Plagiarism - Protecting Your Writing from Blog Content Thieves

Have you discovered that your hard work writing orginal blog posts and article content has been scraped, framed, spam-blogged, splogged — blatantly rippled off?

Once you get beyond the shock and anger — all the emotional stuff — and start thinking strategically — as in, how to better protect your posts, or how to get REVENGE — you ask yourself “What can I DO about it?”

And you think there’s little you CAN do? Wrong — you can kick ‘em right in the Adsense.

Here’s the email I received this morning from a fellow blogger:

It’s the issue of protecting our written work. I recently was browsing through the list of Technorati’s links to my site and I discovered someone who had taken one of my posts and posted them on her site verbatim. I’m tempted to leave a comment on her post telling her that I don’t mind being quoted as long as I’m given proper credit.

[A fellow blogger] dealt with this issue when she discovered that someone had used one of her articles to write a term paper. She wrote that she was angry but not inclined to plaster copyright info all over her site. I would tend to agree except that I am hoping to turn some of my material into a book and I feel the need to protect my work from plagiarism.

What is your feeling on the subject?

Well, obviously I feel the same way you do about the subject of copyright violation and blog content theft — PISSED as hell. (I’m also glad to hear that Technorati has actually proven useful for something… but that’s another post.)

So, let’s fast-forward the discussion straight to Action.

What can you DO about content theft?
The first time I discovered one of my blog posts had been stolen and republished without proper attribution or my permission, the thief was in Bulgaria. My first thought was “Oh, well, it’s not like anyone outside the U.S. is going to give a damn about U.S. Copyright Law.”

Copyright litigation under U.S. law is so expensive that cases rarely make it through the court system. Self-published authors typically do not have the resources that a large commercial publishing company might employ to battle content thieves. Bloggers who don’t have super mainstream visibility are seen as easier prey, too, by scrapers, sploggers, spam-bloggers.

But don’t be so quick to assume there’s nothing you can do to protect your content AND to deal with thieves.

The level playing field of web publishing technology works better than you think it does, in ways you might not have realized. Google’s influence can be leveraged for punishment as well as reward.

PageSpank
MaxPower coined this term, and it was his victory post that gave me the alternative to Cease and Desist Legaleze that I currently employ to put the smackdown on thieves.

First of all, scraping IS theft — let’s be clear about that. Don’t even waste your energy wondering if you’ve been victimized — you HAVE. You are fully justified in behaving accordingly. But instead of crying about it, let’s kick the splogger in the groin. HARD.

Google’s power is global — its reward is Attention, and ultimately, in the Economy of Attention, that translates into cold hard cash. Content thieves, blog scrapers, and copyrapers are entirely motivated by money. They are most likely using your content to make pennies off of Google Adsense.

If the thief of your content is running Google Adsense, her ass is grass. Google has a zero-tolerance policy for running Adsense off of stolen content. They WILL investigate — it takes them awhile to get around to it, but it is REALLY easy for them to pass judgment. All they have to do is look at the date and time of the indexed content — the Google bot already knows where the article in question first appeared. The algorithm already automatically de-values the appearance of duplicate content when considering search engine returns and pagerank; the idiots stealing your content are burying themselves deeper in the Google sandbox.

Alert a human investigator at Google’s Adsense and the spamblogger doesn’t stand a chance; they will be kicked out of the Adsense program. And, in case they don’t already know, be sure and remind the thief when you contact her that a blacklisting by Google is FOR LIFE. Nothing associated with that web master’s identity is likely to be indexed by Google ever again. What web site owner or blogger is stupid enough to blow that?

Who cares about U.S. Copyright Law when Google can cut out the webmaster’s wallet — in any currency — in any location?

Here’s what I suggest you do:

Cease and Desist
Contact the author of the offending site immediately and let her know who you are, what your complaint is about, and what action you expect her to take — for instance, give her 24 hours to either remove the content from her site or to give you proper attribution and links as the original author.

Feel free to include a link to this post, or the original MaxPower post (included in the resources at the end of this article) in your Cease and Desist Email.

Again, if she is running Google Adsense, let her know that you will be submitting a complaint to have the site expelled from the Adsense program, and be sure to mention the Zero Tolerance Blacklist — for LIFE — that will occur when the issue is investigated by Google.

If you can’t get in touch with the blogger, webmaster, or site owner, I suggest you notify the web hosting company next. You can use Whois information to determine where the site is hosted — most likely, it is a shared account. If the blog is hosted on Blogger.com — double whammy, because that’s Google’s own back yard, and they are quick to delete a questionable splog built with Blogger (there have even been complaints that they are too heavy-handed, and have deleted gray-area blogs without notification or warning.)

Consider also that any reputable web hosting company has multiple sites running on the same servers — they won’t tolerate one bad apple ruining the whole basket. No, ma’am.

