Plagiarism Driving Me Nuts

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   Lionrhodposted 8 years ago

   So over the past few weeks I've been wanting to re-publish some of my old articles.
   
   Knowing that Google has a prob with duplicate pages I start looking up my articles on the web, and crud! My articles are ALL over the web. Some of them have 10-20 dupes.
   
   I suppose I should feel complimented!
   
   Meanwhile some idiot who's posted my article on his FB page complains to me and wants me to prove that I'm the original owner of my own article. HE KNOWS he didn't write it because he KNOWS he took it from another page whether mine, or one that copied off mine.
   
   REALLY!

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      Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      This is the big downside of publishing on HubPages.  I've had countless articles stolen from HubPages but not one from my blogs - even though my blogs get more traffic now. 
      
      The reason is that most of the thefts are by scrapers, and they're ONLY interested in sites that publish several new posts every single day.  Obviously few of us are doing that on our blogs, so sites like HubPages stand out as obvious targets. 
      
      The danger is when you unpublish and delete from HubPages before searching out and killing off the copies - and there are always far more than you think, when you start running them through Copyscape and the like. 
      
      When I moved some articles off HubPages, I unpublished but did not delete them, just in case I needed to prove the original publication date later (an unpublished Hub retains its original publication date).  If you already deleted that Hub, you could try the Wayback machine or as a last resort, email HubPages and see if they have any record.

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      1. 73

         stricktlydatingposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Because I have been putting a copyright warning within the text of my Hubs, and I am monitoring if this will improve the amount of copyright violations I have been reporting, I did a search in Google as 'Copyright StricktlyDating' today, and it looks like I've come across a site which is scraping Hubpages articles in full, including the related Hubs, and mine were among them, they are almost a perfect copy of my Hubs, with all photos and text copied - Only the text is translated into another language. I've updated the images on my Hubs recently and the pages copied show my previous images. They are running each copied page with Adsense. I've reported this to Google and sent an email to Hubpages today, because I didn't know how to report an entire site like this. Here is one example of a page copied from Hubpages (Note: You will need to fill in the spaces I didn't want to post the URL in it's correct format on here): www. radi kewl.com/60292862.html

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            theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I've been putting copyright info at the end of the intros in all my hubs for a couple of years (and ignoring the 'style' warnings). It makes no difference. The whole thing gets copied, often with the copyright stuff in there too. They don't care, those slimeball thieves.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      To avoid this problem, when I had my blog, I transferred the hub to it first, without deleting it.  Then, an hour or so later, I deleted it and went on to Google Webmaster and asked for it to be de indexed.
      
      This way, I took a chance on creating duplicate content but eliminated any possibility that someone could steal my article.  Never had a problem.
      
      If I were you, I would take the basic info from the article you originally wrote, reword it and then publish it again.

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   3. 73

      stricktlydatingposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      You're not the only one! I filed 40 DMCA's in Dec 15. 16 were the same Hub. I am allocating a few hours each week to search for and report copied content, as many of the copied pages do outrank my originals Hubs. It's a very disheartening battle!

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         Lady Loreleiposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you. When you do this you often help out other writers as well. Another way to hurt the plagiarists is to report them to Google Adsense or Amazon affiliates if you spot those ads on their pages. Losing their source of income can stop them for awhile.

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   4. 88

      theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      It's horrible. Definitely the main reason why I prefer my own sites/writing for other people's sites, rather than publishing here.
      
      I go through the whole range of emotions from "How bloody dare they!" to "Who cares?" I'll have a DMCA blitz now and then, but it's so disheartening, especially as so many are republished on Chinese and Russian sites.
      
      One of mine has been reproduced on a teacher's blog - despite contacting her school, her webhost and the teacher herself, after two years, it's still there. A great example to her kids.
      
      I even had the National Trust publish one (a previous Squidoo lens). I sent them a bill and they phoned to apologise and sent a cheque for the full amount - £250. Another hubber also took that one and insisted that she'd written it, despite the fact I sent her a screenshot of the original date. She then claimed she was ill so it wasn't her fault. HP didn't want to know.

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      1. 75

         Lionrhodposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Wow! You actually got someone to send a check? Bloody awesome!
         
         How did you manage to come up with the amount?
         
         I threatened one thief (after she got bleeping arrogant with me) to subpoena her website records and then charge her lawyer fees plus $1.49 (the median of iTunes download costs) per page view.
         She still insisted that she was allowed "Fair Use." She was "willing" to turn my article into an "excerpt" and then link to me. I pointed out that I had not authorized an excerpt and that "Fair Use" was approx 25 words BASED ON word count, and THAT was based on book-length items (as opposed to the couple thousand word length of my article).
         
         Funny how after several arrogant emails she suddenly took down my article.
         
         Meanwhile I just don't get how some people think they have a right to your work just cause it's posted on the web somewhere. Here's the deal - you DAMN WELL KNOW you did not write it. IF the lawful owner shows up and asks you to cease/desist you just say, oops, sorry. You don't challenge who the hell they are and what right they have to insist on the removal of THEIR OWN DAMN WRITING.
         
         Freaking Sheesh!

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            Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I've been paid twice, and I just asked for $100 because it was the first figure that came into my head!  It was just a bluff in fact - I usually say something like, "You may not be aware that this article is copyright and it is illegal to reproduce it without permission.  Accordingly, please remove this article from your site at once.  Alternatively you may keep the article for my usual fee of ...."     I never expected anyone to say they would pay!
            
