Lazy Thieving Plagiarists - warning, rant inside

by 16 replies
19
I just found a website whose entire content, bar about 2 articles, has been stolen from articles I've written with no resource boxes left at all.

Needless to say a stern email has been sent to the owner, which will be swiftly followed by a DMCA notice to Dreamhost.

GRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

/rant
#off topic forum #inside #lazy #plagiarists #rant #thieving #warning
  • You better believe it!
    • [1] reply
    • I just had to do something very similar and I've often contemplated how much I could get away with using images for parts of text that I'm not trying to rank for and regular text for the SEO bits.

      Trouble is that the Google bots can't crawl images (yet) to check for relevancy so that throws that idea out the window to some extent.

      The trolls like this person will never amount to anything more than a troll anyway so they are hardly worth considering.
  • Geesh when will these folks learn
    Sorry to hear about it,but good on ya for taking action
    cheers
    -WD
    • [1] reply
    • Unfortunately, never. There is nothing for 'these folks' to learn - they know what they're doing.

      It's an unfortunate fact of life online. People scrape and copy other people's stuff. You can do as the OP is doing; sometimes it's effective, sometimes it isn't.

      If you work with a lot of content, you'll have this happen to you. Sucks, but that's life on the Internet.

      bfas
      • [1] reply
  • Hey Rose,

    Sorry to hear that. It's happened to me a LOT of times. I used to get annoyed but these days I just accept that it happens and that people like that will always struggle because they're not able to be creative or work enough on their own content to be successful.
    I feel sorry for them.
  • Good luck with that. I don't know how many posts of yours I've enjoyed that didn't have any kind of strong language at all, so this headline was an attention getter

    Quite rarely the thought does cross my mind 'time to buy a gun...' Not that I ever will, and not that I'm even serious when I think of it, but some things do inspire the inner grouch. (snarl)
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Here is a DMCA sample for you if you need it. If not, then somebody else can snag it.
    DMCA Take Down Notice Sample Example | Internet Marketing Strategies by E Brian Rose

    I wouldn't stop with their host. If they are selling anything, make sure that their payment processor is notified. If they have advertising, make sure that the advertisers know that they are advertising on a site that uses stolen material. That would include CB and AdSense.

    Good luck. With a little persistence, you should be able to get something done about this.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • I'm not sure what, if anything, they are selling. It's a strange site. They offer the chance to advertise (there are no ads on there) and include this advise

      "Our links will never be recognized as "paid links" by search engines. (To find out why this is important and how we stay under the radar, please contact us)."

      That advise is included as a graphic, so you won't find it if you google it and I'm not going to dignify them with a link.

      Oh yes - thanks for the DMCA link, but I sent their host the same one I always use.
  • It's great that you were able to spot your plagiarized content online. I'm sure it won't take much more than the DMCA notice to their host to get them to comply.

    I'm curious - were you specifically looking for your content being plagiarized, or was this something that you just stumbled upon?

    Paul
    • [1] reply
    • I was intending to submit one of the articles to another article directory. To find out where I'd already submitted it, I just googled a sentence from it - and found this rogue website.

      As the articles are about the game of bridge, I was surprised to find it used. I found one site where it was being used properly - links in tact etc, and this one where over 50% of the content was my articles - 7 in all.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • I don't think my comments below apply to the website mentioned by the OP. If this guy is offering advertising on his site, then he's obviously got some marketing nous, and should know what's right and wrong.

    I'm constantly surprised at how many people have no idea that copyright still applies on the web.

    I hired someone to compile one of my short reports into a pdf with nice footer/hyperlinks etc and when he was done, it looked fantastic! Great pictures, relevant to each chapter, were included. When I asked where the images came from and what rights applied to them, he said he got them from Google images, and there's no copyright, so we're fine to use them. He just didn't get it when I asked him to remove them all.

    One of my best friends who holds a master's degree told me the same thing - if it's on the web, it's in the public domain.
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