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Simple Comments Are Telling

I recently received a comment from a visitor to my website who raised my consciousness about a potentially explosive dilemma in literary works: The Plague of Plagiarism. It is the crime of stealing someone else’s original written content and passing it off as the thief’s own work. The problem is a curse running rampant with students and website content creators worldwide.

I didn’t realize how serious the issue was until I made the offer to the commentator that I would look into the problem. Apparently there are far more people looking to copy material from original authors than there are those taking the time and effort to produce it.

If you have created a website and you spend hours writing an article, it belongs to you. Not some hacker or copy-and-paste thief who is using your sweat and blood to rank high on search engines while you toil to get their yourself.

If someone tells me that they labor into the night to create their original piece of literary art, and then see it pasted by thieves all over the internet, I find it deeply disturbing. I have not investigated that problem in regards to my own works yet, but I am going to start. I may be shocked by what I find out!

Where Do You Start

There was an issue that was brought to my attention when I started my website. It was to guard against my use of the content of other writers and passing it off as my own. Many programs offered to provide me endless content so that I would have to do nothing myself. Since that seemed like an extremely risky proposition, I said no! I would just proceed with my own efforts and learn how to write original content.

Also, I was careful to use “links” to either reference, or take the reader to, the original work that documented the subject I was writing about. In other words, always “Give Credit Where Credit Is Due”!

The main point of my initial dissertation is be honest. Don’t complain or fret about someone stealing your content if you are willing to do it yourself. If you are, stop reading this article. It was not meant for you.

Google Does What?

I am not a big fan of Google dominating search engine traffic across the internet. But the originators evolved the science of creating and locating information on that vast entity we now know as the World Wide Web. As a result of their efforts, they make most of the rules that other search engines fly by.

One of those endeavors is to develop algorithms that reward or punish those who stray from the rules. One of their recent dictates is to fully acknowledge and understand quality content emanating from a website. It is called Google Panda. It is entrenched in their organic search engine platform. If you want to know what the parameters are, original works that meet quality standards are In. Thinly disguised duplicated articles are out, as are those with poor quality, controlled by advertisements, or non authoritative material input.

With this program, Google carefully evaluates online content to determine if it’s original or not and increasingly wards off spam directed towards the end-user. As a result, many websites that had top rankings were “demoted”. They were sent down the ladder of visibility, so to speak, and many of those websites contained Plagiarized Content.

Back Down To Earth

It is not my intention to give an educated dialog on how all this technical stuff works. I am not that smart. I am just trying to address a monumental problem that others are facing with stolen content and what I or they (or you) can do to solve it. If it is going to take rocket science to achieve satisfactory results, then I am out.

I also have no intention of lecturing my reader(s). I hate that type of approach to solving problems. Instead, I want to find out what works, what doesn’t, and relay the information I find.

One program I want to pursue is Google Alerts. It is supposed to tell me when someone has stolen my material and used it on that thief’s website. Notifications are sent to your email address in the format that you prescribe when initial instructions are set in place by you.

Another format I would like to know more about is Google’s DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) compliant form. You can use the form to report an offender to Google, and they apparently take the issue quite seriously.

So What Is The Bottom Line Here?

Since I must go through the learning curve myself, I can only hope to give a future up date with “Plagiarism Pandemonium: Part II“. Meanwhile, I will attempt to find out if anyone is stealing my content. If I do, I will confront that person or organization myself. In the event that I cannot convince the offender to desist, I will follow prescriptive remedies that are allowed.

I am not interested in becoming a bad guy with this endeavor, but theft is theft. I go out of my way to construct original content and I fully acknowledge the work of others when I use it. In many cases, I also try to promote their websites without asking for any remuneration while doing so.

So, I will sign off for now. Please look for an update in one of the future blogs I present on my site. What ever information I uncover, I will certainly furnish all my readers with it so that they can use same for whatever advantage they are looking for.

I am requesting that my readers click on the links provided and download a sample read of each book and give a review on Amazon. You will have free access to the first four chapters of each book. My hope is that you will like the story lines enough to obtain either an eBook version or a paperback copy that you can put on your bookshelf as a masterpiece when you are done. FATE STALKS A HERO I: RESURGENCE, FATE STALKS A HERO II:THE FIJI FULCRUM, and THE SAGA OF HERACLES PENOIT. I will be giving excerpts on these works in upcoming blogs to familiarize you the reader with exciting details about the contents of each one. Thank you!
 

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