On his blog, Shaun Low asks, “Do bloggers need a copyright page?.”

From a simple copyright perspective, the answer is no. As soon as any work is fixed in some tangible medium, the original expression in that work is protected by copyright law. As I am writing, I just saved what I had written before this sentence, so everything before this sentence is protected. When I post the article, everything in it will be covered by copyright.

Unfortunately, copyright infringement is so pervasive on the internet, it’s usually going to be difficult to do anything about it.

Content scrapers, though, usually indiscriminately scrape — steal — every bit of content from a post. Therefore, if one includes a copyright statement on every post — like you see at the end of this post — and that material appears elsewhere, it’s going to be a bit more obvious that it is stolen.

The copyright notice is another tweak to the blog. Thanks Shaun for a good question and post that made me think. Shaun’s blog is the newest addition to my growing blogroll of quality blogs.

August 11, 2007

dcr @ 12:49 am

It is difficult to do much about copyright infringement online, but every bit helps. TechFreak had another idea for fighting the scrapers in this post. The post also has links to other sites with various ideas on fighting content theft. I haven’t tried any of them yet. I’ve only used Google, as mentioned in a previous comment, and also Copyscape.

I use the Copyscrape graphic on some of my websites too, just to serve as an extra warning in addition to the copyright notice at the bottom of the page.

I should put the notice on my blog too…

Opal Tribble @ 6:38 am

I put the warning on my page and it’s on my RSS feed also. I constantly check to see if my information has been scraped. There are many people that really don’t think of it as stealing so a simple email does the trick but the ones that are difficult I’ll follow up with Google Spam. I haven’t had to go past that level yet.

August 12, 2007

dcr Blogs » Blog Archive » Are You Free? @ 3:23 pm

[…] you have to spend your time fighting content theft, how free are […]

August 20, 2007

The Spotlight Is On…. @ 4:06 pm

[…] writes many post that keep me coming back for more I thought I would point out two of his posts Copyright and Blog Scraping and Combating Internet […]

A lost Exit78 post , recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

“dcr” at dcr Blogs left a comment on my previous article that left me wondering about the original source of the quote I used.

While I knew where I got it, I didn’t know the original publication, so I used the internet to track down what I believe to be the original source. What’s ironic was that the original article, written in 1995, was about how it’s unlikely that the internet will change the world.

It was an interesting search, but it turned up something that was quite surprising.

I believe I found an instance of plagiarism in a published work. It appears that the authors of a book under revision in 1995-1996 lifted two sentences of an article by Clifford Stoll that had been published in Newsweek on February 27, 1995.

When I used a phrase from the quotation at the beginning of my article to search on Google, one of the first hits was from Google Books for a book called “The New Positioning: The Latest on the World’s #1 Business Strategy.” When that came up, I began to wonder if I had the quote correctly attributed.

By using variations of the search term, I found several more instances referring to Clifford Stoll as the author, including one that identified the original publication and the date. As well, virtually all of these references, including my original post, predated the advent of Google Books.

This was a very interesting search exercise — with unanticipated results — and it demonstrates that the internet of today has moved far beyond the internet of Clifford Stoll’s 1995 article.

Comments on “Google Books may be a Danger to Plagiarists!”

August 9, 2007

dcr @ 2:18 pm

It’s true! Google is useful for checking for possible plagiarism. On one of my websites, I have used freelance writers to write articles for me. I take parts of the articles and run them through Google to see if there are any matches. Not a foolproof method, but I did catch one writer red-handed. Said she used the website I found as a source, and some of their content ended up in her article by accident. Um, okay…

Michael Fultz @ 11:42 pm

I love Google for research and the like. I can see how it would be harder on would-be plagiarists to operate. If you’re a fake, it will be found out in 3 seconds. Encouraging news for all of us who would like to start writing for a living someday.

August 10, 2007

Jonathan Bailey @ 4:48 pm

Google has always been a Godsend for detecting plagiarism, all that is happening now is that it is moving into the offline world as well.

The results will be very interesting to say the least…

A lost Exit78 post , recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Michael Martin, the guy behind Pro Blog Design, has an interesting post on tweaking some of the common aspects of your blog.

Using his article as a guide, I’ve customized my number of comments statements and the footer at the bottom of the page. I’m pretty happy with everything else here – for now, anyhow.

Thanks Michael!

(Oh, and his blog is the newest addition to my blogroll)

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Originally posted 11/25/2004 on a blog that I have since retired (update – On February 27, 2011, the original post was recovered and posted here with the original date).

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is that the Internet is an ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.
-Clifford Stoll

(See the second comment below for some background on this quote, including what appears to be a case of plagiarism.)

