Constant Content

Just discovered: http://www.plagium.com/
This is a free tool that you can enter large blocks of text and URLs to see if your work has been stolen. What's neat is that if you sign up for an account, you can create alerts which are much like Google Alerts except they can be much larger. Each week, you will get an email report detailing every single alert you've set up. It's time-consuming to copy and paste each article into the alert screen, but if it turns out to be reliable, it may be worth doing. I set up about 10 articles and will keep you posted. Looks basic but promising. . .

Thanks for the link, Celeste. I'm going to try it out - fingers crossed its more reliable than Google Alerts!

Yeah, I like that you can enter the entire article rather than just a phrase or two. Plus, I assume that weekly reports mean weekly scans for matches. Seems like Google is so slow in reporting matches back. We'll see how it goes.

Oh drat. 20 article limit.

JUst received my first Plagium email alert and discovered two AC imposters!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/5 ... _kuhn.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/5 ... ander.html

I've notified CC Support. Luke has 18 articles (about half are mine), Richard has just four so not a huge number. So far, I like Plagium. Downsides: It took about a month to get the alerts and they have a 20 article limit. I've emailed them asking about the possibility of getting a higher limit. In the meantime, I'm tempted to open a second account but I can't imagine managing a bunch of accounts.

I just received my first alert, too! And of course, I forgot to put my exerpt in quotation marks, so it listed the most random websites. Aside from Plagium thinking a week runs from Sept 24 to Oct 17, it seems reliable. I'm going to set up an alert with both Google and Plagium for an article of mine I know is stolen, and I'll see who sends me an alert fastest. My money's on Plagium.

And I'll email Plagium, too - they might increase the limit if more users ask.

Ben Epstein of Septet Systems / PLagium responded to my email a few minutes ago and says they are looking at offering expanded service for paying users. I'd be willing to pay a reasonable fee to track my whole set of articles.

Amy, I didn't get random sites and I didn't use quotations. Did you enter the entire article? I entered the text of each entire article and the results were spot on.

That's where I went wrong - I only entered a paragraph from each article. For some reason, I assumed there was a limit to the amount of text you could enter in the box. I'm off to adjust my settings now.

And great news about the expanded service. I only hope they don't impose any restrictions - like a limit of 100 articles.

I tried this site; it doesn't seem to be working. Anyone know anything?

tks,
steph