I came home last night to find that some traffic had come in to my site from an unfamiliar host that had one of my article names in its permalink. (If you’re not reading this on getmoneyenergy.com, this post has been stolen too.) I followed up on it to find that one of my articles had been taken 100% and copied onto this person’s site with the byline saying that it was “posted by WebMaster” (I won’t put the person’s name in here until I figure out what really happened). To casual readers this appears as though he wrote it, not myself. At the bottom of the site are some ad links. I don’t know how much traffic his site gets, but in theory he’s making money off of my work. He never contacted me in advance about reprinting it. In my opinion it does not matter if the article, at the bottom, contains my name and a link back (to my homepage; not even to the article). This was done without contacting me in advance. It feels like theft. I cannot trust this person now, and I find that when I look at their site, many more questions arise for me about its authenticity. It looks like a content-rich blog, but it could be a scraper site in good disguise.

Now, I’m not talking about the “mashup”-type blogs that talk in terms of [...] and DaveBrin posted this [...]. My article was simply reprinted whole.

I’m still new to blogging, so you can smirk at my naivete. In my day job I belong to an industry in which plagiarism and content originality are the gold standard of all progress. As far as I’m concerned, stealing someone’s content is akin to falsifying scientific results, buying essays and stealing a degree, medical malpractice, counterfeiting money and other such crimes that erode at social foundations.

Plagiarism Tools For Your Blog

I’ve since spent several hours researching plagiarism and content theft detection, protection and prevention tools. While my researches are not over (and I’d appreciate any other contributions/suggestions), I’ve applied some already, but I think that Copyscape and Copyfeed are just initial steps in the right direction. I’d also like to point other bloggers out to this great post (one year old) by Jonathan Bailey at the Blog Herald, entitled “The 20 Best Free Anti-Plagiarism Tools.” Apparently two of the links are outdated, but the rest seem ok. Please let me know if you have others to share.

I’m all for someone wanting to reprint an article of mine if they thought it was great, etc. I like to hear compliments! But I’d like to be contacted first for my permission. If you’re just quoting a line or two of something I wrote, that’s fine if you do it according to standard attribution guidelines and provide a proper link back to me and include my name. I’m happy to have the exposure! But if I see another entire post stolen again - especially when I worked for several hours on it - I will take the appropriate actions (as I have begun with this case). It really makes me wonder how the blogosphere has managed to survive at all. Perhaps it hasn’t. It’s 70% junk. It’s quite saddening when you think of it. Not only is it theft, but it can also pull down one’s own site’s reputation, ranking, and general quality of content when search engines link up to the falsified posts’ sites. And things worse than that, too, I imagine.