Stolen Content

[Amy W]

Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up - "author" John Paul has been stealing CC content- he's stolen two of my articles, and I recognize a few of his other titles as belonging on CC. Here's the link - http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/877290/john_paul.html - if you want to check for your articles.

[CharlotteAndrews]

Thanks for the heads up. I found one of mine there. It's sold since then, but still. What a jerk. The most insane part of stealing like that is when it's so obvious it's not the whole article. Mine was in a "glossary" format, so the sample 1/3 he stole ends on the letter "D."

Is it a sign of a true writer's insanity that I get almost as angry that a thief ruins the structure of the piece when he takes the sample like that? You know, you work so hard to organize your thoughts and research, making sure a piece flows well and then . . . oh, well. Yeah, I'm probably crazy. I'll just stick to being angry about the stealing itself.

[Amy W]

Too funny, Charlotte - I thought it was just me! One time, a thief stole my article word-for-word, but he rewrote the title - and it had like three errors. It's bad enough that he stole my article, but now he's ruining it? Why couldn't he have just stolen the title too, while he was at it!

Good to know I'm not the only crazy one . . .

[CharlotteAndrews]

Love it Amy! On the other hand, there was one article I sold and the customer changed the title--and it was so much better than mine! Part of the reason was that I think clear titles sell better than cute ones, so I try really hard to keep my titles kind of boring. But finding it online after it sold, then seeing that the customer actually improved it a bit really got under my skin too. I'm hopeless.

I still like to find my stuff after it sells and print it out. And I think it's important to keep an eye out for thieves. However, if I'm going to make a go of this, I think for my own sanity I might have to just write my stuff and let it go. You could crazy. It just takes so little to distract me when what I should be focused on is writing more. With that said, I'm off . . .

[jak]

I found one of mine on there, and left a comment saying it had been stolen from CC and contravened my copyright. As I write this, it's still visible, but only if you click on comments. I contacted support and got a reply from Eric that he has contacted AC about it. A bit puzzling that as I'm not sure that it has anything to do with AC, but perhaps it was a Freudian error and he meant to type Yahoo.

[MelissaNott]

This is the old AC; they were bought by Yahoo and just recently changed their name. The pay still stinks though, so I guess we can rejoice in the fact that "John Paul has probably only made a couple of bucks. I recognized one of the articles on his list and contacted the CC author. Thanks for bringing this to light, Amy!

[michaelsmoker]

Speaking of "pay still stinks," Helium just changed their remuneration model. They now pay a maximum of $5 for full rights to articles, and considerably less than $5 in some cases. Kin ya say bye-bye Helium?

Michael

[jadedragon]

I get a lot of traffic on my blog for the search term Associated Content Scam. If they change the name of the site to get away from the bad rep that is kind of bad for me LOL! That site sucks, especially if you are not an United States of America version of American.

[ConstantEric]

I just heard back from Yahoo and they have removed all of the stolen articles.

[CharlotteAndrews]

thanks Eric!

[jak]

Thanks from me too Eric, and thanks for your emails.

[Amy W]

Thanks from me three, Eric