How to protect your content from plagiarism
What is plagiarism?
Anything that is stolen and re-used without the permission of the original author/creator is plagiarism, you know when you use to steal information from wikipedia for your school projects? or stealing your competitors content for your own clients? this is the first hand example of plagiarism, the Internet has made the entire world a very small village, and communication is so fast that it is possible for someone stealing your content within the next 10 minutes of it being published.
But the plagiarism that i am talking about here is about the the content[mostly articles, scripts,software,images] that you create and which get stolen. Plagiarism surely is very hot topic on the Internet world and their is no doubt 80% of what you see and what you get online from ‘any’ website or ‘any’ guru is actually a ‘remake’ of someone Else’s work, this is how it goes, you get a idea you sell it, the other uses that idea and adds some of his own to it and then sells its again its a whole new idea! But when it comes to articles and web content, specially for bloggers, then you don’t want thieves stealing your work!
Why? because plagiarism hits any webmaster very hard, although their might not be any advantage to the thief, but their surely are disadvantages for you! That is why your content must stay protected, because you have worked hard for it and if someone else is profiting on your hard work then that is simply unacceptable and not fair!
But the question arises, How can you detect, protect and punish plagiarism??
There are many smart webmasters and equally smart thieves, so it all depends on your knowledge on how you deal with it, because some times you might not even know that your content is being stolen and used elsewhere!
How to Detect plagiarism?
Many people don’t know that they are victims of plagiarism and as a webmaster its YOUR responsibility to keep checking on the Internet and find thieves so that you can defend your works. Their are many plagiarism detection tools, that can detect and inform you about stolen and dupe content. Below are the top 5 tools that i would recommend anyone to use.
1. Copyscape : Copyscape is the most widely used tool to detect plagiarism and dupe content, but its not free for life and after certain inquires you will have to pay for it or wait a month, but so far its the best one out their!
2. Doc Cop : Doc Cop is another free tool, but you need registration before using it, its performance is very similar to that of copyscape and would recommend it as an alternative
3. PlagiarismDetect : Yet another awesome site with more functionality but it requires registration too and the free version is limited.
4. RePrintWriters : This service checks your entire article to find and detect possible copies, excellent tool for article and content plagiarism detection
5. CopyRightSpot : More similar to copyscape and does not require registration
How to protect yourself from plagiarism?
Like they say ‘prevention is better then cure’ its better you protect your content from getting stolen then rather finding thieves. But how can you protect them? Their are many ways to protect yourself from plagiarism.
1. Most content thieves are those who are new to ‘blogging’ or newbies looking for articles to post on directories, squidoo, hubpages, paid to write etc, these people have absolutely no knowledge of what they are doing, but they like spamming, the most easiest way to keep such people away is by showing ‘Page protected by xxx’ signs, most of them won’t mind stealing.
2. The ‘not so newbs’ may not be scared easily by logos or signs you put on your pages[which looks very ugly for a website or blog, trust me] for such users the best option for you is by disabling the ‘right click’ feature, i know that you want to know how to disable that, but it will take lots of time if i explained that here, so i would suggest googling it, for wordpress their are plugins which do that automatically for you.
3. Avoid using your self-written content on ‘other peoples’ sites, what this means is avoid hosting your content on sites like ‘paid to write’ example associated content, etc. Unless you know what your doing, you should always know that once you submit to those sites, your content is no longer yours. Its fine if your selling those articles but if you don’t want others to use them then avoid this.
4. Avoid using free sources, like ‘free blogs from wordpress.com or blogger, because their is no guarantee that the content is yours and anyone could easily steal those, other then that don’t use ‘tweaked content’ on your site as well, tweaked content are ‘remakes’ of someone Else’s articles, which can be easily done with soft wares, so if your doing this and if those articles are stolen then you are in no way going to be the original author of those articles!
Don’t use your articles multiple times, on multiple sites [same articles] and DON’T submit the articles you use on your site into ‘article directories’ for link building, because not only will you get rejected, but if you do get accepted you will lose your main sites page rank and Search engine rankings for ‘dupe content’ so avoid that. I rather write new articles exclusively for article directories.
5. Make your articles your domain/website related, make them so hardcore to edit that the editor will waste lots of time doing that or best of all, include links into your articles to your other articles or sources from your website. This way when they copy your content without editing then you get free ping backs and track backs this will not only inform you that someone stole your article, but it will tell google that the article is yours and google will credit you and ‘ban’ the other website for dupe content. [This has worked for me so far]
How to punish the thieves?
Even after all you do their are chances your content might get stolen, mostly by those ‘autoblogs’ that just hack into your RSS feeds and take everything away. So how can you punish thieves that had stolen your content?
