Content Theft - Ezine Articles

[ezine ads]

A few weeks ago a "nice" guy named VANSON TAN copied from EzineArticles one of my articles and posted it on various article directories under his name and using his resource box. Finnally all directories removed the article copied from me, but only one directory banned the thief. The whole story is here: Ezine Advertising Blog Archive Beware of Ezine Articles Thieves

Since only ArticlesBase banned the thief, I contacted once again some articles directories and offered them proofs that tens of articles posted by Vanson Tan are actually stolen from EZA. I asked them to ban that thief and remove "his" articles.

They didn't care! Yes, you read it well!

So ... I'm trying to contact the authors of the stolen articles. I already posted via Twitter 5 cases: Twitter / adrianjock

FABIAN TAN you're one of them (Edit by Adrian Jock: for avoidance of any doubt, Fabian is one of the authors, not a thief ). Look for example here: Why Your Emails Aren't Working - Email Marketing Tips - Why Your Emails Aren't Working at All (please remind me to DELETE later this link ) - Edit by Adrian Jock: link deleted. Update: IdeaMarketers deleted the stolen article but still didn't ban the thief.

If you're an article author, take care!

[ebooks4u]

It's sad to see people doing this. It's not only illegal, but also ruins a reputation. I hope they get caught...

[Colin Evans]

This is one case in many - I wonder how much of this is done deliberately or because of bad advice... I often read marketers telling people to go to EzineArticles and use existing articles as the foundation of their own - might be too much work for some so they copy them instead.

I have also seen one or two PLR packs which contain articles taken from article directories. Since then I've always been wary of big PLR packs, it's difficult to check every article in these big packs to make sure they are actually PLR.

[WinsonYeung]

wow, the thief still dare to show his nice face within the articles !
thick skin thief indeed

[ryanman]

This has happened to me several times with multiple sites. I have had people using my articles without giving proper link back or at least leaving the author name in tact. Well I don't think much can be done in these cases...

[ezine ads]

Here are some big lists of articles copied by this "smart" guy:

http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/profile.cfm?writerid=63798

Vanson Tan's Articles

Free Article Directory - Author Information for Vanson Tan

(I will delete the links later)

If you want to protect your copyright, check to see whether your articles are there or not. Tip: Read only the titles, the thief didn't waste his time by making modifications.

[countonuspr]

That is very frustrating. It takes hard work and a lot of thought/money to have articles written. It is really too bad that they don't give you credit for your work. That is very, very frustrating.

[Anomaly1974]

It sucks but I can top that! One former(?) warrior is still selling two of my books on lulu.com and did not even bother to change my name! Funny though, he did take time to block my email addresses LOL

If I had the money to fight it I would but I have been offline for almost a year and did not even know about it. About the best I can think of is to sell them on my site and undercut his prices.

Copyright Infringement is a crime but unfortunately, in many countries it is rarely addressed and even when it is, prosecutions are few and far between. Copyright Lawyers are also prohibitively expensive so what to do?

I have articles that have been downloaded literally thousands of times but I am lucky to get eight or ten backlinks from them.

Nowadays I will be concentrating more on posting my articles on my site and using Social Bookmarking and Social Networking Sites for my site and traffic promotions.

Just my two cents

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by theyoungmarketer

How do you all check if your articles are being used elsewhere?

That's very easy. If you want to check NOW, then go to Google and search for "title of your article". Replace "title of your article" by the actual title.

Then setup a Google Alert for the main keywords from your articles and Google will do the job

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by theyoungmarketer

Would you always set this up for your articles?

Like only fir your site content or an article you wish to keep unique?

Yes, I always setup Google Alerts for my keywords because I want to know what else happens in my niche, what the competitors are doing, who is stealing my content and so on.

[mrsteady]

I didn't know this was happening so much. It is terrible. Do you think there would be a market for a product in which you can enter in your own content and it constantly searches the web for copies?

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by mrsteady

Do you think there would be a market for a product in which you can enter in your own content and it constantly searches the web for copies?

Like Copyscape? I don't know if there is market for such product.

I don't know about others, but ... if it comes to me ... Why would I be interested in it when Google is so easy to use?

[solardave]

I wasn't aware of all this but it doesn't surprise me. It's like unarmed robbery.

[SEO Inspire]

Stealing other's content really sucks!

[SDG-Nick]

Makes you sick that after spending time writing an informative article it leads to someone coming along and stealing it

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by SEO Inspire

Stealing other's content really sucks!

Thieves will always be, online or offline.

What is really annoying is that many article directories do NOT verify whether the articles are copied or not (exception: EZA really makes this verification).

