What can you do when someone steals your blog post, word for word, changes the title, and posts it on their site while also refusing to post your comments or reply to your requests to remove it? To be honest, there isn’t much you can do. How do I know? Because its happening to me right now.
Ben Mira (at least, I think that’s his name), author of springtips.blogspot.com (DO NOT GO THERE, he has ads on his site and thus makes some money each time someone views his site), stole my blog post about handling exceptions in Spring MVC, without even a mention of the original article which I wrote, or the author – me.
I was flattered at first as I have read posts on the blog before and saw it as a collection of relevant Spring posts. But as I read through the site again, after being alerted to my post being there, I noticed other posts which have been stolen. These, again, have no mention of the original author or post.
What can a boy do?
I did what anyone would do – I wrote a comment on the site. However, I have had no luck with this, as he moderates the comments and has decided to ignore them.
I then lodged a complaint with Blogger, owner of BlogSpot, but this only led to an email from them telling me to write a Notice of Infringement which complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Well, I have never written one, don’t have a lawyer, make no money from the blog to pay for a lawyer, and don’t come from the US; wow, I certainly feel out of my depth.
I then spoke to my brother, who is a lawyer in London, about my options. He advised me to write another comment giving him 24 hours to remove the post or further action will be taken, but it’s been over 24 hours and relying on a busy lawyer brother to help is dependent on his spare time, which is pretty sparse.
I am not angry that my post has been duplicated; I am angry that I was not mentioned as the author and that my original article was not linked to.
My instincts tell me that this won’t blow over quickly, but if you have any advice or can point me in the right direction please post a comment.
I’ll keep you updated.
10 Comments
7 March, 2008 at 11:59 am
I can understand your fear about filing a DMCA complaint but the process is actually VERY easy. Google makes things a bit harder by requiring you to fax or mail in your complaint, but you can get around that as well.
I have a DMCA template on my site, just fill out the parts that it instructs you too and then, using your favorite word processor and a scanned copy of your signature, create a signed version of the letter.
Convert that to a PDF and then email that as an attachment to amac at google dot com. It should work as that is their designated agent’s address. I have used it successfully in the past.
If you need any help with this, please let me know!
7 March, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you so much for your comment, not only were you quick to read my post, but you were quick to help out.
I will use the template ASAP and send the email/pdf away quick smart.
Also, I had a read over your site and its fantastic, a must read for everyone.
Again, thank you and I will shout out if I have no luck.
Josh
14 March, 2008 at 6:09 am
Wow, that is really sad. hopefully this post of yours is read a lot so people know who the real author is.
14 March, 2008 at 8:56 am
I know that sinking feeling when you realise somebody has copied you word-for-word. I have written several times to somebody who has done this with one of my articles but have not received a reply.
The site doesn’t even have comments so I can’t irritate him that way. It gets even more frustrating when they havd had the audacity to remove my links and copyright and replace it with their own.
I will definitely be visiting Johnathon’s site!
14 March, 2008 at 9:47 am
You’re not the only one. I subscribed to that for a while, and the guy’s writing was very erratic, both in style and frequency. I thought it was strange, so I deleted the feed. Anyway, I just went to his site (sorry, already been there!) and picked some random articles, copied a sentence, googled it, and sure enough somebody else wrote it. I found at least 4 forgeries. The header of his blog says “knowledgebase” so maybe he’s trying to be some sort of aggregator. While not citing sources. Some kind of ad-generating scam? I think some of the content is original though.
Btw the name “Nabil” comes through the feed.
15 March, 2008 at 9:33 am
I sent the template DMCA Infringement notice from the Plagiarism Today site, and have received a small response which show things are being looked into…
Hello Josh,
We have received your DMCA complaint regarding
http://springtips.blogspot.com/2008/03/spring-mvc-how-to-handle-exceptions.html.
We are currently reviewing the complaint and will contact you when we have
completed processing the request. We appreciate your patience with this
process.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
17 March, 2008 at 7:16 pm
That blog post has been taken down by blogger, congrats! Can Greg above send them the other posts that he’s ripped off and maybe the site can be shut down for good.
17 March, 2008 at 9:19 pm
I would love someone to complain and get the rest taken down, but I think the best way would be for the original authors to be informed and for them to make the complaints.
The funny thing is if SpringTips had asked me for permission to republish my post, I might of said yes, but I am glad he didn’t because what he is doing is pretty unethical.
Thank you for everyones support.
17 June, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Hello Josh,
today I noticed that SpringTips has stolen one of my recent SpringOne reports as well. I, too, will send in an infringement notice, and, if you don’t mind, add a reference to your case in order to make clear that is not an isolated incident. Maybe that will get the blog shut down for good.
Regards,
Nils
18 June, 2008 at 8:51 am
Update:
Well, it seems that the SpringTips’ author is reading his comments. At least he’s trying (not yet completely successfully, but it’s a first step) to comply with the Creative Commons Licence I’ve chosen for Springify.
While this will, once attribution is given in the form of the required backlink, technically allow such usage of content as we see on SpringTips, I still don’t see the point. All he really gets is bad reputation (and I cannot imagine that it is possible to actually monetize a blog like that).