My blog is fairly new – you could say it’s still in it’s infancy, being just over 2 months old. So far I’d heard loads of stories about one’s blog content being ripped off verbatim and used by others to pass off as their own. I always kept wondering when it was going to happen to me, for I was sure it would at some point or the other. I’ve been an administrator at the Astahost Forums for over 2 years now and I’ve seen plenty of such occurences during my tenure. Lets say, my wait is over…
Today I made a post on Ajaxload.info – the site which creates cool ajax load indicators for you online. I usually make it a point to submit my notable articles to digg and so I did for this post too. Following that I was browsing through the digg list when suddenly I came across another article that bore a very similar title as mine. I was kind of taken aback as it hadn’t even been 10-15 minutes since I posted mine. So decided to check the other post out and lo behold – what do I discover? A 100% verbatim copy of my post including the images I’d embedded with just some minor modifications. And of course there wasn’t even a bare bone attempt to attribute the original author (me).
Here’s the link to the plagiarised post:
https://aeon.edublogs.org/2007/02/08/looking-for-an-ajax-animated-loading-logo-make-your-own-now/
As I said, I’d seen plenty of such action at Astahost – so it wasn’t anything to panic about. However, I am not someone to let it go so easily. My first option was to contact the spammer / plagiariser – as you term him – and try and reason with him. So I did. I headed over to his blog and posted a comment telling him where he’s going wrong and that he should take the article down. However, I didn’t receive any communication from him given a fair amount of time.
My next step was to head over to his service provider. His blog is hosted at the EduBlogs server. Browsing their site, I couldn’t find any easy means of communication with the maintenance staff – except for a support forum. No other form of contact information or a basic Contact link is provided anywhere on their site. Browsing through their forums, I figured it’s pretty much support oriented. So I joined it and started a thread there regarding this problem. I’m yet to receive any reply on that.
Lets see what comes out of it. If the plagiariser was using Google AdSense or in fact any other reknowned advertisement service, it’d have been much easier. For most part such people try to rip your content and make money from it.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting and watching.
Case resolved. I was contacted by the folks at EduBlogs. They were extremely helpful in this matter and the stolen post was taken down in no time. On my part, I agree that I was a little harsh during the lashback. My due apologies to the concerned people for that.
P.S. My friend Vyoma, who runs the blog named Splat suffered from a similar problem recently – but his solution didn’t come so easy. If you want to know more on how he tackled it, read this post.
Hiya,
Edublogs is a blog hosting site and as such we don’t have control over what goes up there – I will, however, contact the user directly and get this sorted out.
Main reason you haven’t received a reply yet – I’m in Australia…
Cheers, James
I’m sorry to hear about your recent troubles, if there is anything that I can do to help, please let me know. I looked a little bit into Edublogs and it appears that the contact form is the best approach. You might also want to try james at incsub.org as that is the address associated with the site itself.
Also, I have information on Edublogs host if needed, just let me know.
Hope that this works out for you!
Hmmm. So it happens to you too? It was just few days back I wrote a commentary about a similar happening over at Splat: Content Stolen From Splat
I too tried to contact the plagiarist and when there was no response, I had to do something. It seems like Google Adsense (the plagiarist was monetizing on stolen content) requires a written DMCA complain and the email does not suffice. But his webhost was responsive and I was able to get the stolen content off his site.
James & Jonathan – thank you for writing back. The source of the complaint i.e. the stolen article has been taken down. I believe what was prompt action on your part helped in resolving the conflict.
James: I probably owe you an apology for lashing out like that. However, if you were in my place you’d realise how frustrating in can be to see your entire content ripped off in that manner without any form of attribution whatsoever. I’ve got an existing licensing policy for my site that doesn’t prevent others from copying and distributing my work or even make derivative works out of it, as long as the original author is properly attributed to.
Anyway, alls well that ends well. Thank you once again.