Content theft: How to detect plagiarism of ebooks, posts, and book reviews

Sie finden die deutsche Version dieses Textes hier.

Imagine you invested hours, bit two pencil to the death, spilt a cup of coffee over your notebook, shouted at your lovely cat because it crossed your flow – all because of your perfect post. Your masterpiece. Your one-of-a-kind eBook. Your best book review ever.

Now it is ready. Ready to go online.

You settle back. Tired but happy. Happy because of your perfect baby.

Few days later you can’t resist – you have to google yourself. Not quite yourself – your baby.

What a shock! There were at least two offers for free download for your eBook on the web. Certain John Doe claims your post blog to be written by him. And the book review you wrote appears on a blog you never heard of …

Why write it if you can „borrow” it?

Some time ago, while I was looking into something I stumbled across a blog post I already read a couple of days before. Only this post appears on a different blog.

Such a bold plagiarism?

The blog author (the one who „borrowed”) did it the subtle way. He (or she) duplicated entire post entry and reduced the size for the font used for the name of the original author so far it was hardly readable.

I poked around and found more of these „borrowings”. Almost the entire blog was build upon the content of other authors.

What is plagiarism and where does it begin?

You can cite a paragraph or two originated by someone else when clearly attributed to the original author to illustrate a fact you are talking about. It’s OK.

But an entire post? A blog consisting of duplicates with obscure attribution? Or, even perkier, of stolen book reviews?

What can I do?

Long time ago I found an advice to set Google Alerts for phrases from the content (blog posts, book reviews, eBooks). By the way, pay attention to set an alert for a phrase contained within the first 10 % of your eBook because online stores show only the first 10 % of your eBook in the preview.

I was surprised how rarely Google alerted me of some keywords which should be updated daily (NaNoWriMo for example). I did my research (oh, I love to research, really).

It turned out Google Alerts are buggy. I searched further (did I already mention, I love to research?) and found one possible solution: Talkwalker.com.

I did not have much more time for broader research (poor me) so if you do know some other alternatives I would appreciate if you would drop me a message in the comments right below this post. Thank you in advance!

I use Talkwalker for several days now and it seems to do what it should. Of course, I can not be sure the service does deliver each and every hit for the specific keyword but it delivers a lot of hits, so what?

You can use Talkwalker much the same way you use Google Alerts. So, if you like to know who uses, sells, or offers your contents for free give this tool a chance.

But be aware of the fact that Talkwalker delivers only new entries for your keywords. If you are serious about the monitoring your keywords you should google them for all already existing copyright frauds.

What to do with content theft?

Uhm, no idea, really. I’m afraid, I need more research on this topic ;)

For now, I suggest you to start with following two posts about DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Here, John Dolan reports about his experience with illegal free downloads for one of his books. Ken Liu demystifies DMCA in this post.

Before you go

I searched for a way to activate keyword alerts for Yandex.ru. Why Yandex? It turned out that Yandex outplays Google for some keywords, most of them looking quite illegal.

Unfortunately I did not found any way to do it. Do you know how to set keyword alerts in Yandex? If so, would you please drop me a comment right below this post?

Do you know another way to keep an eye on keywords?

Do you know how to prevent or stop illegal use of your content?

If so, I would be glad to hear from you. My comment form is open for your suggestions. Or drop me a message using my contact form.

I will post some more posts on this topic so sign-in for my newsletter if you want to receive notifications about new post.

Sie finden die deutsche Version dieses Textes hier.

Mira

Update

Hier einige Links zum Theme Content-Klau:

• Avast! Piracy and the Self-Publisher by David Kudler on TheBookDesigner.com (English)