A Curmudgeon in Redmond

Using and abusing software since 1966

Plagarism Blog

Check out the blog Todd's World. (Go ahead, I'll wait for you to come back.)

There's lots of neat content there. Trouble is, as far as I can tell, not one word of it is original. It's all stolen from other places, including my own blog.

I don't know who Todd is; his BlogSpot profile lists him only by first name. But here's a clue for you Todd: Linking to stuff you find interesting is cool. Summarizing it, commenting on it, explaining why it's interesting, and even ripping it to shreds are all cool. Copying it word-for-word, without attribution, isn't.

It's especially galling that Google finds his copy of my words, and not mine.

Is this sort of thing common? What's appropriate to do, if anything?

Posted: Aug 11 2008, 02:53 PM by jim | with 3 comment(s)

Comments

Brier said:

Happens all the time here.

There are some tools that news orgs are experimenting with to respond to this sort of thing - search cadenhead+AP+copyright - but the expense of chasing ripoffs can be more than that of the lost traffic.

At least people like your stuff ...  

# August 11, 2008 5:03 PM

AlistairL said:

The light touch approach would be to post on your own blog like you have, perhaps leave comments on the offending blog. But it is the risk of publishing - publish and be plagiarised!

# August 12, 2008 2:46 AM

Tom said:

I've had folks copy my entire website, changing all the internal links to their site, and the name of the site to a new name.  It is definitely something you should pursue... although it is certainly a pain to have to do it in the first place.  You'll have to file a DMCA notice to the web host (blogger.com).

On Todd's World click on "Flag Blog" at the top.  Then click on "copyright" to report a violation of blogger.com's terms of service... then click the link to DMCA...  www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html

Blogger will take down the copied content.

Tom

# August 18, 2008 12:24 AM