What is even more annoying is that I notified two such directories about this issue and they did NOT remove the articles. Since they didn't receive a Copyright Infringement Notice from the articles authors, it seems that they don't have any legal issue. Fine! However ... Doing business like this ... No, I won't add anything else!

[smithb]

Originally Posted by Nikhitalonely

Yes copyscape is the best resources to check the copied pages of your site.

I agree.
Copyscape is really great tool to know is your content is unique or not..?

[Chris Thompson]

You know - this is pretty brutal. It's good to shut it down if you can, but at the same time you don't want to invest too much time in it. You could spend your whole life trying to stop this criminal activity. Is it worth it?

[jayden.fellze]

I hope people will try to respect other people's work. that is surely a bad thing that has been done. karma is on it's way.

[neddag]

I recently found an article I published at Ezine Articles republished in about 20 other directories with the resource box changed and the new links pointing back to the thief's site. The rest of the article was word for word.

I contacted the 20 or so directory owners and less than half chose to remove the article. And one did so begrudgingly stating....

"whilst the evidence of copyright infringement that you offered was, in
effect, non existent I have chosen to remove the article on the basis
that doing otherwise might prove tiresome."

I did a quick check and this particular thief has hundreds of articles published in these directories and of the ones I checked (probably about 10), every one of them was taken from Ezine articles with the resource box and title changed. Yes he took the time to change the titles, and a few of the articles I noticed were originally written by familiar names on this forum.

And no, it was not the same person mentioned in this thread.

After wasting several hours checking this all out, I've decided that there are better uses of my time and figure it's probably best just to accept that this happens and move on.

Ned

[Sandor Verebi]

It is frustrating that thiefs steal your hard work. What is more annoying that most of directories don't have interest to stop this kind of activity. Resignation.... Really you don't have other opportunity only you just check your every new articles if they aren't duplicated content.

[Mari_Quint]

This happened to me too. I saw my published ezine article on someone else's blog and the person tweaked the original content by replacing some of the words. And no linking back to the original author as well. I left a message on the person's blog. I haven't followed it up though.
What I do is to create Google Alerts to track down these publishers.

[lorrainelim]

This is really terrible. And I agree that the directories make the situation worse by not taking action.

Why not just submit your EZA articles to as many directories as possible?

[Joseph Then]

Originally Posted by ezine ads

FABIAN TAN you're one of them. Look for example here: Why Your Emails Aren't Working - Email Marketing Tips - Why Your Emails Aren't Working at All (please remind me to DELETE later this link )

I don't understand why you mention Fabian Tan. Is he one of the thief? Or his article is also stolen?

Better clarify this. You are mentioning names now and it is not allowed.

[A8ch]

As reprehensible as it is to have someone blatantly steal your work and
use it as their own, it's also a stark reminder that there are talentless,
parasites operating in cyberspace.

These low-lifes are nothing more than petty annoyances who subsist on
whatever remnants they can scrounge. Any impact they may have is
usually insignificant and temporary. Weasels!

Hermas

[camforbes]

I had someone steal my $297 product and post it on another forum, where it's one of the most popular posts/downloads!

I've contacted the mods over there but they aren't listening because the thread is getting so much attention. It's total BS.

How can someone blatantly take someone's copywritten materials and just think they can use them/give them away how ever they like? It's ridiculous.

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Joseph Then

I don't understand why you mention Fabian Tan. Is he one of the thief? Or his article is also stolen?

Better clarify this. You are mentioning names now and it is not allowed.

Funny! It is not allowed to warn the authors that their articles are copied?

Read once again:

I'm trying to contact the authors of the stolen articles. I already posted via Twitter 5 cases: Twitter / adrianjock

FABIAN TAN you're one of them.

The above means this:

1) I'm trying to contact the authors
2) I found 5 authors whose articles are stolen by that thief
3) Fabian is one of the authors, not a thief.

[Roy Carter]

Well, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but these thieves are very annoying.

There's another saying you will have heard of...

What goes around comes around.

These people are too bone idle to market properly and will therefore never likely succeed.

There is one blogger out there who has the gall to take the content of my emails to my subscribers (he must be a subscriber of mine under a different name) and then post my email content on his blog.

The thing is, you can get all uptight and twisted and spend hours looking for these thieves and trying to contact them etc, but honestly? Your time is best spent ignoring them and concentrating on your business.

Why waste time with low-life people who will never answer your email requests to cease and desist anyway.

Life's too short to waste time with them. Like I said...What goes around, comes around!

Roy

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Roy Carter

Why waste time with low-life people who will never answer your email requests to cease and desist anyway.

