original content got pushed down the search engine results and the stolen copy was higher.
Good luck getting it removed.
Oh, my! I’ve been hearing about all the plagiarized blog content. I’m sorry it happened to you. I agree with your two points–doesn’t help to be angry and well, you could be flattered. This technologically advanced age creates a lot of ways for people to wrongly pass thoughts off as their own. I’ve never even searched to see if anyone has used any of my content. I’ve always encouraged people to just credit me with whatever they use. Oh, well. At any rate, I’m glad you caught them and put them on blast here. Keep cranking out the good content!
Shaking my head at cyber-thieves…
Davida
People are correct when they call plagiarism “thievery”. It doesn’t sound so nice when you tell them they have stolen your content, does it?
Maxie
Excellent post. I’ve linked your site to my blogroll. (I discuss copyright and permissions.) I don’t have access to my own computer right now, but once I do I will directly reference this post about plagiarism.
Anne
permissionsplease.today.com
Hello great article,
And thanks for the insight – I am a twenty-one year old female and was posting poetry online for a number of years. My work was that of a terrible childhood. However, all my work was plagiarism to other sites and blogs, people claiming my work as their own. I gave chases, but in pursuing I would often come to death eras and nothing was ever done to remove my work from those sites.
I couldn’t believe it (LOST) – and there I was bearing my soul to world in my poetry for years to have others come along and steal it - Lesson learnt – I pulled down all my work and I will never post any of it online ever again.
Regards
Bijoufem