Are essay writing sites selling my article?

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   RonElFranposted 7 years ago

   When I search for the title of one of my articles (the one on Anita Hemmings) results show it appearing on several sites that sell essays to students. But when I go to the site, only their advertising is there, with no listings of specific articles. I'm wondering if my article is somewhere on their site where only purchasers can see it, and they are offering it for sale. Anybody know of a way to check this out? And if they are selling articles without permission, what can writers do about it?

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      If you're willing to pay for one, a good lawyer could find the info you need and then file a few nice lawsuits.  However, you'll have to prove the work is yours, which may be hard to do.
      
      You might also want to "sign up" at one of those sites to find out who they are and proceed from there, but I'm not sure doing all of this is worth the time.
      
      I stopped waiting to reproduce articles to move them long ago.  I put them on the new site first and then delete them. Then I put the URL on Google  Webmaster Tools to get them removed from Google. 
      
      Saves many problems.

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         RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         One of my principles is that I never spend any money on my articles, and certainly not for lawyers! And I don't think they are taking any views away. It's just the principle of the thing. As Stella says, I think I'll just take it as a compliment and let it go.

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   Stella Kayeposted 7 years ago

   This is a problem I've encountered. Unless you file an official complaint which will cost you there's not much you can do about it and you have to accept it as one of the risks of putting your work online. I used to write for the Helium site which closed several years back. After the closure and before I could transfer all my articles to HubPages, I found to my horror that they were appearing elsewhere with no payment or accreditation to me. When I tried to republish them on HubPages I got reprimanded for duplicate content. From then onwards I made a point of putting all my previous works through a plagiarism checker to see they hadn't appeared elsewhere! It was a hapless task trying to track down the rogue sites that had plagiarised my writing and in the end I gave up as they were not even contactable. I ended up doing complete rewrites of my own work, some of which was autobiographical so could never have been written by anybody else!

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      RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Stella, I've had the same experience of wanting to transfer articles I wrote for other sites to HubPages, only to find they had been stolen. It's maddening! But, for the most part I've been able to get those resolved by filing DMCA complaints with Google or the rogue site's hosting service. In this case, I can't even prove these essay services are selling my article. And that's even more maddening!

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         Stella Kayeposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I tend to see the funny side and think oh,well at least my writing must be good if someone's willing to copy it rather than come up with an original work of their own!

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            RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Stella, that's a great way to look at it. But how embarrassing it would be if somebody got a "C" on it!

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   chef-de-jourposted 7 years ago

   I wish I could supply a specific solution to your problem my friend. I wonder, could you check this out with Google on a forum maybe? There could be some useful info out there on this very topic.
   
   I've had articles copied before and managed to sort things out with a DMCA and emails, which you probably know about. Your query is a little different but needs answering - these awful sites could be getting away with daylight robbery.
   
   Please let us know how you get on.

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      RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      chef-de-jour, thanks for the suggestion about going to a Google forum. But I've never even seen a Google forum, wouldn't know how to get on one, and, honestly, don't want to take the time right now to figure it out.  I'm doing several writing projects for clients that have deadlines, so I'm concentrating on that. Maybe when I have more time, I might try it.

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   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   There is no need to spend money. Send a DMCA notice, if it is your essay they are highly likely to comply with the notice.  They don't want to risk being delisted by Google.

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      RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      The problem with DMCA is that you must be able to point to a specific url for the offending material, which I cannot. If these sites are indeed selling my articles, they don't put them on the internet, but sell them directly to students. In fact, I'm not even sure they are doing that. I was looking for a way to check that out. So far, it looks as if there's no easy way to do that.

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         psycheskinnerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         You can use whatever url gave you the idea they had the work.

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   JoanTheChoirLadyposted 7 years ago

   I don't know anything about how to get the article removed, but I'm thinking that the fact that you have your stuff on a very public website would be one of the best ways to discourage selling it to students.  Any decent plagiarism check that a teacher would do would surely find something that is on HubPages, right?

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      RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I thought about that. I suppose it could be that a student who submits the article on paper could assume that the teacher wouldn't go to the trouble of typing in portions of every paper they get in order to check for plagiarism. Or maybe they're supposed to have enough sense to paraphrase enough that the plagiarism filters wouldn't get a match.

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