Whenever I find someone stealing – er, plagiarising – my work, I usually just deal with it by contacting the offending individual. If I’m unable to contact this person directly, I try to go to someone else who may have higher authority.
But, in all the cases that I’ve caught over the last few years (especially the last year or so), I’ve kept quiet. I never blogged about these people, mostly because:
1) I don’t really like to create too much fuss and drama, even if I do get upset about such things;
2) Many of them do apologise and make the necessary ammendments; and
3) I don’t really wish to direct more traffic to these people by linking to them or mentioning their names. I’d rather that they just disappear in cyberspace – especially the unapologetic ones.
But, there’s one particular copyright infringement incident that irks me up until now. Well, there are a few unresolved ones, but this one has a way of haunting me over and over because I keep encountering this person’s name in the blogosphere.
You see, at this time, some people consider this person as an “expert” in the blogging field. And, that makes my stomach turn a bit.
And, why not? This person “lifted” at least 1-2 articles (that I’m aware of), then repackaged it as “his” without giving me any attribution or credit. When I contacted him, he seemed sorry — sorry that he did it or sorry that he got caught, who knows? But, at least, he offered a public apology and even called me a ‘mentor’. However, he decided to delete my comments (and that of another blogger) about the issue. And, he refused to acknowledge that he did, in fact, delete our comments.
So, inevitably, I’ve lost respect for this person. But, obviously he’s still “out there”. Granted, maybe he does have good, original things to say. And, I suppose, we all make mistakes somehow, but then… Hmmm…
Anyway, enough of that. I guess, the point of this blog entry is to post the question:
If YOU get plagiarised, will you expose the person/s concerned? Why or why not?
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That’s a hard one. I guess I’d do what you did — approach him personally. Then if he did to me what he did to you, I’d contact other well-known bloggers that you know that also know him and see if they would approach him for me and/or what they would advise doing.
Good luck.
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Thanks for your input, John. I’m not quite sure who to approach and all, as I don’t really wish to be a “mud slinger” – especially since people seem to think highly of this person. Hmmm…
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OK, option #2. Why don’t you email some of the blogs that deal with blogging and ask them to talk about/post/ask their readers what they would do. Maybe then you’d get a couple good ideas of how to handle it.
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Interesting…right before I found this post I was over at the Blog Herald, commenting on a similar post (http://www.blogherald.com/2005/06/03/calacanis-on-content-theft-dob-em-in/#comments) I’m a relative Newbie to blogging, but I suggested it might be a good idea to start a Blogger’s Content Collective or some such thing, that would leverage the power of a large community of bloggers in order to put pressure on people who are outright stealing content in an attempt to make some Ad Revenue money. I believe that if a large enough group came together it could possibly wield the power needed to approach Google, AdBrite etc about enforcing their own rules about copyright infringement (I personally remember signing an agreement when I joined AdSense, that said I WOULD NOT be infringing on other’s copyrights.)
If I knew more big time bloggers I would to set-up something like this myself. Maybe we should really consider it….Hmmmm.
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Hi, Cary. I just checked out your blog. Thanks for leaving a comment here and linking up. I’m not sure about the logistics of a Content Collective. But, I believe bloggers can help each other out by looking out for each other. I mean, the problem of course is that if more than one person claims that they’re the original author. Who will be believed?
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