I have just received an email telling me that I have been permanently suspended from this site for plagiarism. To say I am upset is beyond an understatement. I have never, ever plagiarised anything in my life, and to not even be given chance to defend myself - or prove that I am the original author of an article - is heartbreaking. I had over 200 articles on this site and over $150 in sales for the beginning of the month - surely my reputation speaks for itself. Why would I want to ruin that by stealing somebody's content and trying to pass it off as my own.
To just receive a straight out ban when I have been writing for this site for such a long time is absolutely awful. I'm now stuck with hundreds of articles that I have nowhere to place and to be honest I'm just completely gutted. I can't believe I wasn't given any opportunity to respond considering my history on this site.
I gather it all worked out for you? I hope so. That would be soo bad to get banned. I always put my articles through copyscape before submitting just to make sure as you never know what other people are writing. Not sure how CC looks for plagarism. I pray copyscape continues to work though. I don't want to get banned!
Yeah. Eric has been a lifesaver and cleared the issue up for me. A lot of what I'm currently submitting is old content that I have written over the years for clients that either rejected the work or decided not to pay for it (for whatever reason). I actually have quite a bit of content that I wrote in advance for clients too, but that were then hit by Google penalties. I have been reworking it all and checking it all via Copyscape before submitting but one of my articles seems to have been published online (even though the owner didn't pay for it). So I now need to submit a copyright claim against the site, and email Copyscape to work out why the match isn't showing up. Once that is sorted I will submit content again. It has really put me on edge though, but Eric said that it is automated so thankfully it wasn't personal.
Did you get some chargebacks? Someone who bought a lot of articles charged them back and hit me with $117 in chargebacks. Boo. I tracked it down to someone buying the mobile articles, and I think it might have been the big buyer. Not sure, because I can't remember if the mobile articles were a part of the big batches that used to sell.
I was afraid he sent them back for being angry over something shady going on, because I know I wasn't the only one hit.
No it wasn't chargebacks. Basically one of my articles (which I retain the copyright for) had been used by an old client of mine who never paid for the article. I had checked the article in Copyscape and didn't have a match so I thought it would be okay to upload - Constant Content's system found my article online though, and they flagged me as a plagiarist. After speaking to Eric, who thankfully believed that I am the original owner, they have reinstated my account and un-suspended all of my articles. Apparently the CC system automatically bans people if plagiarism is detected. It really shook me up though! Losing the $30 for the price of the article is one thing, but to lose my income would probably have pushed me over the edge
I'm now trying to get hold of the website owner to ask that my content is removed, whilst emailing the old client and letting him know that he cannot use work that he has not paid for. The article was written over a year ago and I find it totally shady that people think they can use content in this way - it's just another thing that shows me that some people just have no respect for writers and the effort they put into work. What worries me is the future: as a writer, what legal protection do we have really unless we publish the article first? I could have lost a good income from this site if the staff hadn't believed me.
I probably would have panicked too. What a crappy day for you! Glad it all worked out.
Personally, I would file a DMCA against the website owner. Make him/her go through some headaches. She/he basically stole from you and could have ruined your rep. Here is the link to file a DMCA with Google. https://support.google.com/legal/troubl ... 4905?hl=en
ETA: You can also send a cease and desist to the host (if they are in the US). I've seen that work several times.
Wow, that was an eye-opening thread. I haven't used copyscape. But I sure plan to in the future. I got flagged on yahoo voices for an article that someone bought here for usage but didn't use my name. Grrr. They corrected it, though. Thanks for the copyscape tip even though it didn't catch your issue.
