It took about an hour and a half to manually check 100 articles using Copyscape premium. If you go that route, I suggest copying the URLs in a spreadsheet for future reference. They have some sort of API feature that I think you can use to automate the process somehow.
CopySentry can get pricey if you monitor every single article but . . . it's insurance I suppose. I think I'll protect specific articles and then periodically rotate the pages that are being monitored as well as use the premium searches to spot check articles from time to time. I'm also putting a notice in the summaries to alert would-be thieves that I'm using CopySentry. It may not stop them but they will get caught.
Annoying!
Plagiarized Work
Moderators: Celeste Stewart, Ed
-
Celeste Stewart
- Posts: 3528
- Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:28 pm
- Location: California
- Contact:
-
Jaye Lewis
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2005 6:27 pm
Associated Content Plagerized Work
Thanks to everyone on your posts and excellent advice, and my gosh, thanks to Chris and Support. As far as this awful fiasco regarding plagerized work, for those of you who have articles all over the web, I don't know if I have an answer. I also write inspirational stories and an inspirational blog, but the articles that I write are posted only on Constant Content.
I feel that I've been blessed, since my work has been pretty protected in the inspirational venue; however, I would like to say that even if someone were to post only 1/3 of an article for CC, it can still be stolen. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!
I will say this about Associated Content. I believe that they are dirty. I've dealt with them before. My guess is THEY make the money and nuts to the real author. THREE CHEERS FOR CHRIS AND THE ENTIRE SUPPORT TEAM! I DO FEEL TAKEN CARE OF. Take care, authors, and may this be your best year ever! Blessings, Jaye
I feel that I've been blessed, since my work has been pretty protected in the inspirational venue; however, I would like to say that even if someone were to post only 1/3 of an article for CC, it can still be stolen. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!
I will say this about Associated Content. I believe that they are dirty. I've dealt with them before. My guess is THEY make the money and nuts to the real author. THREE CHEERS FOR CHRIS AND THE ENTIRE SUPPORT TEAM! I DO FEEL TAKEN CARE OF. Take care, authors, and may this be your best year ever! Blessings, Jaye
-
constant-content
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am
AC's final word on the problem:
Chris,
Thank you for your patience. I understand that this is a very frustrating situation, and I want to reiterate that AC is not taking this matter lightly. After looking into the matter vigorously, we have a pretty good idea of the identity of the individual that is stealing content from your writers and opening accounts at AC under their names. As you may be aware, the person opened fraudulent accounts in the names of the authors on CC. So, in addition to copyright infringement, this person violated identity theft laws.
As a result of our investigation we triangulated IP addresses, account names, and Paypal accounts and its pretty clear it is the work of a single individual. Of course, we have shut down all the accounts associated with this person and removed all content associated with those accounts. Additionally, We have submitted a formal complaint to Paypal, and asked that the user be banned permanently for violating Federal and State law and Paypal’s own terms of use. We have also filed a complaint with the university where the Paypal account originated notifying them that one of their students or alumnus is using their email system to engage in fraud. Lastly, we will be notifying the authorities about this persons activities.
Unfortunately, our privacy policy does not allow us to disclose a user’s personally identifiable data unless its pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process. That being said, we would be more that happy to respond to any subpoena pursuant to a “john doe” action.
I hope this resolves the matter to your satisfaction. If there are any further issues regarding this or any other matter, please contact me directly.
Chris,
Thank you for your patience. I understand that this is a very frustrating situation, and I want to reiterate that AC is not taking this matter lightly. After looking into the matter vigorously, we have a pretty good idea of the identity of the individual that is stealing content from your writers and opening accounts at AC under their names. As you may be aware, the person opened fraudulent accounts in the names of the authors on CC. So, in addition to copyright infringement, this person violated identity theft laws.
As a result of our investigation we triangulated IP addresses, account names, and Paypal accounts and its pretty clear it is the work of a single individual. Of course, we have shut down all the accounts associated with this person and removed all content associated with those accounts. Additionally, We have submitted a formal complaint to Paypal, and asked that the user be banned permanently for violating Federal and State law and Paypal’s own terms of use. We have also filed a complaint with the university where the Paypal account originated notifying them that one of their students or alumnus is using their email system to engage in fraud. Lastly, we will be notifying the authorities about this persons activities.
