Thursday Two Questions Meme - Plagiarism
Those of you who were around during the Today.com days know that my work on the apoetsview blog was scraped and plagiarized. I was successful in having the site that stole my work taken down, though it took many months of hard work and frustration.
I also had poetry stolen and entered in a contest on poetry.com. I also spent quite a while dealing with that and had it taken down.
Well, it's the internet so yet again I found that an article I wrote on my new blog, Collectibles Mercantile was scraped, stolen and appears on some site called e-shout.com. The worst part is that they actually have the html code for that page and a box where people can copy and paste the article along with all of my photos and use it as their own work.
Of course I was furious but quickly remembered the frustration and stress it caused me the last couple of times this happened. I am not going to do anything about it. All I have to say is I feel sorry for people who do not have the intelligence to write their own articles. I think I should feel flattered that they thought enough of mine to steal the contents and photos. In closing all I can say is KARMA - what goes around comes around.
My two questions this week are:
1. Have you ever had your work stolen whether it be writing or otherwise?
2. If you have, what did you do about it?
Also, I will be announcing the winner of my giveaway next Thursday on this meme. Thanks for following.
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Comments
2. At this point, I really don't care. The stuff I put out is done as a service, so to speak, and when I send it out, I let it go.
I couldn't do anything about that one, because he did not have the same platform as Blogger - at least that was what I was told, but I would love to know how you did it. I still think that our materials are constantly being ripped off, and it would be very helpful for all of us to know how to handle such a thing.
The first thing I did was try and contact the people who stole it which I could not because there was no information. So I went to http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
and found out who was behind the domain name of the site that stole my work. I found out it was some people in russia without any contact info. However that site gives you domain name information. So I contacted the domain provided which was GoDaddy.com and basically explained the whole story, gave them the link to my blog and threatened to sue them if they didn't do anything. After about three months, they took the site down. These people in Russia had stolen work from hundreds of people and were putting it on their site.
IT is very frustrating but being online, this will happen to many people. I just didn't want to go through all that hassle again.
I periodically check with Copy Scape but so far no problems. I do know that many of my photos come up in searches all the time and I'm pretty sure they are being used by others. With photos I don't mind as much as I would if they were taking my writing. I would prefer that they asked but that probably won't happen.
I've occasionally been successful asking the person stealing the article to remove it. Other times I've had to go to Blogger or the plagiarist's webhost.
At the moment I have one guy who copied 90% of my article and is claiming it's his own work, despite entire paragraphs being identical. He posted a screenshot to go with the article and my blog is open in one of the background tabs!
I wonder what happened to today.com. At one point they changed their name to theblogdog.com. I never did receive my payout :-(
I had contacted the blog owners and asked them nicely to remove my articles, or at least put my byline on them. I was lucky because these sites used blogger platform, and blogger/google is serious about this problem.
I'm so sorry Jo for this to happen again to you..Rats..they are rats!
Sadder than that was what happened to a friend of mine in Junior High. She had written a story and then lost it...it was something she did just for herself, not for any project. Then later she found out someone turned it in for a class project (I forget how she found out, but she never did anything about it).
I haven't had anything stolen that I know of.
I had literary works stolen and copied, photographs of my dogs and some of my photos appearing in other sites without permission.
I am too busy and does not have the technology to run after thieves. But I have techie friends who attack sites who stole my works with threats of lawsuits.
I just bless all my works and when it is used maliciously they simply get diarrhea ;-) forever.
It sounds frustrating and lots of work to try to have your work removed from the thief. So bless you for taking it!
John, it's unbelievable what is happening. As for today.com last I heard they are still up and running, with all of our blogs - talk about plagiarism- although I don't remember their name. They are basically making money on all of our works. Very sad. Sorry you never got your payout either, that's terrible.
Betty, so do I - Karma is very powerful :)
Icy, yes they are rats and I remember that happening. I just decided to let it go because it's too frustrating to do anything about it.
Gale, I don't mind at all if someone asks to use something I will probably always say yes but to just take it is not acceptable. That's terrible what happened to you and your friend.
Ann, I hope you never have anything stolen. If you do you always have Duke to go get em :D
Lui, I'm sorry that happened to you but you made me laugh with that last comment :)
Doan, thanks so much for your kind thoughts and comment :)
My sweet Daisy, How could anyone block you. That's terrible that someone could just go do that to you and Harley. People are crazy sometimes.
As I once owned a site about poetry / photography and had to close it due to various problems with readers, thought that I had deleted all, yet had to find out, that it now is 'owned' by someone else with much of its content - leaving me somehow unable to do much.
Thank you for this reminder to be as careful as possible.
Please have a good Friday.
I'm not sure if my work was ever stolen because this is the internet.
And other than reporting it and getting others to get the word out, I have no idea what else I'd do.
Aloha! :)
As far as I know I haven't had anything stolen - but I haven't quite delved into how to discover it if it has! :)
Aloha: Pet Food
Stacy, it's easy to find out by going to copyscape but then again, save yourself the frustration of finding out it's been stolen. I don't think I'll ever check again :)