A recent interest in online blogging and freelance writing has been sweeping the internet. In these troubling economic times people are turning to alternate sources of potential income. And so have the copyright thieves and plagiarizers of online content…
Writing blogs for the internet can earn some decent extra money if anyone can devote the time to it and gain an audience. Blogging with any of the ‘AdSense’-type ads campaigns can earn anyone a decent residual income. But noticeably there has been an increase in organized plagiarism, the site-specific stealing of content and re-posting in its entirety, to earn revenue.
A number of sites I have viewed recently are populated with content stolen entirely from a site that I write for, Triond.com. Specifically, several of Triond’s domains, PurpleSlinky and Authspot notably, are prime targets for these plagiarizers. One site I viewed just recently has over 13 pages of nothing but stolen works from Triond domains! Think about that. That is well over 100 articles, stolen entirely from you and me, the freelance writers for Triond.
I could name names! I think I’ll wait though and maybe they will see this article and think twice and then do the right thing and delete their stolen articles immediately! They are in our awares. We know who you are. We are watching you.
What is Plagiarism?
According to Wikipedia, plagiarism is:
“the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one’s own original work.”
Wikipedia goes on to explain the variation of plagiarism, including “academic plagiarism” (by students, professors or researchers) and journalistic plagiarism, which is that done by reporters. A reporter whom plagiarizes content or sources usually faces disciplinary measures. ‘Accidental plagiarism’ occurs when in academic or journalistic circles the failure to give quotations or citation occurs. The “I heard that” or “I read that” etc. If it is important enough to include, it probably should be cited. Especially if further points of contention are based upon it.
Internet plagiarism has become rampant what with the ability of electronic copy-&-paste ability, and that is the offense I am writing about. We freelance writers at Triond have collectively found and viewed several web sites that are routinely copying-and-pasting our articles for themselves, with no accreditation to the real author, no link-back whatsoever. You know, for ‘fair use blogging’ they could use the first paragraph or two of our article(s) with a “read more” backlink to the real article. That way, they benefit from first-view and their local AdSense ads, we benefit from click-through for the “read more” continuance. But they are not doing this. They are publishing the entire content for themselves.
These unfair use sites are a member of the Google AdSense program, meaning that they are earning money from the advertising. It’s the same general deal that Triond offers us, except we get no share of their profits from those sites that steal. They are using OUR articles to earn money for themselves! This dishonest practice needs to be addressed and it needs to be stopped.
While plagiarism is not specifically “copyright infringement,” according to Wikipedia, the particular acts ‘…pertain to two different transgressions.’ We keep calling the use of our articles on these other sites “plagiarism” when they are in fact, “copyright infringement.” Plagiarized content is a ‘derivative work’ based heavily upon an existing source. “Copyright infringement” is a verbose copy be passed as one’s own work without the consent of the author.
Pain to insult is that we at Triond get paid renewing monthly royalties for our published works and seek to promote our works for increased traffic, yielding hopefully continued financial benefits every month. But when other sites are doing ‘copy-and-paste’ of our works, those sites are in essence stealing the potential traffic for our published copyrighted works. This needs to stop now!
February 9th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Well said and thanks for going public over this. SU’d
February 9th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I recently wrote an article about how to know if someone is copying your content (http://www.webupon.com/Services/How-to-Know-If-Your-Content-is-Being-Stolen.492693) and with this tool I found several Triond users who were being plagiarized, like Ruby Hawk and Mark Bentley. Some of them are taking action and some of them think that there not much you can do about it. There are more information in the forums.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:15 am
It is a sad world we live in. Interesting article.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Oh Stickman here we go again. This is the same problem that arose a couple months ago with Chan. These people that are doing this need to be stopped as soon as possible. It makes me sick to think about the time and effort all of us put into our articles and to have someone steel them is unacceptable. Wonderful article and lets hope this all stops soon!
February 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Hopefully I make a dollar on this article and pretty sure it won’t be ’stolen’ by you-know-what.com site, eh?
February 9th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Hey I just realized that this marks my 100th text-article with Triond!
February 9th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Very inciteful and informative article. Thank you!
February 9th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for the article. good information
February 9th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
You know, this is becoming a huge problem, and although I do love Triond and the opportunities here, I had a another run in with myamazingfacts.blogspot.com, who has again stolen more of our work.
I contacted him directly and the content was removed. You don’t need to be nice to these people because that never works.
Excellent piece my friend
February 9th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
This is a big problem on Triond and I think on all sites. I left a message on gassavers.org after Maria told me they had an exact copy of a paragraph in my http;//www.gomestic.com/Personal-Finance/15-Ways-to-Save-Money.40149 I checked back several times and it is still there as of today. This has been happening ever since I started publishing on Triond. I think it happens all over and I don’t believe there is anything we can do about it other than ask that they take our work off their site. Does any one have a solution?
February 9th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Well I am LIKING the ad-box in my article. Two links to ‘writing’ sites and a FREE PLAGIARISM CHECKER site! Well done!!
And on another note… watch tomorrow for another “Stickmen” cartoon!
It has been over 8-months since I last drew one of these (supposedly) continuing series…
Thanks all!
-thestickman
February 9th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
They should start fining the people who steal articles, that will stop the scam article posting like this, I am sure if they know that will happen then the pressure will be a little more serious.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Some websites have their right click ’save as’ disabled.
