Battling Pirates, Protecting Content – by guest writer, Matt Lee

Matt Lee is a Business Information Specialist and librarian at theJames J. Hill Reference Library, specializing in   digital libraries and other online initiatives. 

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This blog’s recent post called “Someone is Stealing Nicholas Boothman’s Stuff” highlighted an example of overt plagiarism in marketing copy. This isn’t the first reported instance of pirated content online, and in our cut-and-paste-friendly era, it probably won’t be the last. That article’s suggestions for tracking down plagiarism in Google were great – so we were thrilled when they asked us here at the Hill Library to dig up some additional tools to make sure the copy you create stays where it belongs. Here then are the top four tools to identify and combat online plagiarism:

• Copyscape (copyscape.com) – Compare the copy on your Web site to other sites across the Internet. Just paste in your URL and Copyscape returns other sites with similar language.
• ArticleChecker (articlechecker.com) – Paste smaller snippets of your text into the site’s search box or upload larger files of complete text. ArticleChecker runs these through several search engines and returns sites with similar copy.
• Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) and
  Yahoo! Alerts (alerts.yahoo.com) – Set up alerts to notify you if a site appears using key pieces of your copy.
• Wayback Machine (archive.org/web/web.php) – Research the history of a site you think might be using your copy. If the suspect site posted copy closely after you created it, you may have found a pirate.

But what if you do find someone using your copy? How do you make them stop?

1. Send an email to the perpetrator if their contact info is listed on the site. If your copy shows up on a blog, leave a comment. Here’s an example of a cease and desist letter.
2. Contact the host of the infringing site and ask them to take the site down. Locate a site’s host using DomainTools (domaintools.com).
3. Complain to search engines. Most search engines accept complaints involving copyright issues and will remove offenders from results pages.

Great copy is an investment. You’ve put time and energy into the creation of your content; make sure that content pays dividends for you, and not some Internet pirate.