Friday, January 29, 2010

ALERT to all Classic Film Bloggers

A Google Alert for keywords "Charles Emmett Mack" alerted me to the fact that http://pakway.blogspot.com and it's mirror site http://guromusic.blogspot.com have stolen entire posts from my site. I have gone through the site thoroughly, identified all of my blog posts and have written to the blog administrator asking that my posts be removed immediately. He asked specifically for which links to remove. I have also found other film blogger's content on there as and I made sure I contacted them directly about their content being stolen.

I have alerted other folks on Twitter but thought I'd make an announcement here.

This person is continuously adding new content to his blog so your blog may be next. Check your stats. If you see IP Address 119.152.53.101 from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan in your stats, then assume the blog thief in question is trying to steal your content.

This person has a disclaimer at the bottom of the posts that says that what he is doing is not illegal. If your content is not copyrighted, it's really a free for all. Take the opportunity to add a copyright disclaimer at the bottom of your blog and on the RSS feed of your individual posts.

Don't take the "Oh I'm sorry for you, but I'm glad it didn't happen to me" stance. Even if it hasn't happened yet, it can happen in the future.

And if you find someone else's content stolen, please stick up for them! Let them know about their content being stolen and complain on their behalf. We have to stick together as a community of bloggers. We all work really hard on our blogs and we can't allow scrap bloggers to leech off of us like this.

16 comments:

  1. Thanks Raquel! The thief is wrong as a matter of law; everything created privately and originally in the USA after 1989 is copyrighted whether it has a notice or not. You might try letting him know that. A notice does put people on notice though so thanks for the heads-up.

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  2. I had this problem with my last blog at wordpress (twice in one week last summer), as well as daily spam comments in the hundreds, to the point where I finally came back to blogger, cos at least I never had too much trouble with spam at blogger as I did at wordpress.

    But for the content stealers, I use a Creative Commons and a Copyscape banner on each of my posts and on my blog. Copyscape is supposed to be able to tell you if someone has stolen your content when you post your url at their site. Creative Commons kind of gives you the legal backup. I've also tried some code that prevents people from cutting/copying your work and puts a copyright on it, but it didn't work.

    At least they're trying to be cooperative. I've dealt with mostly uncooperative people and/or spammers who steal my content.

    Good luck!

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  3. The Siren is right on the money about US copyright law--copyright is accorded by default to privately produced works. You're both also write that copyright disclaimers &, as appropriate, CCommons licenses are tools for asserting legal standing. For myself, I wouldn't mind something using content, but only if it were properly attributed & linked. Of course, I'd also object to someone making $ on my content. Thanks for this, & so sorry to hear about what happened to you. I agree about the blogger community, too.

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  4. that's *right* not *write*--typing too fast for brain

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  5. I use both
    http://myfreecopyright.com/

    and

    http://www.copyscape.com/

    because I've found many of my blog stories were on sites which appeared as if they borrowed from lots of bloggers.

    Because of these thefts I also removed most of my older postings.

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  6. Thanks for posting this Raquelle. I've had to ask people to remove my writing from their sites before and it just amazes me how self-righteous they can be about it. One guy sent me a message back in all caps, and with lots of exclamation points, that he'd removed it--as if I'd been inconveniencing him! Though this thief really doesn't have a claim under copyright law, I can see that putting up a notice would make sense. I mean, most people know better, but a lot of people out there actually are clueless.

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  7. Thanks for the heads-up. I combed through his blog last night and didn't see anything of mine, but it's so hard to tell when he's adding so much stolen content so rapidly it's hard to tell for sure.

    On the off chance that it's just some well-meaning kid who's ignorant about plagiarism (I've seen too much of that on my own college campus to dismiss the notion outright) I'm going to send him an e-mail explaining in detail why what he's doing is wrong, but I'll certainly continue to keep an eye out for my own posts or any others I recognize on his site.

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  8. Siren - Thank you so much for that information. I didn't realize that a notice wasn't necessary. Since this blog is an international one, does it still apply since the content was created in the USA?

    The Cinemaphile - You're welcome!

    Sarah - Thank you so much for the info on Creative Commons. I will check them out. I learned about Copyscape yesterday and ran a report with them but the two scrapper blogs didn't show up. I'll look into getting that banner. I really wish I could figure out a way to prevent right-click on images but someone could try to find the shortcut of the photograph anyways some other way, right?

    John - Wow. Everyone is providing such awesome information, yourself included. I have my content fed in other places but it's always been with my permission and with all the correct attributions and links provided. Thanks for your support.

    Bill - Thank you! Where do you keep your older postings? Do you put them on a separate site or keep them for yourself?

    KC - Oh geez. I'm sorry you had to go through this too. Thanks for your support.

    Princess - Thank you so much for offering to write to him. My friend Jonas also wrote to him and I've written to him as well. Maybe if enough people contact him, he'll learn the ramifications of what he is donig. I agree with you, he seems ignorant about plagiarism and doesn't think what he's doing is wrong.

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  9. This is ridiculous. I've noticed that I've been getting a lot of comments on my old blog in Chinese and Japanese, and quite a lot of spam too. I wonder if my stuff has been stolen too. I will do some hunting today and definitely get some sort of banner. Thanks for the heads up.

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  10. When I discovered I had been plagiarized my first thought was, "I gotta stop this" so I installed the two copyright services. But a 'good' thief can still copy or scan things, reorganize stuff and do whatever. Plagiarized material doesn't have to be used on the web. It could be used in print only - school projects, newspapers, etc.

    I had a lot of short stories, poems and essays - those were what I removed. (About 700 items!)

    Some of the older blogs I moved them back to draft form - they are still available for re-posting - just not available to browsing.

    Some I saved to a separate file and then deleted them from Blogger. The saved version remains and looks as it was on original blog. Links or photos remain active ... click on a small pic and it will enlarge. The export format (using Apple. Safari) is "Web Archive".

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  11. I have had a few of my essays turn up elsewhere with no attribution. It's never been a case, so far, where they were making money off my work. Writing publicly as we do on the internet means this is always going to happen and no one doing the stealing is going to care any more about copyright laws than a burglar cares that breaking and entering is against the law. The best we can do is be vigilant while we keep creating.

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  12. Thanks for the heads up, Raquelle! As of yet, I haven't found anything he ripped off from me, but it irks that he would plagiarise anyone, let alone my friends. He is in clear violation of copyright law. Copyright is in force at the moment of creation and does not need to be asserted or declared. What he is doing is not just illegal, it is VERY illegal, not to mention immoral, unethical, and just plain rude!

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  13. Unbelievable, your whole Norma post and no attribution at all, and I think I saw a couple of your posts pretty much complete. I did find three images off my Allure blog, but for some strange reason he did attribute them to my site. I have always had the creative commons copyright on the site, but don't know if that caused him to make the (clickable)attribution. Recently had to deal with the Chinese spam guy "11" and now my comments are moderated - another pita. Hopefully this guy, who must have lots of free time to surf and steal, will get the message.

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  14. Disgusting. Thanks for the notice, Raquelle. You've done us all a great service.

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  15. Raquelle:

    I noticed a couple of days after I emailed the fellow that he had removed all of the posts I dinged him about. He never replied to my email, but I can't say I much care. :)

    Again, thanks so much for the heads-up. I owe you one! :)

    mark-

    ReplyDelete

Leave me a comment! If it is a long one, make sure you save a draft of it elsewhere just in case Google gobbles it up and spits it out.

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