My experience has been that initial Cease and Desist contact — “pretty please and I’m asking nicely” — does little to convince the thief. The minute I started simply sending links to articles about Google PageSpank, those articles come down lightning fast, with apologies.

Lazy Bloggers
Now, some bloggers are just stupid, lazy, or some combination of loser attributes. They may not have the creative skill or work ethic to create original material (worthy of theft). Lazy bloggers only link to everybody else, or regurgitate other authors’ posts.

So long as you have proper attribution and links back to your original post — let them have at it — they’re effectively viral-marketing your blog for you, however lame they may be.

A Lazy Blogger may not understand when a proper blockquote or a trackback bleeds into bald-face rip-off — but they may only be guilty of misguided enthusiasm and a pitiful form of copycat flattery.

This is your call, as the author, whether you want to allow the post to remain. I say, Let the peons have their fun, as long as their links are in order.

My Horror Story
In the most extreme case I’ve personally dealt with, the blogger went to great lengths to make it look like it was his post — he took my entire article, blockquoted a paragraph from a third blogger, then blockquoted ONE paragraph of my OWN article and attributed just that paragraph to me — stupid, really, because anyone linking through to my article would clearly notice. At first, I treated it like an error in citation, and contacted him about correcting it.

He immediately agreed to do so, and apologized, but never could seem to “get around to fixing it.” There was a link to my original article, but… Then I received an email from one of his readers chastizing ME for copying HIS article. Oh, no — HAY-ell No.

I repeatedly contacted the thief, who continued to admit to what he had done — with an increasingly mocking tone — he flat out told me my web presence wasn’t big enough to bother with, that he wasn’t subject to U.S. Law — and here was the real kick in the stomach — he sent me a link to Copyscape and suggested I have some fun seeing who else was getting away with using my content.

Each time, with an excuse as to why he hadn’t gotten around to fixing the post, and promises to “get around to it.”

Here’s the really disgusting part — his site’s popularity continues to grow. His blog is all about Bettering Yourself. I continue to discover my other blog Shift Your Spirits in the blog rolls of my peers — right beneath his. [No, it's not Steve Pavlina -- God, no -- he's Steve's Dark Twin from Eastern Europe -- the blog name starts with an R, and if you'd like to know who it is and would like to read our correspondence, please contact me behind-the-screens and I'll show you what this guy is really made of. I refuse to mention or link to him -- the last thing I will do is send him traffic or linkshare, for any reason.]

I keep seeing his blog, linked by people I admire, in the niche of my peers, and it turns my stomach. Given his topic, I did not want to believe in the beginning that he was treating me maliciously. But, because of him — at his invitation “What are you going to do about it?” — I went on a mission to find out exactly what I COULD do about it.

I discovered Google PageSpank as a weapon, and he was the first adversary I tried it on.

After weeks of jeering and taunting me, I sent him a link to the MaxPower post — Mr. Bulgarian Better-Yourself has Adsense plastered all over his blog, and is obviously following Steve Pavlina’s traffic-ad-leveraging problogging model. He removed the post within the hour — after days and days of excuses about server problems, or his blog redesign, or difficulty accessing his older articles.

He sent me multiple apologies — probably quaking in his boots that his Adsense fix was about to be yanked.

Looking back, here was my error — had I known going into it what I did coming out — that he was afraid of Google Blacklisting — I should have let the article remain and simply filed a complaint and done him in completely and totally. With the post no longer on his site, I lost my leverage.

I didn’t want to go to war with anyone… Trust me, bullies count on that.

I now use the threat of PageSpank on the first email, with a 24 hour deadline for compliance. If the site is running Adsense and seems to be high traffic, then they are stealing not only words but money from you. I suggest that you send ONE Cease and Desist email, and go straight to Google to report them. It could be a few months before they respond to the complaint.

What you can do BEFORE this happens?

• Don’t post anything you can’t bear to lose
• When offering content for republication, such as on Ezine Article banks, state exactly what you require — that the article remains in tact, with the author by-line and link attribution following the article
• Decide on how you want to deal with thieves before you are victimized and weakened by the blow
• Build protective strategies into your posts from the beginning

There are plug-ins that assist you in branding WordPress blog posts or otherwise alter the feeds in ways that make scraping either unattractive, or force your link’s inclusion for the sploggers who are screwing people with automation.

Below I’ve listed a few resources you can explore to learn more about how to protect your writing from content thieves:

• MaxPower’s article on PageSpank
• What Bloggers can learn from a plagiarist
• Copyscape
• Numly
• Plagiarism Today
• Better Feed Plug-in for WordPress
• Copyright Plug-in for WordPress

If you’re using Feedburner syndication, explore your Uncommon Use tab.

*To report Google Adsense fraud, click on the “Ads by Google” link in the ads on the offending site, then click on the Feedback option, and send Google an email — originating directly from the thief’s own Adsense block.

Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.

March 28, 2007 | by Slade Roberson | Filed Under Plagiarism

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