Stolen article

[Greg]

Part of the problem is that the article had been up there for around a year - making money the whole time. I don't know how much, but hey, its money that isn't his. I also may have lost out on sales. Its all speculative, but there's no recourse. No sense suing someone over $100 in lost sales and for their own unjust enrichment. Thus, no real deterrence.

Bah.

[Greg]

Just so you know what happens, here is the reply I got from AC:

Dear Mr. Phillips,

We are in receipt of your letter dated August 14, 2009. AC has removed the content in dispute, and have banned the user from AC. In the future, please feel free to email the Designated Agent directly for a more expedited response.

Best,

AC Legal

[jrichards]

Just a quick note to let you know that Joyce Willis and all her articles and Peter Crouch and all his articles have been removed from AC.

Still working on other sites, I'll update on those once I have some news.

Thanks for helping us fight these fraudsters.
-jrichards
Constant-Content.com

[LindaM]

My 2 thieves on AC were Christina Casal and Tyler Cleaver. Some of Tyler's other stuff looked familiar to me, it may have come from CC as well. He was amazingly illiterate and copied my piece using the word 'animal' instead of annual throughout the article. The article was simply a segment originating on CC and he published it as is, with all the rest missing....Does AC even look at what gets posted there??

Linda

[Debbi]

Thansk so much for taking care of the problem so quickly!

Even though I know there are plenty of people in the world who are too lazy to do their own work and have no qualms about stealing other people's hard work, it still shocks me every time it happens. I guess they don't see that stealing copyrighted articles is the same as stealing someone's wallet.

I love the Internet. My life would be much more difficult and less pleasurable without it, but the anonymity and sense of "everything is free" it engenders helps people like these content thieves to rationalize their actions. Bah!

Debbi

[Greg]

You may want to consider amending your Terms and Conditions if you are going to be making copyright claims on behalf of authors on AC and other sites.

Not that any author is likely to take issue with you protecting their copyright, but ownership of the Works remains vested in the Author until the rights are sold. However, in order to make a complaint to AC, for example, you must make a statement that "you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner's behalf."

A term authorizing you do act on behalf of the author should be inserted into the Terms and Conditions.

Just a quick note to let you know that Joyce Willis and all her articles and Peter Crouch and all his articles have been removed from AC.

Still working on other sites, I'll update on those once I have some news.

Thanks for helping us fight these fraudsters.
-jrichards
Constant-Content.com

[Zabrina]

Thanks to this thread, I Googled all my articles and found three stolen. One had already been removed (it must not have been removed from Google yet), but the other two were still there. I've contacted Support and AC about it already. This is my first encounter with totally blatant plagiarism, though I've had some people take an article for their site and leave my byline on it.

[Lysis]

If you can't get satisfaction, another option is filing a DMCA with Google http://www.google.com/dmca.html

If AC gets enough complaints, Google will yank them from the search engine. You would think that a big site wouldn't lose their position in Google, but Google has done it to BMW. They take that stuff seriously.

[Antonia]

Found another one of mine stolen by this guy:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/5 ... ilips.html

He has nine other articles posted, so go take a look and make sure they're not yours....

I wrote to support also.

[Zabrina]

A second of my three stolen articles was taken down, but I'm still waiting on the third, which was plagiarized by this person: http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/5 ... ayers.html I see an article there from Word Gypsy, one from beconrad, and one from Cindy Tabacchi.

[cashwriter]

I google searched one of my articles and found it posted by Grace Wesley on AC. I notified them. She has 7 other articles posted, so you may want to check.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/5 ... esley.html

[cashwriter]

Well, I set up all my Google Alerts, so hopefully I'll catch them quicker next time. Ugh, I'm so PISSED right now!

[Debbi]

If AC just ran the articles submitted to them against even the titles on CC, they'd catch 99% of the thieves. The plagarists are so lazy they rarely even change the titles.

Debbi

[Lor]

Thanks everyone who has been affect by this for sending me your information via the support address. I'm following up on this at the moment and will post as soon as I have an update on the situation.

If you haven't yet received a response to your email sent to support, one is coming.

If you do find an article posted elsewhere please be sure to include a link to the article and a link to the same article on CC.

Thanks,
-jrichards
Constant-Content.com

Thanks for being on top of this. I look forward to your email.

[Lor]

I had my GA set up long before the theft. No email from Google.