Plagiarism and Stolen Content: A Growing Web Problem — Is Your Firm Unknowingly Falling Victim and Being Penalized by Google & Other SEs

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April 18, 2011

This morning, as I was clearing out my inbox, I ran across a message from @ @lingocode (on Twitter) with the subject line, “You’ve been plagiarized.”

You’ve Been Plagiarized

She was alerting me to an article I wrote back in 2008 entitled 11 Reasons You’ll Never Succeed as a Freelance Writer (forgive the look of the page; it’s still in the old design the site had), that had been used by another site.

They’d stuck in a few sentences and changed  few words to make it applicable to their industry, but it was without a doubt a 98% ripoff of my content.

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Post Continued Below — Note: To get a free, customizable report that you can distribute to your clients to help them avoid using plagiarized/stolen content, subscribe to our newsletter. Signup box is on every page of this site to the right. Helpful, free info like this that you pass along can help you land more freelance writing jobs.
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Mad as Hell!

plagiarism-and-content-theftI was furious, as it seems this is happening more and more. As an aside, I’ve got to get a handle on my anger when it comes to this kind of stuff simply because I know it IS only going to get worse, not better.

How I Got My Stolen Content Removed from the Offending Site

At any rate, I contacted the company and received an email from the president not even half an hour later that the content was removed and that she had no idea that it was stolen material.

I believed her.

She even asked if she could repost the material giving me the credit. I said no, stating that she could use it in the following manner. Following is how I explained it:

The article may not be rerun as is, but, if you want to say something to the effect of: “According to this article on InkwellEditorial.com’s site (link to article of course), our industry face the same problems. Based on that article, here are lessons we can learn . . .”
 
The point is to use my article as a reference (and link out to it). It may not be rerun practically verbatim with just a few words changed here and there. That’s plagiarism.
 
Again, thank you for your prompt attention to the matter; I truly appreciate it and your professionalism.
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She responded, in part:

Unfortunately, this does not appear to be a one time problem [another freelancer found her copyrighted material on the site as well, which was subsequently removed] …….we are very disappointed with the way the blog has been handled by the person in charge of it. 

I don’t wish to burn her at the stake or anything but we are going to have to change how we do this.  Like I said, we learned a big lesson today.  It is difficult because we don’t have the resources to put someone “in charge of making sure the blog posting is original!” This is very unfortunate for us…….i am sincerely sorry you were affected.
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I responded:

Using basic tools like Copyscape.com and plagium.com to check for possible plagiarism is a must for businesses these days because w/ things like Google’s recent Panda update, this is happening more and more. Google puts a premium on relevant, indepth, well-written content, and that’s why more and more thieves are stealing from writers like me who produce it.
 
In my opinion, burning the freelancer who engaged in this behavior at the stake is EXACTLY what needs to happen. She knows what she did is wrong and there’s simply no excuse for it, especially if she calls herself a writer as well. This morning, I’ve spent close to two hours on this — time I could well use for other things, as I run a thriving freelance writing business.
 
At any rate, these are just my opinions.
 
Good luck however you decide to proceed.
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How Many Web Businesses Get Suckered into Buying Plagiarized/Stolen Content

All of this got me to thinking, a lot of firms may be unknowingly using copyrighted material. After all, many of them use outsourcers to fulfill their freelance writing job needs, as we discussed here recently.

And, they trust that content providers are providing them with original content – UNLESS it is specifically stated otherwise or they are knowingly purchasing PLR content.

So it’s up to us, ethical freelance writers and SEO content providers, to protect our clients. Many depend on us for their content needs. In order to honor that trust, we need to ensure that the content we pass on to them is what they want – unique copy.

Free web tools like Copyscape.com and Plagium.com make it quick and easy to do so.

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Post Continued Below: Copyright Violation Notice. If you’re reading this entire post (snippets are fine) on any site other than InkwellEditorial.com, it is stolen content. Scraping content (eg, using software to illegally copy and paste copyrighted content from websites and blogs) is becoming a common practice which affects every website owner. So if you see this content someplace else, please take a quick moment to send an email to [info]at[InkwellEditorial.com] (remove brackets, of course) so that we can take the appropriate action. Thank you in advance for your help.
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Web Marketers: 2 Questions to Ask Any SEO Writing Company You’re Thinking of Using

Following are two basic questions to ask any SEO content provider you’re thinking about using to ensure that you get original content:

1. Do you use outsourcers (freelancers)? Many SEO writing firms do. This is not the problem. What is a problem is if they don’t have quality checks in place to check the originality of copy, which brings us to the next question;

2. How do you ensure originality of content? Again, there are any number of ways for an SEO writing company to check this – and most of them are free.