That’s one way, TRIOND. After all the trouble and hard work we go through, TRIOND should disable right click use of mouse so that they can’t copy, paste.
C’mon guys have your say. This would be a good article to post, since the stickman came up with the idea, maybe he could put it forward to TRIOND.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
“right-click/save” captures images.
“left-click/hold-drag” copies text (and images.)
Either of these are ‘kiddie’ prevention techniques, as the actual data enters the computer anyway. It is in cache files if you know how to extract them. But this simple technique will stop the ‘casual thief’ from lifting content.
This is usally accomplished with javascript which, if turned-off, being absent the ‘protection’ is gone. Soome browsers let you ‘turn off’ javascript (and JAVA, and FLASH, etc etc..)
Another, albeit equally ineffective technique, for stopping right-click/save on IMAGES, is to paste a ‘transparent’ image over-top of the actual subject image… This is a common ‘trick’ that web page builder 10-years ago would do, thus any attempt to ‘right-click/save’ would only save the ‘top image’, -the transparent one! But in fact again, both images are cached in the computer’s temp folders, -if you knew where to look.
The ‘committed thief’ would find this. The casual user, would probably not… as there are thousands of cached files/images in any typical cache folder.. just turning your computer ON and viewing your homepage, adds hundresd sometimes..
-Not knocking the ideas, -totally advocating them! We won’t stop the ‘committed’ content thief. *I* am out to stop the teenaged and twenty-something goons that don’t know better and have no knowledge that what they are doing, is breaking the law. If we can reduce by 25% the currently-stolen content from being ‘lifted’, -we can all shout VICTORY!
February 9th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Thanks for your advice.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:08 am
This is an unfortunate part of the internet – - that eventually with time, I believe will be remedied.
Blessings.
Sincerely,
-Liane Schmidt.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:12 am
Good article, These are the conditions we must face in the information era. Even the Sun has a sun-spot…
February 10th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Yes I have seen this also with articles not posted here through Triond, seeing as I am new here I have not had this occur as yet. Some previous articles that I posted through other article sites, were posted by people on their blogs and websites, not only stealing my words without reference to showing that I am the author, but also to change the words slightly in the structure of the article. It is still obvious that it is my work in the writing, not much has been changed, and the silly people left the title the same.
I definately agree that this is so easy to achieve through the internet, not only for writers, but also for other artists, such as musicians.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
good tips, I found one of my articles through copyscape recently, was quite angry about that!
Nice article man.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:21 am
plagiarism is a problem if they do not placed a link back to our article. else it is beneficial to us as we will have tonnes of reprocical external links to our articles/website.
reprocical links will give you a high pr indexed and from that you will get more traffic both from the articles and search engine results.
if you do not want the extra traffic, give them a shout via email. most of them are kiddies just trying to earn a few bucks a month. warn them if they do not comply but never threaten them as it is a serious offend in any developed country.
my articles were plagiarized many times. i am happy if they have a link back to my article but if not, i will simply approach them and politely ask them to add a link to me. many of them are happily promoting the articles for me now. they earn their few bucks (means a lot if they are in a third world country) and in return they send give me the hundreds of unique traffic i might never get. it’s a win-win situation.
and do you realized you have just plagiarized from wikipedia?
February 11th, 2009 at 6:29 am
I cite my source for definitions as having came from Wikipedia even if no link is provided. I am more concerned about ‘copyright infringement’ which is the complete copying of an article and re-publishing as one’s own. I’d be delighted if a blogger were to use the first paragraph or two of an article and have a “read more…” link to the actual published article. That way, the blogger gets some AdWord traffic, I/we get a backlink and possible visit for the reader whom wishes to read the entire article. There are numerous sites that currently are not doing this.
And yeah, I suspect that most are ‘just teenagers’ enthralled to have a blog/web presence and have discovered that they can earn revenue from text.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
The best blogs on the net are those that combine both original work with links to other articles. I seriously do not believe that the ones who copy and paste will last for a long time as they will soon discover that adsense is not the get rich quick they once imagined and even when they steal the work of others they have to promote the blog, rather than just sit down and wait for the hits to roll in. Plus, people get wise real quick and abandon these blogs. When you only have your gran reading it, people give up.
Personally, I always send (when there is an email address – some of these people are so chick sh*t they don’t even have that on their sites) a message which effectively says cease and desist.
If that doesn’t work, I download a virus on to their machines. If that doesn’t work I, through industrial sabotage, allow the company for which they work to fail. If that doesn’t work, then I have their nearest and dearest killed in inexplicable but obviously deliberate accidents. If that doesn’t work then the delivery of a small nuclear device (set on timer) to their country of origin *almost always* does the trick. If that doesn’t work I use my time machine and introduce smallpox to the village in which their great great great grandparents lived.
Mwah ha ha…..
February 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
“If that doesn’t work, I download a virus on to their machines. If that doesn’t work…”
Guy, -you’re hardcore aren’t ya?
Good on ya! Mr, I just squeak publicly until someone else tears down their pillow fort…
-thestickman
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
Hi, was browsing the Triond forums and looking at old threads. Saw the “OMG TRIED COPYSCAPE AND FOUND MY ARTICLE COPIED”, read that you had written about copyright infringer sites, clicked your profile, checked out your works, and finally found this article.
Your article sure was hard to find, lol.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I’m glad that you came out with this article and good job