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Hey there,
I had a blog friend whose content was completely copied word-for-word. I was wondering if WordPress had any features that allow me to have a "blogging signature" or something so that I can track if someone is attempting to copy my content? Or what other precautions I can take to prevent this from happening?
Thanks!
The blog I need help with is ollinmorales.wordpress.com.
Plagiarism is awful I can't tell you how to stop it but I can sympathize with you about it some people should get a mind of there own. God Bless you
1) make a practice of googling the first sentence in each of your posts.
2) follow the suggestions at http://stolen.wordpress.com
3) if you are absolutely terrified of theft, either get a flash-based website or post only PNGs and use the Monotone theme.
Or don't put it on the web. If you put it on the web, someone, sometime is going to lift it and claim it as their own.
True, but it's fun to track down the little rats and take their entire blogs down.
I've actually created a DMCA form in MS Word that I just fill in and email/fax/snail mail off. And you know what is even more fun than taking their sites down? Complaining to Adsense and getting the banned from Adsense for life.
Sometimes it takes so little to make me happy.
I hear you on that. Adsense them first, then report them to their hosts. Then they spend all that time getting the website back up only to discover they don't have any ads on it. It's a beautiful thing.
I have a PDF of the DMCA I just fill out. Yay for EFF.
Can someone please point me to a easy to understand fill in the blanks DMCA form? Someone has sucked my entire site into theirs. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
thanks
do you get mad if someone copies one of your posts and posts it on their site giving you credit and linking your site?
I don't get mad. If they do not comply with my copyright notice, then their site is toast. It is as simple as that. I have a very specific copyright notice.
@auxclass, I patterned mine off of the one at plagiarism today's site. The below page has a lot of useful samples.
@thesacredpath - thanks much - I am wading through your copyright notice and one of timethiefs - several things I did not think about at first - one of the sites that I have excerpts on is commercial (with my permission) so that part might need to be modified - excerpts are OK, but sucking the whole site is a bit annoying maybe a bit more so than the average person as some of my articles or Posts take up to 40 hours to prepare.
thanks again
@auxclass, that falls under permission when you allow someone to excerpt your stuff.
@thesacredpath - the excerpts with permission (or even plain excerpts) when there is the link back for the full content is OK - that part is fine - -
the part that is not OK is the taking a full post and re-posting the whole article without even a credit or a link back or the site that seems to have inset my whole site on theirs.
Not that anyone reads the copyright things when they are thieves I am going to put up a full notice along the lines of what you have on your site.
Oh yeah, without permission or lifting the whole article requires major surgery to extract their site from them (without anesthesia).
Having a copyright notice is just that little bit of an extra when it comes to whacking them. The web hosts will visit the sites, and seeing the copyright notice just add that little bit of extra weight.
Thank you all. This was very illuminating.
It's astonishingh how many people are not ware that copyright law also applies in cyberspace, or pretend they do not know. I Google excerpts from every post I publish like raincoaster does. I use copyscape http://copyscape.com/ to search for copies of my posts on the web.
When my posts are stolen and I find them on a monetized blog I do a whois seach and contact the site owner where possible (one of the caharacteristics of splogs is lack of contact information). If I do contact them and they mess with me rather than immediately removing my content. I bring the hammer down hard. I do as advised above and report the site to Google Adsense and to all other advertisers on the site first.
Then I send in a DMCA complaint to the web host. I too have a copy and paste on hand.
Next I publish a blog post identifying the splogger and post the whois information in it and state how disgusting content thieves are. My readers and I decimate them and we post to all social networks and forums we belong to warning others of their slimy behavior. We report the splogger to every social network they have joined to as the social networks all have copyright provisions in their ToS and content theft is breach one is banned for.
The thieves always take my content down and most beg me to remove my posts and my forum postings on social networks too - fat chance! Those who blog for bucks are in business and practicing due diligence comes with that territory.
However, in the case of a newbie blogger with a non-monetized blog who has yet to educate themselves on copyright I have been known to be forgiving. If I contact theme and they immediately say they are sorry and remove the content then that's not a barrier to securing my friendship.
Hello, timethief, raincoaster, and thesacredpath -
I'm happy to see that one CAN do something about content thieves. Thank you for the tips.
I'm just a tiny bit mystified about the "Googling an excerpt / first sentence of every post".
Do you mean that after the post is posted, you periodically check to see if you can find it online at another person's site?
Or do you mean that you do this before posting and it acts as some kind of date stamp, like people who mail themselves a manuscript or a completed design and leave it sealed to prove they owned it on such and such a day?
Thanks.
It means we use Google search after publishing a post. We type in an extract of text from our post and see if it has been indexed as appearing on any site aside from our own site.
Ah, thanks again. I thought maybe you guys had a trick up you sleeves.
.^_^.
As I said above I also use copyscape http://copyscape.com/ to search for copies of my posts on the web. :)
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