Copy Cat
Update: April 7th
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/ ’s Jonathan Bailey has made us aware of his website. Very resourceful information can be found here, if you’re looking for proper proceedings.
A close peer had her blog copied recently as part of a dating service profile… I must say my peer writes very well. Cheap shot. If you’re that hard up, you should be able to write your own. Copyrights for bloggers or internet stuff does exist, but as you’ll see in the next few links, it’s not easy to work around. As I write this post today, I find two more peers that are reporting plagiarism.
There is an interesting article here about this type of activity. The article also goes on to explain what is fair copying here. Not exactly what I had in mind to protect author’s materials or rights now is it? Still it should be read.
There are other ways to discourage the copy cats, and more and more people with material to protect are taking action. Recently, AlexSuze have created a Web-page to report and track this type of activity. With the proper action taken, the copied work will be removed. Read the post over at AlexSuze.
The culprit can be definitely discouraged to the point of removing the copied work which is really the direction of this post, unless you have plenty of financial and legal resources to fight your cause.
To help reduce this type of plagiarism, you can contact the culprit and identify yourself, let them squirm, post comments on their site and let them know you are on to them. Politely ask them to take the posts or material down.
If you get no results, you escalate your work by sending your most polite friends to comment on their theft. 
If it’s not their own domain, you can contact the domain administrator and report the activity and ask for a follow up. email them back until you have results. Let them acknowledge they have received your note. If it is their own domain, find out who hosts it and get in touch with them.
You’ll see, providers do not like users with activity that draws this type of attention.
3 comments
DH, thanks for the advice, links and promoting the cause. I owe you a big one at your next get together.
I’ll hold you to it!
Personally, I would reserve raising a ruckus until the last possible moment. Generally speaking, DMCA notices sent to hosts work a lot better than any amount of drama. Best of all, if you know how to do it yourself, there’s no need to get a lawyer involved.
Long story short, if you file a DMCA notice the host, if it is American at least, is legally obligated to remove the work. Out of the 300 cases of plagiarism I’ve handled, I’d say that it’s resolved about 60% of them.
Just let me know if you need any help, you can reach me easily via the contact form on my site.
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