Not the thief is the problem here, but the articles directories that approve content without verifying anything and then when they are warned they don't take any action like removing the copied articles. If they do their job, the thieves will not be able to post anything on high-traffic places (the sole places that matter )

[TeamGlobal]

This is very irritating when it happens. Some article directories are more responsive than others.

EzineArticles.com removed an article I reported within hours of my notifying them.

I waited 7 days to hear something from Zimbio and I finally decided to contact their hosting company. The stolen content was taken down one day after that. I never did get a response from Zimbio.

As a whole I have found contacting the hosting company to be very effective. The concientious ones don't want stolen content on their servers or the resulting possible legal actions that may be taken.

As others would advise this is nothing to get obsessed with as you don't want to spend every hour of every day tracking down and shutting down content thieves. With that said, however, it doesn't take long to send an email to an article directory or hosting company to get stolen content removed...typically 3-5 minutes.

All The Best,


Tony

[Jon Alexander]

Originally Posted by neddag

"whilst the evidence of copyright infringement that you offered was, in
effect, non existent I have chosen to remove the article on the basis
that doing otherwise might prove tiresome."

probably one of the best reasons why you should publish it first on your own site and let it mature for a while - then there should be enough 'evidence' (wayback machine - how frequently does it spider???)

[Marty S]

I have rather given up chasing the fools who have blatantly stolen my written content. I just don't have the time anymore. This is going to be changed until Google implements a reasonable reporting procedure and follow through for reporting such thieves.

One thing I did do however in one major case of thievery, was that I notified an affiliate program that both myself and the thief were marketing. I showed them what he was doing and the affiliate and I came to an agreement where I would get credit for half of his (the thief) sales (unbeknownst to him).

Now he is working for me.... well sort of.

[stefanjames]

damn that does suck. there should be rules against this. I'm not a big article marketer but doesn't this block or steal away from the original author gaining backlinks to their site?

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

probably one of the best reasons why you should publish it first on your own site

That's right.

Originally Posted by Jon Alexander

and let it mature for a while - then there should be enough 'evidence' (wayback machine - how frequently does it spider???)

You don't need to let it mature. In addition, like you said, you don't know when the wayback machine robot will spider that particular page where the article is posted.

You can register your copyright with a third-party. If you want to see an example, here is what I do: How to Avoid the Failure of Your Solo Advertising Campaign (scroll down and see what follows right after the resource box. Then click on that copyright badge).

[dibbo]

Sorry to hear that. I've had photos used uncredited and unpaid in a national paper and magazine. In my case, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to spend my precious time finding who has nicked a paragraph from an article. I've been considering the problem for at least a year. Since 'takedown' and 'cease and desist' notices seem to be so effective, I was looking at ways of exploiting them. If I come up with a solution, I will report back. I still know rationally that getting on with the next article is more effctive, but hey! shooting thieves feels better :-)
PS Viper plagiarism software used to be quite good (and time wasting).

[radhika]

You can not blame directories for publishing articles (First of all they don't know it is stolen and second of all, they can't follow each and every article they publish). You expect them to search for article titles like you do for your articles? No way ...

Unless they receive few more complaints from other authors, they don't delete this persons account. So expect few more stolen articles

Contact other authors and send a complaint all of you combinely to the directories. Then there is a possibility that they might suspend his account.

.

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by radhika

You can not blame directories for publishing articles (First of all they don't know it is stolen and second of all, they can't follow each and every article they publish). You expect them to search for article titles like you do for your articles? No way ...

Actually EZA does it! And then some people wonder how comes that EZA is on the first place and there is no one on the 2nd and 3rd places

Originally Posted by radhika

Unless they receive few more complaints from other authors, they don't delete this persons account.

Actually, another serious directory - ArticleBase - told me that after receipt of my notice regarding my own article they checked all thief's articles and noticed that all of them are copied. ArticlesBase was the first directory that banned the thief. Then GoArticles.

Then I checked myself for the other directories (seeing that they don't do it) and I showed them the PROOFS that the articles were copied from different authors. Since no normal person can believe that tens of authors stole the articles from the thief, the conclusion is that the thief stole the articles from them. So ... these articles directories HAVE THE PROOFS but don't ban the thief. Now you got it?

Originally Posted by radhika

So expect few more stolen articles

Shall I understand that over 100 articles stolen and submitted within a few days are not enough?

[Joseph Then]

Originally Posted by ezine ads

Funny! It is not allowed to warn the authors that their articles are copied?

Forum Rule #1: If you have a problem with another Warrior, a Guru, or God, take it up with them directly. Not here. No exceptions.
Read it here:
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ead-first.html


Quite frankly, you can spend the time look out for thieves, talking about thieves, get angry with them and spend all the time smearing and complaining about them.

