How to Deal with Plagiarism

Illustration by seriousnuts.

You've probably already heard or read somewhere about the saying: "Jealousy is the greatest form of flattery." This is true and many of you will surely agree with that statement. I can somehow relate this saying into Blogosphere, but jealousy is not the issue here. Rather, it's about plagiarism. 

For the nth time, I found out that some of my written works were copied and pasted into another website and claimed to be the blogger's own works. I was of course mad about my discovery. I was even tempted to drop a comment such as:

"Hey, it's my written work you're posting." "Do you know it's plagiarism you're doing?""Are you sure this post is written by you? I will have your site closed soon, just wait."

But instead, I held my composure, and did what is right - filing a DMCA complaint to Google (since it was Google that hosted the blogger's site in question).

How will you know if it's plagiarism? It is plagiarism when the author/blogger posted your whole written work, or an excerpt of your work, verbatim, without even asking for your permission and giving credit to you. 

Finding out about any violations against your works is very tricky. But one way to know about existing infringements is by copying a couple of sentences in your article and then searching it in Google or any other search engines. Of course, don't forget to put quotation marks for the sentences you are searching. Another way is by copy pasting your titles in the Google search box to check for duplicates, again with quotation marks over the title you're searching.

Once you've made the query, look carefully among the results. I've found out that I'm a victim of plagiarism by searching my work's title across the web. I saw that one result gave the exact same title and exact same introductory paragraph. After clicking on the link, I was shocked to see that everything is copied, including the pictures of that particular work. I also saw among the related posts below the article that another work I've written was included there. And to make things worse, the link didn't refer to my site, but to that violator's own site. In other words, two of my works produced by my sweat and blood was simply copied by another, placed under his/her own site, and claimed as his/her own. 

Now, if you found out your works were also violated, don't fret. Don't try to threaten the offender. Rather, go to Google (or whichever writing platform the offender came from) and file a DMCA complaint. Here'for Google/Blogspot platform:

http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs

The said page contains easy to follow directions. Fill in the necessary information, including your name, URL of the offending page, and the original URL containing the authorized content. Once you filed the complaint, Google will send an automated email confirming your application. 

After a few days of filing my own complaint, I received a notification stating that the contents were already removed. I'm glad Google responded swiftly to my plea. 

As a precaution to future offenders, I have included a plagiarism warning banner from Copyscape. As simple as it may sound, placing a "Do Not Copy" warning may prevent some plagiarizers to your content. Yeah, some bloggers may not know that you don't want your work to be copied! 

If you are also interested to place a plagiarism warning banner in your website or blog, here is where you can get one. 

http://www.copyscape.com/banners.php?o=f

To a blogger or online writer, plagiarism is indeed the greatest form of flattery. Yet I don't feel flattered at all. Though the fact that someone sincerely liked my work gave me the patience to not post rude comments in his/her site and instead prompted me to act properly.