The reason is simple: Plagiarism detection systems don’t detect who actually wrote the paper, just that the paper is unique compared to the other works it has seen. If an essay mill sells a truly unique paper to a student, then that paper will appear to be unique. End of story.

But are essay mills truly something to be worried about? Should educators be making essay mills a priority or worrying excessively about them? The answer is probably not though the “Why?” is much more complicated to answer.

The Resurgence of Essay Mills

Last month, I talked about how hired plagiarism has made a comeback and essay mills have been seeing new life due to better plagiarism detection and cheaper labor, in particular offshore.

While all of this is true, it’s also true that essay mills are not a new phenomenon. They’ve been advertising in the backs of magazines and newspapers long before there was an Internet.

However, as was also discussed in that article, it isn’t just essay mills that are resurging as a source for plagiarized content, it’s also freelancer sites, forums and more that are becoming places to obtain plagiarists-for-hire.

But just because a method of plagiarism is on the rise doesn’t mean that it’s effective or that it can’t be easily defeated. Essay mills have a lot of problems that limit their usefulness as plagiarism tools and their impact on academics.

Essay Mills Do Garbage Work

As I talked about in my article about in my article on industries with surprising content theft problems. Essay mills do garbage work.

Simply put, to attract customers essay mills have to churn out work quickly and cheaply while often talking about highly specialized subjects. As Dan Ariely found when he purchased a series of essay mill papers for a survey, the papers themselves were almost gibberish in many cases and even showed heavy signs of plagiarism.

While some essay mills probably offer decent work, there is so much garbage in the industry and little way to know which companies will provide good papers and which will provide bad ones. This is especially true since it can vary from topic to topic and author to author, as most essay mills employ a wide range of writers to fill requests.

This problem is furthered by the fact that essay mill authors aren’t (usually at least) in the class. They don’t know what the instructor wants and are limited to to guidelines set by the buyer (the student), which are usually limited in nature. There’s almost no way an essay mill can cheaply and quickly produce a great paper for a student, especially on an advanced assignment.

At best, buying a paper from an essay mill is like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun. The odds are against the cheater and the consequences for losing dire. Only a fool would play.

Even if a student is able to get a decent essay, it’s going to require a great deal of editing and revising to make it presentable so it isn’t as if a student can forward the essay mill paper directly to their instructor and expect an A. An essay mill is barely a shortcut at all, even when things work out well for the plagiarist.

Essay Mills Are Easily Defeated

But even if a student is able to a good essay mill that produces an “A” worthy paper, an instructor can easily defeat the plagiarism by taking simple steps such as being aware of the student’s writing style/capabilities and asking questions of a student to understand their knowledge level of the topic.

Simply put, no essay mill is a substitute for knowledge and that’s what instructors should be looking for.

However, that’s not nearly as effective as crafting pointed, detailed assignments that are unique and original. Essay assignments that ask students to compare things or write about personal experiences are much more difficult to fake than ones that simply deal with recalling information.

You can also craft assignments to limit resources that are available, such as requiring use of the classroom textbook, or require examples from in-class lectures.

In short, the less an assignment focuses on things that can be easily Googled, the better it is for preventing all types of plagiarism, including from essay mills.

Bottom Line

Are essay mills a problem for schools and universities? Yes. They can and do enable cheating and they have a negative impact on the education of all students, not just the plagiarists.

But that being said, essay mills aren’t the nuclear weapon that will defeat plagiarism detection and bring chaos to written assignments in the classroom. They’ve been around for decades and haven’t done so yet, they aren’t likely to take over now.

In fact, the increased competition among essay mills, especially on price and turnaround, seems to be driving quality down. While more and more students are turning to such sites, they most likely either aren’t turning in what they get (realizing it’s garbage), are receiving a poor grade for turning in shoddy work or are being caught as if they were a traditional plagiarist.

The much bigger threat, at least in the short run, is from students finding classmates to write papers for them. That classic tradition puts an end to a lot of the problems essay mills have, such as not knowing the instructor, the assignment, etc. and can reasonably assure high-quality work. Still, as mentioned above, crafting smart assignments and asking questions can help with this problem as well.

All in all, students who use essay mills for plagiarism, most likely, don’t come out much better than those who use Wikipedia. They usually just come out a great deal poorer and more frustrated.

Student Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

However, the answer wasn’t to publish a new set of guidelines, institute a new plagiarism checking service or even hold a new training session. According to Poynter, the response came in the form of a short, five-question quiz designed to test how well reporters understood attribution and how they handled difficult areas.

The goal of the quiz, which you can see here, is simple: To both determine which reporters may have misconceptions about attribution and to get reporters on record as knowing right from wrong.

According to the company’s director of community engagement, Steve Buttry, this method was chosen over more traditional means of handling a rise in plagiarism issues, such as holding staff meetings, to both ensure 100% attendance and to target the attention on reporters who need the most help.

Basically, the survey is designed to address how to correctly attribute material in five different scenarios and raise a lot of gray area questions such as how to use press releases, cite competitors and so forth. The survey is required of all staff of the company and those reporters who missed just one question are required to attend a training session on plagiarism and attribution.