I don't care. It's karma for them and money for me.

[ezine ads]

Joseph, both your posts on this thread are WEIRD.

First time, you thought that I'm claiming that Fabian Tan is a thief. I've explained you that his article was copied by a thief and I'm trying to warn him (and many others).

Then you point to the rules, pretending that warning someone that his content was stolen is against the rules.

My dear Joseph, I don't care about that thief. As I already said, but it seems that you did NOT read (again & again the same problem), there will always be thieves, online and offline. We cannot stop them.

The purpose of this thread is to warn the real authors (over 100), including Fabian Tan, that their content is stolen. If they further decide to protect their copyrights, is not my business and is not yours. It is only their decision.

Finally, how exactly I spend my time is not your business. However, FYI I do NOT spend my time looking for thieves. Once again, the purpose of this thread is to HELP some people. OK? If they don't need the help, that's fine. However, if I will succeed to help one single author, I'm happy. Do you have any problem with this? What exactly is the problem that bothers you? It seems that you're the only one from the hundreds of viewers of this thread ...

[Davion Wong]

I can understand how that feels. A rather famous marketer Sebestian F copied and posted my article at American Chronicle, an established article directory without my permission or giving the credit to me.

I discovered the act a few months after my article was published at EzineArticles and promptly alerted American Chronicle, but to my disgust, they did not even remove the article. Makes me wonder what kind of quality are they looking for? Stolen quality work?

Never mind he is a "guru" class kind of marketer. Ever since then, I find it hard to ever believe in what he sells.

[Floyd Fisher]

Originally Posted by theyoungmarketer

How do you all check if your articles are being used elsewhere?

check out copyscape.

[Samuel Lee]

A great topic, and I've heard that many article submission sites don't verify whether the articles that are submitted are originals, Ezine of course being the quality exception of course. (Probably explains the time of approval on articles some times) So I guess it always pays to check the duplicate content policies on each of your submission site first, in case its your work that's being tampered with!

[Joseph Then]

Originally Posted by ezine ads

First time, you thought that I'm claiming that Fabian Tan is a thief. I've explained you that his article was copied by a thief and I'm trying to warn him (and many others).

You didn't explain that till this post.

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Joseph Then

You didn't explain that till this post.

Read once again the OP and then read once again my first reply addressed to you.

Anyway, it's good that everything is clear now also for you

[Asher]

I recall that there was a video done by a Warrior about setting
up Google Alerts so that such things can be prevented. Anyone
remember where that video is?

I must admit, I haven't got round to setting up my own Google
Alerts just yet to prevent intellectual content theft.

Asher

[OmarNegron]

aww man...I don't want to worry about this silly stuff now! I need to put an alarm on my articles or something...ha

[Jammy]

This kind of thing makes me really really angry. If I'd discovered it and it was my articles I would go after this moron big time.

I'd track down his websites (check the links in his copied articles) and contact his service provider, the website host, all article directories etc, Then I'd set up a blog detailing everything I was doing and posting everything I could find on this guy...

I would NEVER let it drop. I'd search his email addresses, forum names etc in Google and contact everyone and everywhere he had ever been... and I'd do this forever - everywhere he went and every time he set up a new identity I'd find him...

But that is me, a woman scorned and all that.....

There are some serious nutters on the internet, you know what I would do but what about those out there that would go further than me... people like this should be careful in case they cross the wrong person

[Fabian Tan]

Ok just saw this thread.

Adrian, thank you for pointing this out.

I have PM'ed you about this.

Fabian

P.S. I would appreciate if you removed my name from the title...

[Eric Lorence]

Originally Posted by Roy Carter

Well, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but these thieves are very annoying.

There's another saying you will have heard of...

What goes around comes around.

These people are too bone idle to market properly and will therefore never likely succeed.

There is one blogger out there who has the gall to take the content of my emails to my subscribers (he must be a subscriber of mine under a different name) and then post my email content on his blog.

The thing is, you can get all uptight and twisted and spend hours looking for these thieves and trying to contact them etc, but honestly? Your time is best spent ignoring them and concentrating on your business.

Why waste time with low-life people who will never answer your email requests to cease and desist anyway.

Life's too short to waste time with them. Like I said...What goes around, comes around!

Roy

Agreed, though in IM it should read...

"Imitation is the sincerest form of laziness"

[ezine ads]

Originally Posted by Fabian Tan

Ok just saw this thread.

Adrian, thank you for pointing this out.

I have PM'ed you about this.

Fabian

P.S. I would appreciate if you removed my name from the title...

1) I removed your name from the title.

2) I replied to your PM

3) I'll send you soon another PM to show you where your article is still posted.