Article Theft
Well, it looks like I have fallen prey to the article theft issue too.
Get this, it was an article on integrity in online communications.
The offender appears to be urudunet. Think perhaps it is an african location?
So, I have the entire article word for word without my resource box showing up on this network that appears to spend its time posting Ezine articles and translating them into many different languages. Contact me link on their site doesn't connect to anything relevant.
Here is the E-Zine policy covering this:
I found one of my articles reused without proper credit or links, what do I do?
In instances like these, the first course of action we recommend is that you contact the owner/webmaster of the site and ask them to fix the oversight.
More times than not this will accomplish the end result you are looking for as most people just need to be informed.
If after you contact them and no action has been taken within 48 hours, contact the site's ISP/Host and ask them to enforce their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy).
So, how do I identify the ISP/Host of this site?
Silly me, I have SEOquake. I just used the whois feature on the toolbar and found out everything I needed to know. Apparently the user is actually in Spain. I'll see if he responds to my request.
Update: I contacted the author of the site he was quite responsive and once we accurately identified the article in question he removed it. Too bad, I was hoping he would just add the references. I could use the link love. He said that his site and the hundreds of others that he runs are all automated so apparently this is a common thing.
Recent Comments
6
Hey there. I also posted an update tonight on my article that was stolen. I had a similar reply from ezines. I just went ahead and copied all into my blog today. I don't think that Ezines can or will be able to do anything about this because anyone can go in there and do an edit/copy and thats all it takes. They the "leeches" just figure we will never find out they are using our articles.
I haven't yet submitted any articles to Ezine or articlebase so I can not really comment on their TOS. However, I must admit this issue has me quite concerned as I am planning to submit in the very near future. To me, imho it seems they are leaving it the hands of the authors to enforce copyright infringement. Personally I believe since they make substantial revenue from authors posting in their data base, and we trust them to protect our intellectual property.. THEY should do more to enforce THEIR TOS and WE should demand it.
Almost every time I check google for my articles I find a recent one in several places - all ad blogs with no author on any post. Some hard to track down, especially if it on typepad. Somedays I just don't look!
Hi Craig, I just wrote EZA and asked that question. I'll let you know what they say. Most of the time, all it takes is email to the admin of the site, and they correct it. I'm having an issue with trademark infringement. Person said he took my name out of his title but it's still there. So aggravating.
Glad at least you got a human and cooperative response at least Craig :)