Plagiarism on the interweb

[Jedi Master Thrash]

Anyone have any suggestions on what I should do about plagiarism on the interweb?

A particular work I created several years ago I recently discovered was plagiarized on another website. The plagiarizer denies having ever used my original work as a reference, though their version is nearly an exact reworded copy.

I've tried to solve this smoothly through polite e-mails, but obviously that isn't going to work.

I figure at the last possible step would be to contact the host or ISP to get the site booted, but I don't really desire to get the entire site booted for the behavoir of one admin.

Do hosts/ISPs even listen to claims of plagiarism? Or do they just forward a generic form-letter warning to the party and then forget about it.

 

[cgfm2]

I figure at the last possible step would be to contact the host or ISP to get the site booted, but I don't really desire to get the entire site booted for the behavoir of one admin.

Do hosts/ISPs even listen to claims of plagiarism? Or do they just forward a generic form-letter warning to the party and then forget about it.

If you stuck a (C) <year> <yourname> in the original file, contact the ISP about hosted material that infringes upon your copyright. That will get their attention moreso than plagiarism.

If you write stuff that you want to have legal backing on, you can send it to yourself via registered mail prior to putting it on the internet, and then the sealed, postmarked envelope is your proof of ownership. The other party would have to provide something from an earlier date which of course they can't.

Depending on how far you want to go, a laywer that specializes in copyright abuse/misuse might be useful, so you can take the other person / their ISP to court.

Good luck.

 

[dibz]

Or if you could care less about legality, and just want it taken down, you could send a bogus DMCA claim about the website to their host as is so popular to do these days. They will likely take the website offline immediately without actually checking the claim. Of course, you'd only do that if you were an ass.

Personally it sounds like you have a real claim however, so I would go with what cgfm2 mentioned and go about it the legal way.

 

[Jedi Master Thrash]

Yep, I had a copyright statement. Funny thing is the new version has almost the same (reworded) copyright statement, and just replaced the 2004 (my name) with 2006 (her name).

The problem is that this is turning out to really be more like the war in Iraq. It's not a legal issue, it's a political issue.

The place in question is affiliated with, and personally friends with, a ring of similar places that are very prominent. It's become clear that I simply cannot win the political battle, even if I can win a legal one.

If I pursue this matter further, I'll likely become ostracized from the community. So I'll probably have to let the matter go and just play friendly.

And there is a one out of a hundred chance that there was actually no plagiarism, that it just happens that "great minds think alike" and we both happened to write 90% similar documents independently. I'd hate to get the place booted, make lots of enemies in their many poweful friends, and actually have been wrong about it.

What they all claim is that, since all the information my document is based on is "common knowledge" (within the community), that no plagiarism could have occurred regardless of whether my document was used as a reference or not.

However, am I not right to think that, even if my facts are common knowledge, that the coalescing of the facts with prose and personal recommendations into a large, formatted document is something I can have a copyright on?

Also, to make things more complicated, at the time I wrote the document, much of it wasn't common knowledge. It was the result of new research I and others had done, and some of it was in contrast to what used to be the common knowledge. But then in those 2 years inbetween, we'd done our part on forums to make it common knowledge. So even though it wasn't all common knowledge yet in 2004, it was in 2006.

 

[cgfm2]

However, am I not right to think that, even if my facts are common knowledge, that the coalescing of the facts with prose and personal recommendations into a large, formatted document is something I can have a copyright on?

Yes, you are correct. Two parties could write detailed reports on the Pentium based on the exact same publications from Intel and copyright their own work. Just think of how many video game strategy guides come from different publishers on the same game, and each of those is copyrighted despite having similar content - though they may have near identical lists of items, enemies, etc.

Plagiarism isn't about common knowledge, it's about a document having the same structure, formatting, choice of words, and 'style' as yours. Claiming common knowledge is just an excuse, that has very little to do with copying.

If you can clearly see places where paragraphs were lifted and slightly jumbled or reworded, then I doubt it's a case of great minds thinking alike.

Also, to make things more complicated, at the time I wrote the document, much of it wasn't common knowledge. It was the result of new research I and others had done, and some of it was in contrast to what used to be the common knowledge. But then in those 2 years inbetween, we'd done our part on forums to make it common knowledge. So even though it wasn't all common knowledge yet in 2004, it was in 2006.

If anything this bolsters your point even more. I assume this other person is someone who came into your community late, didn't provide much, but then suddenly came up with their own (copied) version of your findings?

In your future work you could have a disclaimer specifically denying certain parties from using your document as a deterrent. Yeah, naming names is like finger pointing, but it sounds like this individual deserves the finger. 😉

 

[VertigoXX]

I'm interested in reading the documents, if you would post or PM the links please. I've had to deal with issues similar to this one from the end of the publishing website many times over the past decade. I may be able to give you some advice, but as you are talking about non-fiction, I'd like to be able to read the articles in question before suggesting anything specific. It may very well be that what you wrote became the common knowledge, and this other person wrote an article using that for basis. If that is the case, you may be able to get this other writer to include a link to your article as a reference point or footnote. But if this other writer did plagiarize your work, there is legal action you can take.

 

[ExCyber]

Do hosts/ISPs even listen to claims of plagiarism? Or do they just forward a generic form-letter warning to the party and then forget about it.

If it is copyright infringement (i.e. copying your expressions, not merely your ideas; contrary to seemingly popular belief, ideas are not eligible for copyright) and not merely plagiarism (which is not in general illegal, at least by the typical academic definition), you ought to be able to send them a DMCA takedown notice, which I expect they would honor. At that point the other person has to file a counter-notice explicitly claiming that their providing that file is legal. There is a bit of a distasteful "guilty until proven innocent" aspect to this, but it's a mechanism that's intended to absolve ISPs of liability for copyright infringement that occurs without their knowledge. I don't really know how to write a takedown notice, but there should be some good outlines/samples floating around out there...