Stolen sentences, sneaky way to plagiarize, nothing left to do?

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   alexadryposted 9 years ago

   Today, I was surprised to see a picture of my Rottweilers on Facebook. Soon, I noticed it was one of my friends sharing one of my articles, but a big surprise awaited me. I click on the article, and it's not from hubpages! Basically, somebody copied my article and pictures, and people were sharing it left and right and commenting how great it was. Anyhow, I posted to that post that the article is actually mine and informed that I am submitting a DMCA notice. DMCA is already done. But wait..it gets worse... I then decided to Google the first sentence of that article, just to see if there were other people who may have stolen it... and surprise, surprise, I find a Facebook page that has used the intro of my article and then it says "read more" and read more brings you to a page that tells you to purchase an e- book. So because I highly suspected the rest of the article was in the book, I purchased the e-book only to find that the author only copied the first sentences and then just wrote in his own words parts of the rest of the article. Further research made me discover that the author just cuts and pastes pieces of articles together to make an e-book. Many pieces were though almost entirely taken from Wikihow. Anyhow, I guess there's not much to do for me if he just copied 2 sentences?  I am pissed off now because not only did he copy the sentences, he also made extra money from me so I could figure out if he copied more!

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      Brie Hoffmanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Wow, this is terrible.  Why don't you try and file another DMCA notice and see what happens.

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         alexadryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         But isn't DMCA notice only for websites that use Google Ads? This is an e-book that must be paid for and then downloaded so not sure how Google would crawl it to recognize plagiarized content. I feel this would be a more serious issue that would request legal intervention since they are actually selling the e-books. But since it's just a few sentences it may not be worth it. I am negotiating now with the website owner and he is planning to reimburse me the $20. Not only, it looks like now he wants to hire me to write content for him!Not sure if I would want to write for a company that engages in such dishonest practices, but one side of me thinks what if they are trying to improve and do things right now?

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            Brie Hoffmanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Interesting..let us know what you decide to do.

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 9 years agoin reply to this

            alexandry:
            
            Plagiarism is a violation of federal copyright laws and as such a DMCA complaint should cover the theft of your work....any of your work.
            
            You can actually file suit against this person and collect big time if you wish to pursue this...but only if the thief lives in the US.
            
            DMCA complaints are only good in the US except for a few other countries, and I am not sure which ones those are.  The team can probably give you that info.

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            Matthew Meyerposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            As others have mentioned, the DMCA applies to any US company, site, or person.
            If you believe that someone is using your copyrighted material without your permission, a DMCA notice of infringement may be appropriate.
            
            Unless Google is the hosting company (Google+, YouTube, blogger, blogspot, etc.) , issues a DMCA for the content will not result it it being removed but may simply remove the content from Google SERPs.
            
            Here is more on filing a DMCA NOI.
            http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/how- … -complaint

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               alexadryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               Thank you all kindly for replying. Unfortunately, the company is based outside the US. Turns out, I was able to find the person responsible and he apologized and was nice enough to reimburse me the money and then offered to remove the sentences. I am satisfied with this solution. He said he actually had paid people to write for him and it turns out he wasn't aware so many parts of the book were copied. I have seen this happen in the past, so I don't think he may be making up excuses. Could have been much worse!

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                  Maffew Jamesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  You can send a DMCA notice to any person or entity based in the US and they have to comply. If they do not, they are legally liable should you wish to sue for damages.
                  
                  You don't have to send them to Google either. If anything, you should send the notice to the website owner first and foremost. If they don't reply or refuse to do anything about it, you can then elevate the matter by sending a DMCA notice to their web host. Most of the time, the web host will comply even if a website owner on their servers won't. Web hosts have a reputation to uphold and copyright violation is against their terms of services. If you notify a host that your content has been copied and hosted on one of their servers, they are legally liable if they don't act to remove or disable access to the content.
                  
                  If all that fails, send a DMCA notice to Google Search to have the copied page removed from search results. That way they can't receive organic traffic from your work, and it shouldn't affect your original article's ranking in Google. You can also sue the person or company responsible if they are based in the US, and you also live in the US.
                  
                  
                  
                  You can send a DMCA notice to Facebook and they're extremely quick to remove the copyrighted material. The same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I searched for a paragraph of one of my articles and the opening paragraph was used as a Facebook status by someone. Facebook removed the content in less than 2 hours after I sent the DMCA.
                  
                  You can even send a DMCA notice to Amazon and many of the other retailers that would sell the E-Book if you've tried everything else. Companies like Amazon will always respect your copyright and won't sell material that infringes someone's copyright if they are notified of this.
                  
                  
                  
                  When the company is outside the US, if the country it is based in follows the European E-Commerce Directive, you have similar rights and can send a cease and desist notice based on the directive instead of the DMCA. This includes the UK, and other European countries.
                  
                  The same rules apply here. If a website owner or web host refuses to comply with your cease and desist, they are legally liable should you wish to sue. Actually suing someone in another country is difficult though and not really economical in terms of what you would gain should you win.

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            CassandraCaeposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Also if they have people working for them, it could of been one of the employees.

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   alexadryposted 9 years ago

   I told them I would not write for them unless: 1) they first reimburse me the full $20, and 2) they pay me in advance for articles. Serious companies pay me in advance for my work and that's in my opinion the best way to avoid being scammed.

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   psycheskinnerposted 9 years ago

   A DMCA asserts your copyright and tells people to stop using your work.  It need not be a whole page, it can be a few sentences. If not used under "fair use" (which it seems they were not), they are violating copyright and distributors like Amazon will honor your take down request even if the "author" does not.

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   Suzanne Dayposted 9 years ago

   I have a hub about stolen hub content which offers some different solutions for next time, including if they are from another country. I also have a hub about art plagiarism, which could apply if writing Cease and Desist letters for any ebook copies etc. Check these out for more info!

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      alexadryposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Suzanne, will check them out today!

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