Here are My Top 10 Reasons Blogs Are Plagiarized On the Internet

Hi Kris: Yes, I know the feeling. It's outrageously sad AND funny.

Hi Jonelle: 

Oh, there are others such as "I'm going to report you for reporting me." And they just keep coming. I've been waiting for somebody to tell me their dog posted it online.

Yikes Elizabeth!  Have you ever had someone try to tell you that you are actually the one that stole their blog!?

Hi Erin:Well, I have had to PROVE that my article was published months before the plagiarizer's piece. Providing proof was required to get the guy fired from FOX News, because apparently he dug himself a deeper hole by trying to claim he was the author. Since I regularly update articles for typos, punctuation, link substitutions, minor sorts of things, that changes the published date. I had to get the developers at About.com involved to substantiate the dates.

As a result of that episode, I now insert the date I write them as part of the URL. 

Thanks, Debbie and Tyghre: Surprisingly, three Web sites / blogs that swiped my stuff were owned by lawyers.

Whoo boy, just when I thought they couldn't get any sillier, I just received this response from an Assist 2 Sell manager in Arizona, who shall remain unnamed, and I am not going to publish it in its entirety but shall instead paraphrase it for you. It occurred to me that to publish a person's e-mail, regardless of how stupid it is, isn't right, either.

She was very angry that I wrote to her. She insisted she received the article elsewhere, most likely from another thief online. She removed my material but went on to say that she could find  millions of other articles online, so  she was aghast that The New York Times, being the major newspaper that it is, would actually receive payment for reprint rights, and she had no intention of paying for anything. 

She suggested I should be honored that my content was stolen and questioned whether I had better things to do than to defend my income and integrity.

Hi Jon, to answer your question, there are a variety of ways to catch these people. I subscribe to Google Alerts, under my most used keywords. I probably scroll through about 200 blurbs a day, and my writing is such that I instantly recognize it. Other times, I simply stumble upon my stuff on other sites, perhaps searching Google with keywords to determine rank. 

However, I also pay for the premium service on Copyscape.com. It lets me track by URL or a paragraph. Sometimes the plagiarizers won't copy my entire article but will select several paragraphs to plunk into the middle of their stuff, and I find it that way. For example, I wrote a piece about selling in spring. Simple little article. It gets ripped off a dozen times a day. I find it because I say that sellers should put out yellow flowers. I'm the only person who says that, so it's easy to find.

People think that if they copy only a paragraph or two, it's OK. But it's not.

I think this was a blog in itself, and would be very helpful for newbies especially. Why not post it for everyone out there.

Well, Jon, I don't know if anybody has ever accused me of yakking too much about a subject, but I think this post, since it's on AR, it is there for everybody to see, isn't it? I suppose I could be wrong. But I'm happy that you've found something worthwhile to digest in this post. :)

Hi Ryan: Yes, people are lazy. They are also clueless at times. But sometimes we get so rushed that we forget what we are doing. There is a big difference between, say, downloading an amusing photo and forwarding that photo to a friend in a private e-mail and posting the photograph on your blog. Other think as long as they link to you, and give you attribution, that they are complying with the law. But they are plagiarizing because they copied an article or part of an article without permission.

However, I also pay for the premium service on Copyscape.com. It lets me track by URL or a paragraph. Sometimes the plagiarizers won't copy my entire article but will select several paragraphs to plunk into the middle of their stuff, and I find it that way. For example, I wrote a piece about selling in spring. Simple little article. It gets ripped off a dozen times a day. I find it because I say that sellers should put out yellow flowers. I'm the only person who says that, so it's easy to find.