Unfortunately, our privacy policy does not allow us to disclose a user’s personally identifiable data unless its pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process. That being said, we would be more that happy to respond to any subpoena pursuant to a “john doe” action.
I hope this resolves the matter to your satisfaction. If there are any further issues regarding this or any other matter, please contact me directly.
-
Celeste Stewart
- Posts: 3528
- Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:28 pm
- Location: California
- Contact:
-
jak
From what I can tell AC does check articles that have been submitted for up-front payment. It goes through an entire process - for about 1-2 weeks before they approve it, offer a payment amount and post it. It is the articles you submit for "performance payments only" (clicks) that can be put on the site without AC reading them. If the stolen articles were posted this way then the thief probably didn't make too much money since it takes about 1000 clicks to make $1.50.
Also, even if AC ran articles through a checker like Copyscape or Article Checker the articles posted for sale on CC wouldn't come up. So as far as AC would be concerned, the articles would be okay.
I'm not defending AC, I'm just giving facts. AC isn't the greatest site out there for writers but I don't think they are the enemy, it's the people who come up with these ideas to make quick money who we have to worry about.
Also, even if AC ran articles through a checker like Copyscape or Article Checker the articles posted for sale on CC wouldn't come up. So as far as AC would be concerned, the articles would be okay.
I'm not defending AC, I'm just giving facts. AC isn't the greatest site out there for writers but I don't think they are the enemy, it's the people who come up with these ideas to make quick money who we have to worry about.
-
Celeste Stewart
- Posts: 3528
- Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:28 pm
- Location: California
- Contact:
-
Elizabeth Ann West
- Posts: 561
- Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:42 am
- Location: Moncks Corner, SC
- Contact:
I agree the person was dumb, but mere peanuts to a college student adds up. $20 of free money buys beer for a weekend. LOL
Plus, I was a head of the disciplinary committee for my university, and while I can tell you right now the university will do everything they can to prevent this person from being prosecuted (it looks bad on the U.S. News and World Report Ranking), academically they can severly punish the student. We had students lose internet privileges, kicked out of school, etc. I'll never forget expelling a senior computer science major due to graduate in 2 months because he couldn't be bothered to write his own final program for a gen eds class he was taking as an elective for his minor. Professor said at the beginning of the semester she runs plagairism checkers on all code, and somewhow I guess he thought she was bluffing.
Not sure if this is a solution, but for one of my longer articles, I chopped it up in the long summary. I had the introductory graphs, but for subsequent graphs only 1-2 senteces with ellipses and in brackets [article continues]. That way buyers got the gist, but to plaigarize it would be awkward and slightly more difficult. I don't have the article anymore because it sold, and it did take more effort from me during the submittal process. I also realize that this isn't a good policy for articles less than about 750 words.
Plus, I was a head of the disciplinary committee for my university, and while I can tell you right now the university will do everything they can to prevent this person from being prosecuted (it looks bad on the U.S. News and World Report Ranking), academically they can severly punish the student. We had students lose internet privileges, kicked out of school, etc. I'll never forget expelling a senior computer science major due to graduate in 2 months because he couldn't be bothered to write his own final program for a gen eds class he was taking as an elective for his minor. Professor said at the beginning of the semester she runs plagairism checkers on all code, and somewhow I guess he thought she was bluffing.
Not sure if this is a solution, but for one of my longer articles, I chopped it up in the long summary. I had the introductory graphs, but for subsequent graphs only 1-2 senteces with ellipses and in brackets [article continues]. That way buyers got the gist, but to plaigarize it would be awkward and slightly more difficult. I don't have the article anymore because it sold, and it did take more effort from me during the submittal process. I also realize that this isn't a good policy for articles less than about 750 words.
-
constant-content
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:20 am
Scanning an article to find plagiarism is not good enough if you ask me. We have other ways to determine if an article is being plagiarized. If someone took time to actually read the article like we do at CC there are ways to determine if an article is legit or not. I’m not going to go into details but scanning the article and then approving is not a good solution for article approval.
