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OpenDiary.com: Nobody’s Home

By Jonathan Bailey • Aug 18th, 2005 • Category: Personal Experiences, Villains

Imagine, for a second if, coming home from a vacation to discover that you were robbed. You quickly call the police only to discover that no one is answering the phone. You then drive down to the station to find it deserted without even an indication where to go if you need help.

That’s exactly how I feel when dealing with opendiary.com and it’s sister sites.

Over the past two months, I have attempted to contact the administrators of this site regarding two different plagiarists. Yet, every attempt to do so has been thwarted. Every email I have sent to the company, including ones to the abuse account and several to the account associated with the domain name, has bounced back.

Despite having over a month to repair their email, nothing has been done and, worse still, calling the number given with their registration info only gave me a standard status report on the site’s servers and no information on contacting the person or people who run it.

There’s simply no way, that I’ve found, to reach a human being regarding this matter…

Of course, the implications of this go far beyond just the inability to report plagiarism. Users, or so I’m forced to assume, can’t get any help if they have problems, other forms of abuse (harassment, adult content, etc.) will go unchecked and the site, more or less, becomes a wild west environment.

After all, without some means of following up on abuse complaints, there’s no way to keep such a large site clean.

In the end, this kind of negligence is completely unethical and, quite fortunately, illegal. The DMCA requires that you provide such contact information and even domain registration requires that people be able to get in touch with you. Taking that avenue, I’ve reported the lack of valid contact info to ICANN, the body that governs domain names, and I’m hoping that this will get opendiary to update their records.

Otherwise, it’s possible that the domain could be deleted as invalid. An unwelcome outcome considering there are many legitimate users of the site, but a possible consequence of breaking the rules that govern the Internet.

In the end though, Opendiary.com is one of the worst and most negligent hosts I have ever had the displeasure of working with. Though I’m holding out hope that they’ll change their ways and become good citizens in the online world, it seems unlikely at best.

It’s not a service I’d want to use and not a service that I want to deal with again.

In the meantime though, I guess I can try snail mail. Perhaps the mailing address is at least somewhat valid.

Note: As is my policy, I attempted to contact the plagiarist directly first. However, OpenDiary thwarted that as well. There are no profiles of people who post and no way for the public to get in touch with the diary owners. In fact, their rules state “No full names, addresses, telephone numbers, or other identifying information allowed.”

[tags]Plagiarism, ICANN, DMCA[/tags]

Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
Email this author | All posts by Jonathan Bailey

Viewing 52 Comments

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    i've been using opendiary for a couple of years now with no hassles at all. however, i have attempted to contact the diarymaster on two occasions with no response. although i wasn't bringing up anything particularly important, it didn't instill much faith. there have also been a couple of bad hacker attacks and some people still don't have their journals back.
    if you want to contact the diarymaster i suggest you create an opendiary account and leave a note on the diarymaster's diary. you can access it from the homepage. if you've already tried that, you have my sympathy.
    mia
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    I've been using OpenDiary since I was in 6th grade.
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    I certainly hope you're not trying to imply in that note that users should have their full names, addresses and telephone numbers displayed on their diary.

    People accidentally plagiarize in diaries all the time. And since it's for personal use, and not literature being sold to the public, it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
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    Kait,

    I'm not implying that at all. Still, nearly every other blog provider offers some means of contacting individual diary owners. Be it an email address, a PM feature or an IM name. OD is the only one I know of that forbids people from posting contact information.

    However, I'm not talking about the individual diary holders, but rather, the administrators. By law, under the DMCA, they have to provide for a designated agent to deal with copyright infringement taking place on their servers. However, I have found no valid contact information for them.

    Finally, if it is my work, it is my business, it's that simple. U.S. copyright law allows for up to 150,000 in damages for intentional acts of copyright infringement, regardless of whether or not profit was made. Plagiarizing work is illegal, profit or not, and I speak for a great number of people when I say I don't want my material being copied and pasted under other people's names.

    It's that simple.
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    Hmm...I've also been using OpenDiary for almost five years without any problems. I did try contacting the diary master once regarding a little "stalking" issue...he never responded...so I just made my diary inaccessible to certain people. Other than that, no problems!
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    I don't believe there are ppl like you. If you don't like it (the site) stop going there. What can you gain for pursueing this getting the site completely deleted mission? There are hundreds of thousands people who like the site and haven't seen much problems in it. Only one time have I stumbled into explicit language and someone "out there" did delete the entry content. Right now I want to say things to you that won't do any good, and you'd probably sue me for saying them so I'll leave this matter here.

    Have a nice day
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    I may be off but it seems Nina hasn't quite gotten the point of the post here. Some major misinterpretation going on when she suggests "if you don't like the site stop going there", as though "liking" the site has anything to do with the real problem at hand.

    To the whole point of that's been raised, I'd suggest filing a DMCA complaint and let the company running Open Diary deal directly with the fall out of not being in compliance with Federal law. They don't want to deal with you, they can deal with the authorities and the courts.
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    If you dont like opendiary or the way it is.. then dont go there anymore. AND why would you trust total strangers with things if you REALLY don't want them taking your stuff?

