Can someone clearly explain it to us that how to fight plagiarism!

Till the time I wasn’t earning money full time from blogging, I never took plagiarism seriously. I didn’t care if someone was stealing my content and posting it on their blogs. Luckily, not much content was copied from my blog.

But, recently I noticed a blog called TechBlogy (http://www.techblogy.com) which copied the content from my blog and was publishing on his own blog. Thanks to Shankar who actually told me that this guy is copying the content from our blogs (alas! but yes, he copied the content from his blog too).

First of all, I’ll request all of you to please go through this blog and see if he’s copied the content from your blog or not.

Now I would like to take you through the various steps which I took to fight against this guy :

1. Contacted him directly : Well, as the ProBlogger tells us that the first step is to contact the culprit directly. I did that by finding his contact information but only to be sad that this guy doesn’t care about this and didn’t respond to my request. Here’s the email which I’d sent to him :

Hello,
My name is Mayank Gupta and I’m the author of ReviewSaurus. I’m sorry to say this but it seems that you’ve copied the posts from my blog and posted them without giving any credit and also, you’ve done the complete copy and paste of the whole post. I would request you to please remove the posts or if you could make sure that you give the credit by just using small portion of the post.
I’m sure it will help you and your readers.
Thanks & Regards
Mayank

I waited for a day but there was no response, so decided that I’ll report this to Google Adsense team and will get his account banned and like this to Chitika too.

2. Contacted Google Adsense and Chitika : When I decided that I’ll report this to Google and Chitika, Shankar showed me this post of Daniel (Daily Blog Tips) - Could Google be taking Plagiarism lightly? Well, after reading the post, I had no hopes from Google but I still went ahead and e-mailed them and here’s what my email says :

Hello,
My name is Mayank Gupta and I am the owner of the blog http://www.reviewsaurus.com.
I recently noticed that a blog which is http://www.techblogy.com/ is copying the content from various blogs and posting it on his blog without giving the credits to the original authors.
He has copied this article from my blog http://www.techblogy.com/secure-notepad-encrypt-the-important-text-files/
and the original article is http://www.reviewsaurus.com/software-reviews/secure-notepad-encrypt-the-important-text-files/

The reason of emailing you was that I could see that he was using Google Adsense as
monetization source and if I’m right then it is not ethical on his part to copy the content
of different owners and pasting it on his own blog.

Not just mine, but I could see that all the posts on his blog are
copied from various sources. I’ve emailed him once but it seems that he’s not in a mood to
respond to the email.

Please find the content of the email down below :
==============content of the email===================
the same email which I’ve mentioned in this post…..
================content of the email ends========================
Could you please take some suitable actions against this publisher in
regards to this.
Thanks & Regards
Mayank Gupta

But I was already prepared for the answer which Google will give me. Thanks to Daniel and Mahesh.

Anyway, I did receive the response from their end and the result was same as Mahesh and Daniel have mentioned. It will be stupid to paste the content again because it has already been shown by Mahesh on his blog post.

The email to Chitika was also same only replaced Google Adsense with Chitika and here’s the response of Chitika :

Mayank,
It is nearly impossible for us to definitively determine who is the owner of content, and as such if we did ‘punish’ someone for allegedly stealing content (and it turns out we were incorrect in doing so), we would be open to all sorts of legal action.
Unfortunately, there is very little we can do; your action is with the publisher directly under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Best Regards,
Daniel
Chitika Customer Service

Then I thought that at least give it one more try to Chitika and thought that may be they’ll listen to us but I don’t think that they are in a mood to entertain us and that’s why even after 3 days they’ve not responded to my email. Anyway, here’s what I tried :

Hello Daniel,
It is easy to find out if that person copies the content or not. Simply pick up any article and copy the first two lines of it and then search for it on Google. You’ll see that similar content for sure.
Another thing, this guy has copied content from http://blog.shankarganesh.com and from http://tech-buzz.net (the blog of Thilak Raj, whom you’ve awarded yourself).
Try this thing on each and every blog post he’s copied and you’ll see similar results..now his blog is not that popular too, so you can’t expect that everyone else is copying his posts.
Also, I couldn’t have achieved Page Rank 6 if I would have copied the content, do you think its possible ???
Hopefully, this will help you in taking the decision, in case you want any help from my side, then I’ll be ready to provide you the information.
Thanks & Regards
Mayank

3. Contacted Web host : Anyway, no joy so thought of giving up and then took a step which Mahesh and Jonathan (http://plagiarismtoday.com) have suggested and that’s contacting the web host. But, then everybody’s not lucky like Mahesh and I’m one of those who are not lucky as Mahesh.

I emailed to GoDaddy that this guy is copying the content from our site and here’s the copy of the email (taken from Mahesh’s blog post):

GoDaddy,
It has come to my notice that the website, Techblogy, hosted on your server is involved in copyright infringement. Techblogy, has a host IP of 68.178.254.128, and the IP look up shows your server. Hence, I deduced that you are hosting the website or your client is hosting the website.
Links to many of the copyright-violated material can be found at : http://www.techblogy.com/
The particular link that brought this to my notice:
http://www.techblogy.com/secure-notepad-encrypt-the-important-text-files/
I have copyright over that material, and I had published it earlier at:
http://www.reviewsaurus.com/software-reviews/secure-notepad-encrypt-the-important-text-files/
Please commit to remove the copyright-violating material from that website. I would be filing a DMCA infringement report shortly.
Thanks & Regards
Mayank

Here’s the response of GoDaddy :

Dear Mayank Gupta,
Thank you for contacting GoDaddy.com. We do not allow content on our site to infringe on copyrighted materials, and we work regularly with the courts, and with law enforcement to ensure that this abuse is curtailed.
In harmony with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), we have created a Copyright and Trademark dispute policy to help get this matter resolved. Please review GoDaddy’s Trademark and Copyright Policy found at http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/legal_agreements/show_doc.asp?se=%2B&pageid=TRADMARK%5FCOPY
In order to process a copyright infringement complaint, you will need to submit your copyright claim to the
following address.
CopyrightClaims@GoDaddy.com
Please provide all information as described in this document under Copyright Disputes in your email. It would also be very helpful, although it is not necessary, if you include the Copyright Registration Number that is being violated. (This information can be looked up via the Library of Congress at http://www.copyright.gov/records/cohm.html) This information will enable us to confirm who, if anyone has the copyright. Content that is not registered with the Library of Congress, or the equivalent body in your area, as a copyrighted work is often highly subjective, and may need to be determined by a court of law.
If you have any further questions, please let us know.
Regards,
Copyright Department
GoDaddy.com

Now, if we notice that all these emails suggest that we have to email them or fax them the documents so that they can take some actions against this copier and that if we fail to prove that my content is mine only then I’ll be facing a law suit!

Now, the thing which concern me is that how can I prove that my content is mine. So, I decided to research more on it and found out that life’s not that bad either for the publishers! I was happy to find more articles written by the ProBlogger’s which suggest that there are few tools which can help us and here are they :

1. Numly : A third party tool which give you a digital signature of when exactly your blog post was published and that gives you some proof. However, after looking at the price any blogger will think more than twice!

2. Registered commons : I’d felt never this better when I came to know about this service. It’s free and provides you the certificate that your blog post is yours. Just like Numly but absolutely free of cost. On top of it they’ve got a WordPress plug-in too but all the joy came to an end when I realized that the plug-in is not supported by the newer versions of WordPress.

Now, I am wondering that if at all I go ahead and do what the above companies have suggested then how can I prove that my content is mine only!