The Writer's Pulse

You’ve always been told that you shouldn’t plagiarize, but what are you supposed to do when someone steals your work? Don’t worry: I’m here to help.

I assume most reading this article are concerned with plagiarism on the Internet, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on. In fact, plagiarism in print media is actually easier to deal with: the articles don’t tend to linger, and it’s much easier to zero in on the plagiarists themselves. Plus, it’s usually a career ender.

On the Internet, things can be somewhat more difficult.

Precautions

Before I even get into the aftermath of having your work plagiarized, I think it’s important to consider what you can do before it happens. Of course, no matter what you do there’s always a chance that someone will come along and snatch up something you’ve created, but it’s always better to plan ahead.

Here are a couple of easy steps you can take to give yourself the advantage:

Let people know how they can fairly use your content. Under the Fair Use policy, anyone can make partial use of content without requesting permission. The problem arises when they overstep their bounds, so it’s a good idea to set limitations and state them clearly beforehand. Provide a concise copyright notice (for example: Copyright © 2009 My Site Name) and create a page explaining the acceptable use of your content.

Get a license. You don’t need a license; once you create something, it’s yours. Still, it can never hurt to have something more or less official backing up your claim to ownership. Check out Creative Commons (which provides limitations while still allowing others to copy and share your work) and iCopyright (for something more restrictive).

These, of course, are just deterrents. The existence of splogs and content thieves on the Internet is an epidemic that will probably never cease to exist. Luckily, you have a number of ways to deal with them.

Courses of action

So, you’re browsing the Internet, you’re checking your ping-backs, you’re reading your e-mails, and you find that someone is taking your content and putting their name on it (or otherwise not making it clear who the original author is). What do you do?

1. The first course of action is to contact the plagiarist. Send them an e-mail requesting that the content in question be removed from their site. Sometimes, however unlikely it may be, the person copying your work simply doesn’t know any better. Other times, they’ll want to avoid further confrontation.

2. If that doesn’t work, take it to the next (and more brutal) level: contact their web host. If they’re hosting their blog on WordPress.com or Blogger, or any other free blogging service, shoot the owners (in this case the WordPress team or Google) an e-mail explaining the situation.

For example, last year one of my articles was picked up by a splogger (in this case a human manually adding posts, not a feed-scraping bot). I sent him an e-mail and contacted the WordPress team. The situation was resolved within 24 hours. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s much easier to handle plagiarism when it occurs on blogs that are on free hosting.

If they’re not on a free host, you can do a Whois search or visit WhoIsHostingThis to learn which host they are using. No host likes to be affiliated with content thieves (or anything illegal), so you can expect some action to be taken.

3. Consider contacting advertisers. If you see Google Adsense ads, that would be a good place to start, as plagiarists would be in direct violation of their Adsense policy. Other advertisers have similar policies, so be sure to notify them of the problem if necessary.

4. If what you’re dealing with turns out to be a Splog, head over to SplogSpot and enter it into the database. Splogs are the scourge of the blogosphere, and most are actually feed-scrapers that automate the information gathering process. These are the reason many bloggers opt to not allow their full articles to appear in feeds. Here’s an interesting article about it (read the comments for extra fun).

Resources

The sad truth is that, no matter how hard you try, content thieves aren’t going anywhere. You may win one battle against a splog or a plagiarist, but sooner or later you can bet that another will probably come along.

So keep an eye out. There’s not much else you can do.

If you’re looking for more information on plagiarism, be sure to check out these other resources:

• Plagiarism.org
• What to do if you’ve been plagiarized
• How to Deal with Online Plagiarism

Remember Steve Vander Ark, the guy who created the website The Harry Potter Lexicon and who cried during his testimony when J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers sued RDR Books for trying to publish a print version? If not, here’s a good synopsis of the court case.

As it turns out, Vander Ark eventually did get to publish the book, although it was greatly modified to meet the restrictions specified by the court. And, with a dash of irony, he’ll be having a book-signing right near the old cafe where Rowling first wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone(Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, for those outside of the U.S.):

American author Steve Vander Ark will be in Edinburgh later this month to give a talk and sign copies of The Lexicon at Blackwell Bookshop on South Bridge.

The bookshop is just a few doors away from the former cafe where Ms Rowling wrote most of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 19 years ago. – news.scotsman.com

I’m still not crazy about what Vander Ark did. Originally, anyway. It’s one thing to be an obsessive fan and to create a website about something you enjoy. It’s another thing entirely to publish a book containing material written by someone else (according to one of the original complaints, many of Rowling’s passages were contained within the encyclopedia without any quotes or attributions distinguishing them from Vander Ark’s text).

However, as it seems the legal issues have been worked out, there’s not much more to complain about.

Turns out best-selling authors aren’t immune to “accidentally” plagiarizing the work of others.

Neal Donald Walsch found this out the hard way last month when, in a blog post on the website Beliefnet.com, he reportedly plagiarized an essay originally written by Candy Chand:

“Mr. Walsch’s story was nearly identical to an essay by a writer named Candy Chand, which was originally published 10 years ago in Clarity, a spiritual magazine, and has been circulating on the Web ever since. Mr. Walsch now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually come from his personal experience.” – New York Times

Internalizing something you’ve read to the point that you think it actually happened to you is no mean feat, I’d say, but it’s really nothing to laugh at.

The post was removed and Walsch is no longer a blogger at Beliefnet.com.

Image: flattop341

Let me tell you a little story about a man named Bo.

Bo was a decent person, just like you or me. His intentions were good: at the end of the day, he really just wanted to help people. So when he decided to start a blog, he thought hey, why don’t I go around the Internet, find articles I like, and re-post them on my blog for others to read? It’ll be awesome! Read the rest of this entry »