    GET OVER YOURSELF AND MOVE ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    -thank you
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    Kim, you are definitely missing the point here. It isn't about not visiting Open Diary. It is about the fact that someone on Open Diary is completely plagarizing another person's work. Open Diary is not dealing with the plagarist and won't even post up-to-date contact information. That is ILLEGAL. I'm sure JB would be completely satisfied if Open Diary just removed the offending entry/blog. But since they are not allowing themselves to be contacted in regards to that, JB has no other recourse but to report Open Diary's violation to the appropriate organization and have them deal with the issue at hand.

    So, to recap, the issue is NOT that JB doesn't like Open Diary. It is that Open Diary is allowing plagarism on its site and offering no channel for the violators to be reported. If they won't comply with federal regulation and allow JB to contact them regarding the plagarism, why should he be nice and just avoid the site? He has every right to report their violations.

    Good for you.
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    I am the publisher of OpenDiary - I found this thread through another blog where the writer had complained about plagiarism by one of our members, which was investigated and deleted. We do provide a reporting mechanism on the site, with selections specifically for reporting rules violations such as this (this mechanism is, in fact, what was used by the previously mentioned author's friends to let us know about that violation).
    Barring that, please feel free to email me at monitor@opendiaryplus.com to report any incidence of plagiarism on our site - personally, I find this sort of behaviour despicable and will do what I can to stop it.
    Thanks.
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    I think that OD is a site for nothing more than theft and an area for nasty housewives to attack others for not sharing like opinions. I would love to see the site crash and burn.
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    i have been using opendiary 4 awhile and have never had any problems. You dont understand what your taking away, your not just taking away a web site, but peoples entries that take them so long to write and are the 1 thing people can turn to and rely on.
    Plz dont take something so important away.
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    have had troubles in open diary with a certain person. As stated above "nasty housewives to attack others for not sharing like opinions". I deleted my OD due to this person. I complained aobu it & theyre still there. Sad thig is this person has very many fake diaries.
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    If you post anything on the internet, it has a chance of being copied and pasted into someone's blog, diary or ezine. You know, you are not the only one who has had work stolen from them. I have copied and pasted information from vairous websites and people's blogs, into my diary. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. Im not selling my diary, Im not making any money off it. Im posting it in a closed community. And you can leave your email, IM, ICQ, Yahoo profile..you can post pics or you can be totally annoymous, fake...just like here. Who are YOU anyway?
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    I might be a little late, but what was the plagiarism? Did you take an article that you had sold for money to a magazine and post it? Did you take anything that was at all for sale and post it? Doing so would probably remove your claim to plagiarism since you are releasing this to an open forum that anyone can read. Since you didn't charge to read it, and didn't sell it to someone who did.. and I doubt that you copyrighted it.... I just don't get it? What did they steal, your quiz??? OD is a place for people to type junk.. some people like the junk, some don't. Some develop meaning into this type, others certainly don't. Its not a magazine. I would agree with a few of the users above, though not quite so violently, but if you want something to be private and have homage paid to it, or royalties paid for it... why on earth would you post it in a completly open online forum that requires no identification at all?
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    i have been on o.d. for a while now and i find sometimes people do do that, but wen i see it its only minor things like songs that theve written on there or book pasages i dont think it realy maters that much! wen i first started on there sumtimes people would diss me in there notes an so i just turned my o.d. favs only, i think wat ur doing is stupid, it duznt realy matter so get ova it! l8er
    red_tiger_eye (o.d.)
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    wat! u cant do that! u would be takeing so much away from the people that depend on that site! it is a place for people to express themselfs without people judging them! that site has given me so much self confidence. it gave me the assurance in needed to tell my friend i was bi! withouit it lots of people would get seriously pissed! please just leave it!! jst leev us alone and go on with ur life! wat ur trying to do is stupid! its not a big issue and it duzznt mata!!
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    I've been using o.d. since 7th grade, and I admit that there are a few kinks that need to be worked out and I should note that it has improved over the past 5 years, but I don't think plagiarism is a problem particular to sites like opendiary.

    Any work you post on the internet runs a risk of being plagiarised, and thats that. It doesn't matter where its posted. If its on the internet- thats fair (well, actually, unfair) game. Unfortunately, thats the way it is. And I say this as someone who posts fiction and poetry.
    I know it might get stolen, but thats a risk I choose to take.

    While I agree that there should be a way to contact diary owners who have disabled notes or set their diaries to 'favorites only', I particularly LIKE the idea that you can control how much contact info you put out. In my opinion, opendiary is better than myspace in that respect because it emphasizes reading over oggling half-naked pictures that fourteen year old girls put up.
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    Seems like a lot of people don't understand that copyright has nothing to do with making money off of someone else's intellectual property. Copyright is about an artist being able to determine where and how their work will be seen or heard. I applaud your efforts to protect the plagiarised.
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    I think this site might help explain things for those that don't understand plagiarisim. As previously stated, the information doesn't have to be sold to be considered plagiarism.

    http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research...
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    Regarding the 'Diary Master's' response here - I did once email monitor@opendiaryplus.com regarding one user's breaking of the opendiary rules, and I never received any response, nor was any action taken against the user. So your pretence that you will do 'anything you can to stop' abuse is just that - a pile of crap.