The internet is believed to be a resource with great promise. However, it can also be a source of great frustration.

Millions of pages are published on the internet every month. Yet of these millions of pages, only a small percentage have any real value and of these, only a very few float to the surface to be accessible by those who might be interested in them.

In a description of what it’s like to search the internet, author Clifford Stoll describes searching for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar on the internet, coming up with hundreds of pages on it, including a biography by an eighth grader, a game that doesn’t work, and a picture of a monument in London. After spending 15 minutes trying to unravel them he doesn’t find what he is looking for.

I don’t know when Mr. Stoll performed his search on the internet nor how experienced at searching the internet he was. I performed a similar search to find the answer and came up with 21 October 1805 in about two minutes. I found the answer in the third result out of about 58, 100 using Google. To initially come up with the answer, I didn’t even look at the first two, because the description of the third looked more promising. When I subsequently looked at them, the first also had the date, while the second had the date for the bicentennial, from which the original date could be derived.More…

It’s apparent that the content on the internet has improved since Mr. Stoll wrote those words. More importantly, “modern” search engines have a much better ability to perform relevant searches, provided they are provided with appropriate terms to search on. My search used “date of battle of Trafalgar.” However, I was able also to find the date of the battle, in little more than a minute, just searching on “battle of Trafalgar.”

However, in other areas, I’ve seen times where the internet can be just as frustrating as Mr. Stoll found it to be. Specifically these occurred when I was trying to find information related to consumer electronics items that I was considering purchasing as well as using the internet to find lodging not covered by the major travel web-sites. In trying searches in both areas this morning, I was able to find relevant information that may influence my plans in a relatively short period of time.

I’m not going to expend a great amount of time trying to find a search that will frustrate me. The improvements in internet search engines as well as my own learned abilities in using them have made these searches relatively pain free, in most instance.

Unfortunately, in some instances, such as looking for information on something I want to buy or lodging in a particular location, the search results can be very, very frustrating.

Comments on “A wasteland of unfiltered data”

August 9, 2007

dcr @ 11:33 am

I’m not sure where the quote comes from, but it may have been from his book, “Silicon Snake Oil.” If so, that was published in 1995, and the Internet has changed quite a bit in the last 12 years!

Mike Goad @ 12:30 pm

I used the miracle of the internet to track this down — and even found a case of plagiarism in published works!

It was published in an article in the February 27, 1995 issue of Newsweek . I think I just found that article online at a site called BookRags. The article there is titled Computers Will Not Significantly Transform Society.

What’s even more interesting is that I think I also came across a case of plagiarism in a book originally published in 1986, and subsequently revised and published in 1996. It’s titled “The New Positioning: The Latest on the World’s #1 Business Strategy” and it’s by Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin. They used everything except the last sentence in my quote.” I found the quote there using Google books.

It’s kind of like “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” I don’t know who plagiarized who for sure, but I’m going to leave my attribution as it is.

Interesting, no?

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Exit 78 | Google Books may be a Danger to Plagiarists!

[…] at dcr Blogs left a comment on my previous article that left me wondering about the original source of the quote I […]

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

I was just reading Rose DesRochers article Blog Lists – Content Theft and Copyright Infringement and it reminded me of the following article, which I had written four years ago about my copyright being infringed.

My Copyright Was Infringed!

originally published online August 16, 2003

This article is available for free distribution and reprint as a public service from the author. Please read conditions at the end of the article.

While looking for pages linked to our internet sites, I came across some material that looked astonishingly familiar, so familiar, in fact, that it was the entire text from one of my web sites.

The really amazing – and ironic – aspect of the whole thing was that the site that was copied was a site on – get this – copyright.

Not only that, but it was published on a county GenWeb site hosted on RootsWeb.

After the realization of what I found sank in, I looked for and found the e-mail addresses of the people I would need to contact in order to remedy the copyright infringement of my material. Then I wrote a message that laid out the situation as I saw it, though I did give the benefit of the doubt by requesting that they provide a copy of any permission document that they might have received, just in case I had given permission and didn’t remember. Unlikely, of course, but possible, I guess.

Continued at Copy Right, Copy Sense

© 2007 Mike Goad, https://exit78.com/weblog – All Rights Reserved.