This is a question that should be readily answered. If the firm you’re thinking about using stumbles when you ask this question, look for another one.

Your online reputation is just too important to risk unknowingly using content that is not unique. And remember, YOUR site is the one that will suffer, not them – even though you’ve done nothing wrong.

Even if you do eventually get it straightened out, it could cost you untold hours in manpower; manpower that could be put to better use someplace else in your business we’re sure.

So just beware.

Copyright Infringement: How to Protect Your Intellectual Property Rights Online

If you’ve ever had an article, a graphic, a video or any other type of “intellectual property rights” stolen, you know the fury and angst it causes.

Learn how to fight back and protect yourself in this copyright infringement ebook.

P.S.: Get Discounts & FREE Stuff When You Subscribe: We often offer discounts and freebies to our subscribers. So be sure to subscribe (see sign-up box to the right on every page of this site). To get the free report mentioned in the beginning of this post, subscribe. Once you do so, you will immediately be emailed the latest post, as well as all previous posts where a subscription is required.

Want to be Featured on InkwellEditorial.com? Submit a Guest Post. Get the guest post submission guidelines.

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5 Responses to “Plagiarism and Stolen Content: A Growing Web Problem — Is Your Firm Unknowingly Falling Victim and Being Penalized by Google & Other SEs”

  1. flora says:
    April 18, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    This is stressful. Had this astute reader on Twitter not notify you, would you have found this out? Perhaps eventually? I can’t imagine that with the amount of articles you have online that you are able to search all of them out for plagiarism. There are a lot of alleged writers who want credit for doing no work at all, and at your expense.

    Best of luck
    Flora

  2. Karen Cioffi says:
    April 18, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    Thanks for the post – I get google alerts and find my writing articles on music sites and even porn sites – it’s so frustrating.

    As a content ghostwriter I write about 95 percent of my own original content. If I need to outsource, I use a writer I know very well. But, the links to the plagiarism sites is good have.

    Thanks so much for the Plagiarism Report!

  3. Yuwanda says:
    April 19, 2011 at 3:11 pm

    @Flora: Probably not, as you’re right, I don’t have time to look for any of my stuff that may have been plagiarized.

    BUT, what I am going to start doing is Googling snippets of recent articles, as many of these thieves use autoblogging software that will steal your content and auto-post it within hours or days after you post.

    @Karen: You’re welcome on the plagiarism report. And you’re right, it’s so frustrating. It makes me outright furious, which I’m trying to get a handle on.

  4. Rose of Lingocode - German to English Translator says:
    April 20, 2011 at 1:21 pm

    Hello again Yuwanda :-)

    For everyone else’s benefit, I am both @lingocode and the original author of another plagiarised post on my owntranslation blog.

    I just had time to respond to the apology I received. It is pretty shocking, and it is great that you have written a post about your experience. I have advised our unwitting plagiarising company (the client of the sham-copywriter) to do the same, and I will likely incorporate the lessons learned into a later post. I have already written a post on the Ethics of Translation Blogging – I would like to see someone plagiarise that! Oh wait – a content farm already did, because it sent a pingback to an older post of mine!

    Perhaps a name and shame place for known plagiarisers would help? Any ideas if one exists? Perhaps something as simple as a report for duplicate content, together with the date it first appeared on another site. That way it is not libellous, simply stating a fact – the same content miraculously appeared elsewhere first.

    The whole thing made me pretty mad, too. Especially when it is something we worked so hard on, now attracting the praise and Google hits for someone else.

    The central answer is this: if we suspect something we are reading is plagiarised – INFORM THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR. It is only by being vigilant and protecting one another that we can ensure this will, well, perhaps not end, but at least be minimised.

    All the best,

    Rose

  5. Yuwanda says:
    April 20, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    Rose, when/if you write that post (incorporating the lessons learned about plagiarism), please alert me to it so I can share it with Inkwell Editorial’s readers.

    RE “Perhaps a name and shame place for known plagiarisers would help? Any ideas if one exists?”

    I thought about starting a website where freelancers could “out”, if you will, people/websites who’ve stolen their content.

    It’s happened to me so many times that I was thinking of doing it only for myself, but then thought, why not let all content providers share their experirences.

    THEN I thought, it’d be too much maintenance. I just don’t have time to do this.

    But man I wish I did.

    FYI, love your idea bout informing the ORIGINAL AUTHOR if you run across a plagiarised piece. It can be difficult to even know who that is, but I will definitely do so from now on if I know who the author is.

    THANK YOU again so much for alerting me in the first place. Some good has come out of it, which is helping all ethical content producers become a sort of “web neighborhood watch.”

    Best!

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