1. Start nice and good, send the webmaster a nice email and ask him nicely to remove your content and explain him why its not good for him for keeping your content[don't threat] and what could happen to his search engine rankings and page rank. [THIS idea has worked for me 99% of the time]
2. Send a email to the ‘web hosting company’ of that website, you can find this information easily by checking the websites ‘whois’. Tell the web host your problem and show them information and everything they need to know, this would get the webmaster hosting account ‘banned’ for breaking copyright laws and plagiarism
3. Use services and forums of reputed companies, social groups and anti plagiarism services, complain or report the webmaster and i am sure you will get lots of help from their, i personally did the same a few times and found lots of help. If the website which had stolen your content is selling some products or services then you can write reviews about them and what they did to your content, even tho this sounds good but it will take time and i personally don’t think link building for some thieves is a good thing:)
4. Threats : They always work, in fact threatening to sue someone for stealing your information always works because the thief knows they stolen and directing them to few documents on the anti-plagiarism sites will show the thieves that they are punishable by law, one single sentence about ’suing you for copyrights infringement’ is enough for them to remove your works. Their are some experts that even threat about harming the thief and actually that always works, they harm the thief’s website reputation and income, some of these involve banning the thief’s web accounts on this hosting or worse his AdSense account by click frauds![i don't recommend this]
5. If nothing works and if your so desperate, then you can actually sue them, this is costly but if you got the amounts and if you sue someone then you might actually make back the money if you win, best of all it will make other thieves aware of your seriousness. In fact one guy made his ‘content thiefs’ rank no 1 on google for words such as ‘biggest content thiefs’ you can try that too, but its up to you to handle it, i rather use method 1,2,3 and maybe 4 and just make the world aware of the thief.
Like always when their are closed doors their are always other open doors or maybe windows too lol, so discover more and play safe, keep your content yours only – simply because you had worked for it!
Has it happened to you?
yes in fact it did, 4 of my articles where stolen by normal websites and bloggers and around 8 of them were ‘tweaked’ and used by auto-blog sites, i did what i told here in this article and i had 90% of them removed.I try keep my site user friendly so i don’t block right clicks or put 100 different logos, but if their is someone threatening my credibility i will fight back!
So what, their is nothing bad in copy pasting! really?
To all those who actually want to steal content or think their is nothing that is bad about it you must know that, google will penalise your website, remove them from search engines, ban your web accounts like AdSense and drop your page rank to 0! ALL THAT for plagiarism, just 1 article and your doomed! so why risk it? their is no money making in stealing content and selling/using or doing whatever you want with it, because at current Internet age, users are becoming very web savvy, same goes for the Internet webmasters and buyers – so your not fooling anyone!
Anyways i think this is enough to get you hooked with your content and make you realize its value, if you want to know anything drop me a email or feel free to contact me.
Once again STOP PLAGIARISM!
Till then have a good day,
SJ
Thanks for the information that was very helpful
i would like to know more about this autoblogging and how they can steal my content.
This is one of the best posts I have seen in a log time. Very useful information. I have been considering looking into Copyscape for some time. Now I think I’ll visit their link. Wonder if they offer an affiliate program (hint). May be a great idea to post a link. Thanks for the great post!
One of my other websites was copied by somebody, it took a simple email to the owner of the site threatening legal action before they removed the content
In most occassions I do not make comments on blogs, but I have to mention that this post really forced me to do so. Really nice post!
So how much money have you made from this since you started?
Hubpages is great specially when you are just starting out to learn how to earn online. Hubpages is spidered frequently so you know that the pages you create will get found by the search engines soon enough. When writing a hub, concentrate on finding a profitable topic and don’t worry about promotion when you’re just starting. Soon you’ll see a trickle of earnings. The trickles will turn into real income if you just keep at it.
i don’t make money via this blog, i am keeping it for informational purposes only din’t monetize it yet
however i make money online by freelancing and affiliate marketing
I love to read articles that are informative, Thanks again for a nice site
It moves like this, a client seeks for a keyword on Google. You have published an article which targets this word and get submitted it to a internet site which Google likes. The client finds your article on page one, shows it, clicks on your website link, and jaws your website. All going well, you will have about affiliate link click-throughs, and special sales in there! That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing.
Thank you so much, there aren’t enough posts on this… keep up the good work
Great post! keep them comin… thanks for all your hard work.
Keep posting, I enjoy hearing what you have to say! I’m bookmarking this page. Do you have any other blogs?
Keep posting, I enjoy hearing what you have to say! I’m bookmarking this page. Do you have any other blogs?
I am really glad to see that you are putting so much of effort for encouraging the visitors with valueable seo posts like this, I have sent this post to my twitter profile.
Thanks for the blogging tips, I think im getting better at this every day
Hello. Great job, if I wasn’t so busy with my school work I read your entire site. Thanks!
That is great info thanks. Any body know about a reliable search engine marketing firm that will not do a sub-standard job? I’ve got so much search engine marketing to be done and no time….. Need to outsource!!
Awesome review. I got to your blog from yahoo while i was looking for web hosting. I will forward your site to our clients and I am sure they will think the same about your article on this site.Regards
Utilising video efficaciously is a exemplary accomplishment to learn for marketing your business. Almost all internet marketing professionals use video as one of the core methods for marketing their business. Video grabs people’s attention far to a greater extent speedily and efficaciously than text, audio or photographs. Having a short video can capture a thousand words and pictures and helps to get across your personal brand and lifestyle.
Hello. Great job, if I wasn’t so busy with my school work I read your total site. Thanks!