4 Responses to “ My Copyright Was Infringed ”

1. # 1 Rose Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 1:41 am Hi Mike, I wish every situation was as simple as yours was. One of my articles was recently reprinted and they removed my author byline. I left a comment on their blog a few requesting they add my byline or remove my article. They ignored my request and deleted my comment. Yesterday I sent a request to WordPress, today the blog in question is suspended. Thanks for the link back!
2. # 2 Opal Tribble Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 5:19 am What a shame!
   That’s happened to me a few times in fact I wrote an article about it a few weeks ago titled Help Someone Has Stolen My Content I don’t mind if they add part of my article and then link back to me but to copy the entire thing without reference to the person who wrote the article is unacceptable.
3. # 3 Jonathan Bailey Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 10:08 am That is an interesting story but not altogether surprising. It seems that some of the worst infringers of copyright are the people that swear to defend it. I have to work triple hard to make sure I don’t even give the appearance of plagiarizing. Others, don’t seem to feel that way.

   I’m glad that the situation was resolved though and it makes for a great story.

4. # 4 Mike Goad Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 7:08 pm Rose, Opal, and John – Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

August 7, 2007

We’re staying in a campground called Rushmore Shadows, near Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.

Last night, we were treated to a brilliant light show before it started raining.

The full sized image can be seen on my photo blog by clicking here.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

On February 5, 2006, I wrote the following:

Senior Discount

Today, at Pizza Hut, without even asking, we were given a senior citizen discount.

Now, even though, I subscribe to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), I’m a long ways from being sixty, which is the earliest that most places given senior discounts. I’m only 54… (and two days). I’m still a year away from being able to early retire… if I want to… and if we’re financially able to.

It didn’t bother me, but it sure seemed to bother my wife. Even though we both knew that it was because of my greying hair that the teen waitress thought we were seniors. If I look old for my age, my wife looks young for hers. Even though we knew the discount was probably for my perceived age, she was the one put out about it.

But did she correct the error? Nope. It was enough to cover the tax on the meal.

Besides, with the leading edge of the boomers just now reaching 60, by the time we reach 60, the senior discounts will probably be few and far between.

Gotta take it when we can.

It happened again one afternoon last week — Thursday, I think, about 2:00 (that’s 1400 for some of my readers) — when we stopped for a treat at Dairy Queen. It didn’t seem to bother Karen at all this time. She seemed a little bit amused.

This morning, just as I was pushing a lumber cart with two twelve-foot long two by tens on it out of the door at the local Lowes Home Improvement Store, a pickup truck towing a trailer with a couple of ATVs pulled up into the white striped loading zone right in front of the exit — and right in front of me — and stopped. The driver turned the engine off, opened the door, and got out in a manner that clearly indicated he was headed into the store in a little bit of a rush.

Then he saw me — and my load — and that he had blocked my path. He apologized and, when he opened the driver side door, I thought he was going to get in and move the truck and trailer forward out of his way. Instead, he tossed the keys to his passenger, asked him to move it, and went inside.

As the passenger was coming around the front of the truck, he, too, started apologizing and told me that he would move the truck out of my way.

I just muttered, “That’s ok,” and turned the cart to push it around the front of the vehicle. By the time he got it started, I was already past him and headed out into the parking lot to where I had parked my truck and trailer.

I’m sure they could tell that I wasn’t happy.

People parking their vehicles in loading zones at home improvement stores is just another one of those things that bothers, though not as much as people parking in handicap spots.

It especially irks me when they block the entrance/exit to the store or when they park in such a way that it blocks access to the high volume building supplies that are stacked outside the entrance. When a vehicle is parked in front of the pallets of concrete mix, it kind of hard to back up to it to load what I’ve paid for.

I guess it’s just another example of today’s hurry up world where some folks just can’t take the time to park a little further out and walk a little more.

Back on February 12, 2006, I posted the following. on an old blog that I am in the process of retiring:

Payin’ down the House

We’re starting to make a bit more on our AdSense ads than we need for paying for internet access, server fees, and other misc. costs and had just been chunking the Google check into checking, with no particular plans for the extra money. Last night, we were talking about my hoped for early retirement and all the different expenses we have to eliminate, reduce and otherwise get under control. Among all of the others was our remaining house payments.

As I was dozing of to sleep last night, the thought occurred to me that we could earmark whatever we get from Google for “payin’ down the house,” a little bit every now and again now to eliminate one more expense later. The way we’re using the money now, it just gets spent. This way, it’s earmarked for something specific and it’s extra money that we really haven’t budget for, so we won’t miss it.

As the year progressed, the momentum towards retiring grew.

We withdrew enough from savings to pay off the house and a couple of other bills.

And I retired at the end of February, 2007.

Comments on “Payin’ down the house”

August 6, 2007

Opal Tribble @ 8:31 am

Congrats Mike! You really should think about writing about the ways you have gone about doing this. I think you would appeal to a lot of readers. You’re approachable and I think you’ll get more to listen to you than some because they will see you as a regular guy who’s making it. Of course your way might not work for everyone but it’s another outlet for people to look at when they want to receive tips about Adsense.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011