What to do if your content is plagiarized

Knish4004 · 06-11-07, 12:03 PM

I do some content writing in my spare time and recently ran across an article I wrote on a site I didn't sell it to. What, if anything, should I do? I did not retain the rights to the article when I sold it to the buyer, but it also doesn't seem like the buyer would have resell rights on the work either. Should I ask the buyer if he sold the content and then put it in his hands if he didn't? Any thoughts?

For what its worth, it's not like a huge amount of money we're talking about either. Probably charged $30 or $40 for the work when I did it. Not a $1000 eBook or anything.

Calypso · 06-11-07, 07:32 PM

Hi Knish4004. I'm a writer myself, so I know how frustrating this can be.

When you sold the article, did you sell all rights to it, or just first electronic rights? If you sold all rights, the company that bought it can give it or sell it to anyone else they want, and there isn't much you can do about it. If the site you sold it to is still functioning, you might want to let them know that the article turned up somewhere else. If they didn't sell it, they might go after the plagarizer themselves.

However, if you only sold first rights, or first electronic rights, you can contact the site upon which the plagarized work is appearing, inform them that the content is plagarized, and request that they either compensate you or remove it immediately. If someone else is claiming to be the original author of the piece, google their name, see if you can figure out who their IP provider is, and report them.

I believe plagarism should be taken seriously, even if you're not talking about huge amounts of money. An individual who plagarizes one writer's work gives all writers a black eye, as far as I'm concerned.

technoflutemom · 06-14-07, 09:40 AM

That's a good point, Calypso. You should know what rights you are selling, and be sure to get the details in a written agreement.

aquariancore · 06-22-07, 08:11 PM

I rarely sell exclusive rights myself and when I publish I give my writer's the option to resell after 60 days of publishing.

Corey Bryant · 06-23-07, 03:06 PM

A good website to use to check for duplicate content is copyscape. It will help to save time.

If you did not sell the rights, ec you can also send a cease and desist letter to the domain owner and to the hosting company. A good example is just what happened to Perez Hilton's website this past week

aquariancore · 06-25-07, 10:29 PM

Actually how I found my work being plaguerized is when I did Digg.

Deedboy · 06-29-07, 07:07 AM

do you have to pay to get the content protection, right?