            But actually it's very,very rare that I even bother to contact the website owner.  If I look at the site and it's obvious they're thieves (rather than just an innocent mistake) I find out who their hosting company is, and send the host a DMCA notice using their official form (you can usually find that by Googling - e.g. "Godaddy DMCA" or "Hostgator DMCA").  Getting an email from their webhost  scares them a darn sight more than getting an email from me, and usually works. 
            
            I do give some websites the benefit of the doubt and get in touch.   For instance, there was a tutu maker who used one of my articles on their site - they looked like a reputable business and sure enough, it turned out that they'd paid someone to write the article for them in good faith.  Another one was a hairdresser who was copying articles from all over the internet, blithely unaware of copyright issues - she took them all down when I explained it to her, and was very apologetic.

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            theraggededgeposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            I just pulled it out of thin air. They are a huge (supposedly charitable) organisation in the UK. They charge a great deal for membership, so I felt no qualms in asking. I thought how much they would have to pay for decent web content and went with it. I wasn't expecting it really. Aparently, it was one of their volunteers who said they would write an article on Welsh food. She stole half her article from me and half from another blogger.

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         Lady Loreleiposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I have found my articles on a Government website and also a lawyer's website. It is amazing how they don't check out thoroughly who is doing their work for them lol.

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      oceansnsunsetsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Wow, I had not thought about this plagiarism thing from that angle.  How absolutely frustrating that must be!!  I don't have the best advice for you, but feel your pain on some level.  I checked last night and about 14 of my hubs show some kind of plagiarism.  It is so frustrating. 
      
      Sometimes, when I go to work on the plagiarized hubs, I find multiple people have plagiarized the same hub on different sites.  For me, often it is photography sites that are trying to sell some image.  They use my written content and think nothing of it. 
      
      Sorry to hear of your problem, I hope it gets resolved soon.

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      jerrycarmanposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      that's life it happens to everybody. Do not let it worry you just keep going with other hubs.

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   paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago

   Been there. I've had so many stolen copies, HP doesn't even bother to tell me about them. Fine with that btw, would be too depressing.

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3. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago

   Ya know... Maybe I should make this DMCA day...

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4. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 8 years ago

   Well, just checked 3 low traffic hubs. No stolen copies. I have perked up.

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5. 69

   makingamarkposted 8 years ago

   The trick to dealing with plagiarism is to:
   1) make copies of all your documented records of your sites (so for example on Squidoo and then again on Hubpages I make sure to copy the statistics page where it states the data the site was first created as a pdf file - you print to pdf)
   2) I then look up the domain registrar for their site and the email address for admin queries and I send an email to tell people they have 48 hours to remove the content before I report their website to their domain registrar (which I name in the email) at which point they may well find their whole site removed from view due to the fact they have breached domain registration conditions
   
   Those that don't have an email address I just go straight to Google with my documented evidence.
   I also keep an email address I use just for these sort of activities
   
   Seems to work.

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6. 75

   Lionrhodposted 8 years ago

   Wow! Awesome stories!///
   
   I wrote this series of articles (on Animal Totems) around 99-01 to help promote my ex hubby's jewelry website.
   
   The site shut down in 2005 and it was astonishing to find how many copies there were pretty much EVERYWHERE.
   
   I've filed something close to 50-100 (I lost count) DMCAs in the past 2 weeks.It's INSANE.
   
   Between them all, they've probably gotten gazillions more hits than my whole website back when it was live.
   
   My first copyright thief happened around 98 or so. I'd written a poem and then found it on someone else's site. I didn't know much about copyright/DMCA (if it even existed at the time) and she refused to take it down, so I eventually allowed her to leave it up so long as she linked to my website. THEN she had the nerve to suggest that while my findings/thesis were correct, I couldn't have possibly been intelligent enough to figure it out on my own, and the correlations I drew must have been pure luck.
   
   Grrr!

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7. 85

   viryaboposted 8 years ago

   What i do now?
   
   If I find Google Ads on the thief's site, i just go report it to Google immediately.
   I find the sites are taken down within a few days.
   
   Saves me the rigours of filing endless DMCA's and it keeps my anger at bay!

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8. 75

   Silva Hayesposted 8 years ago

   I have filed several DMCA complaints and they all were taken care of right away. But recently I've had several other hubs copied and I just haven't got the energy to address it. Not exactly on topic but similar, a Facebook friend mosaiced a beautiful guitar and posted a photo of her original work of art for the public to see. Get this: an Etsy seller copied the photo, had more copies made, glued each of them to a piece of wood, and sold them in her Etsy store! She didn't seem to understand that she did anything wrong. On my future Hubs, I am going to seed them with my name and the date buried somewhere in the body, so that when they are copied, it will be there for readers to see. What do y'all think about that plan?

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      stricktlydatingposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Yes I am doing that, still experimenting with what works best, because sometimes my text is copied only up to the line before I insert the copyright within the text, and I have found for those instances it makes filing DMCA's more difficult because of it being just a few paragraphs from my page. It's really frustrating when this happens and the copied portion still outranks my original Hub page in Google search results!

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9. 76

   Don Bobbittposted 8 years ago

   Frustration has finally driven me to accept the fact that there really is no protection for writers of original content.
   For a long time now, the web has been a digital version of "The Wild West", a place where the most brazen thieves are glorified and rewarded for their underhanded use of what we create.
   I finally realized that my time spent attempting to force someone in Asia or somewhere else, other than the US, is wasted. My entreaties for action is ignored.
   And, the many of the ones in the US who copy my works, act like they had no clue they were breaking the law.
   I decided to only work on getting things fixed once every two months or so. That way I don't stay mad at the world, all of the time.
   Does this hurt me with HP and Google? Of course it does, but I stopped "tilting at windmills" long ago.
   DON

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