I understand Associated Content point of view and I'm happy they are not taking this lightly. To be honest, I'm not even sure if they scan all the articles:
http://mashable.com/2007/12/01/associat ... plagarism/
[b][quote]What’s surprising here is that content submitted to AC supposedly goes to an editor before being published. I tried it out myself, and indeed submitted content first goes through a review process before being posted. The following line, which is the first sentence in Mark’s feature story, should’ve been an automatic red flag:
“We here at Mashable have been going back and forth on the things we’d like to see for Christmas this year …”
That, and the sheer volume of content a single person was able to produce in one day should’ve raised some eyebrows at Associated Content, but in this case, it did not.[/quote][b]
It all comes down to the editors. When Mashables content was stolen any editor who actually read the article would have know it came from Mashable's website. Even in our case some content still had the writers name on it.
Either way, scanning articles should not be the only solution in fighting this.[/b]
I understand Associated Content point of view and I'm happy they are not taking this lightly. To be honest, I'm not even sure if they scan all the articles:
http://mashable.com/2007/12/01/associat ... plagarism/
[b][quote]What’s surprising here is that content submitted to AC supposedly goes to an editor before being published. I tried it out myself, and indeed submitted content first goes through a review process before being posted. The following line, which is the first sentence in Mark’s feature story, should’ve been an automatic red flag:
“We here at Mashable have been going back and forth on the things we’d like to see for Christmas this year …”
That, and the sheer volume of content a single person was able to produce in one day should’ve raised some eyebrows at Associated Content, but in this case, it did not.[/quote][b]
It all comes down to the editors. When Mashables content was stolen any editor who actually read the article would have know it came from Mashable's website. Even in our case some content still had the writers name on it.
Either way, scanning articles should not be the only solution in fighting this.[/b]
Interestingly enough, Associated Content said yesterday that they would no longer offer upfront payment for non-exclusive articles because of a serious legal issue concerning non-exclusive work. I wonder - completely speculating - if that had to do with the copyright infringement from Constant Content authors.
There was an uproar, and the decision has been reversed.
There's an AC article about it here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... hange.html.
Note: This is not my article; I'm not trying to gain page views or anything! I just thought this was either a very interesting coincidence or it was the higher ups at AC trying to respond to the recent plagiarism problems.
There was an uproar, and the decision has been reversed.
There's an AC article about it here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... hange.html.
Note: This is not my article; I'm not trying to gain page views or anything! I just thought this was either a very interesting coincidence or it was the higher ups at AC trying to respond to the recent plagiarism problems.
-
Elizabeth Ann West
- Posts: 561
- Joined: Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:42 am
- Location: Moncks Corner, SC
- Contact:
It's interesting this was said in the Content reply:
"That, and the sheer volume of content a single person was able to produce in one day should’ve raised some eyebrows at Associated Content, but in this case, it did not"
While I don't like to point fingers, but to be honest, there is someone who started here I believe about a week after I did in November and for the life of me I can't figure out how in the world this person wrote hundreds of articles in the short time from November to now. I understand it is possible, but averaging 10 articles a day, every day, for 2.5 months straight is insane. Plus, there is no variation in pricing, which is odd since lengths and subjects tackled do vary.
I will admit, I can't say that this person is doing anything wrong, and it's possible some of this is just jealousy at the sheer number of articles. But it just seems odd that one person is able to deviate from the norm so much than all of the others....
If this is just an ugly green monster please say so and I will crawl back into my cave with huge apologies to the person easily identifiable by my post. If others find this as odd too, well then I'll be glad I wasn't the only one.
"That, and the sheer volume of content a single person was able to produce in one day should’ve raised some eyebrows at Associated Content, but in this case, it did not"
While I don't like to point fingers, but to be honest, there is someone who started here I believe about a week after I did in November and for the life of me I can't figure out how in the world this person wrote hundreds of articles in the short time from November to now. I understand it is possible, but averaging 10 articles a day, every day, for 2.5 months straight is insane. Plus, there is no variation in pricing, which is odd since lengths and subjects tackled do vary.
I will admit, I can't say that this person is doing anything wrong, and it's possible some of this is just jealousy at the sheer number of articles. But it just seems odd that one person is able to deviate from the norm so much than all of the others....
If this is just an ugly green monster please say so and I will crawl back into my cave with huge apologies to the person easily identifiable by my post. If others find this as odd too, well then I'll be glad I wasn't the only one.