But is this a good approach? It’s tough to say but it certainly is a novel one and one that other media companies are likely to mimic.

My Thoughts on the Quiz

All in all, looking through the quiz and trying it for myself, it certainly seemed to be a good summary of the issues a journalist might face in this area, at least as much as can be put in a 5 question survey.

However, the multiple choice survey seemed to be a bit too easy. The range of options always had a clearly best or at least safest answer. Even if I knew almost nothing about attribution I would be able to get the right answers just by making the safest choice possible.

The other problem, and one that the company admits, is that this quiz can’t weed out bad actors and people who know better but maliciously plagiarize. How many cases of journalism plagiarism are mistakes versus malicious remain to be seen, but this might help us get a better idea, especially if more cases of plagiarism pop up at the company.

In the end, this is a novel approach. I like how easy it is to get to all of the employees and the questions themselves are pretty good, if a bit easy to answer (at least to give the “safest” answer). Mostly though, it gets the reporters thinking and reengaged on this issue and, as was pointed out, gets them on record as knowing right from wrong.

While I’m unsure what impact it will have without other action, such as plagiarism spot checking, it will definitely be a useful case study to follow, especially over the next few years to see if the problem of plagiarism arises again at the company.

Quiz Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Pretty much anything you’d find in your spam folder would seem like a good candidate for content misuse, especially by spam bloggers. This includes topics like pharmaceuticals, pornography, SEO services, etc.

However, in talking with other content creators in a variety of industries, the problem of content misuse online is not limited to traditional spam-friendly keywords. In fact, many industries you wouldn’t expect problems from actually have rampant issues of content misuse including plagiarism of marketing copy, unauthorized reuse of blog posts, copied images and more.

WIth that in mind, here are just five of the industries I’ve had dealings with as part of my copyright and plagiarism consulting work that have surprised me with the amount of infringement sites within it have seen.

1. Law Offices / Legal Services

If there were one group that you would expect to know better than infringe copyright, it would be lawyers. Unfortunately, history has sown that to be not the case.

Plagairism and content theft by law offices is widespread and even gains semi-regularly media attention due to it’s nature.

Why it Happens: Law offices are often times just one or two attorneys and, maybe a paralegal or receptionist. In short, they are very small businesses without a lot of expertise in content writing and website development. Many contract out to third parties, often on a very small budget and other times attempt it themselves with no real expertise.

To further the problem, copyright is a very niche area of law and many lawyers don’t know a great deal about it, even as they are violating it.

2. Review Sites

Review sites run the gamut in terms of the topics they cover from candy sites, like long-time reader Cybele May, to electronics and beyond. However, nearly every review site seems to have a significant problem with its content being plagiarized, including sites built off of reader reviews.

Why it Happens: The problem is simple, for every product for sale one of the most popular search terms is for a reviews of it. Spammers have seized upon this as a great way to target popular but less-competitive keywords.

However, the problem is compounded by the fact both positive and negative reviews are often copied with and without attribution by people wanting to make a point about the product. Also, images taken of products for the review are also often lifted instead of using provided promotional photographs or taking new ones.

3. Financial Services

Though some financial services firms are already somewhat predictable targets for content theft with spam-friendly keywords such as mortgage and credit card being within the industry, the issue runs much deeper including a great deal of B2B misuse, in particular with smaller businesses.

Why it Happens: Financial services firms often have the same problem as law firms. They are often small businesses, just one or two people, and lack any real Web /copyright expertise. This includes accountants, debt consultation firms and more.

However, depending on the particular type of business, the barrier to entry may be much lower than with a law firm from a legal standpoint. This can open the floodgates for almost anyone to participate in the field, including more than a few plagiarists.

4. Gaming

The rapid rise in popularity of gaming has opened a floodgate to sites and blogs that want to talk about gaming and tap that new audience. It’s also created a slew of new companies, including many small startups, aimed at making, promoting, distributing, reviewing and talking about video games.

With this explosion has come a swath of allegations of content misuse, plagiarism and copyright infringement, ranging from plagiarism in video games themselves to re-writing reviews.

Why it Happens: I talked more about the reasons for the spike in plagiarism in video games in my previous article, but the issue goes well beyond just the games themselves. Already-embattled Ocean Marketing was hit with a series of plagiarism allegations and plagiarism among video game blogs also appears to be on the rise.

Simply put, the growth and expansion of the industry attracts new businesses of all types, good and bad, creating a climate ripe for content misuse.

5. Essay Mills

The old saying “There is no honor among thieves” holds true when it comes to essay mills. Students often turn to essay mills to get custom-written assignments that won’t be detected by traditional plagiarism checkers. However, as one survey showed, those essays are often plagiarized themselves from various sources. At least one such case of plagiarism ended up in a lawsuit.

Why it Happens: The problem is simple. For the price paid and the time given there is simply no way a paper mill can churn out a high-quality, plagiarism-free paper. Either the mill has to cheat, the quality has to be gibberish or both.

Yet just another reason why essay mills are a bad move for students looking for an easy way out.

Bottom Line

All in all, if you think plagiarism or content misuse issues are limited to a few sectors and you don’t have to think about it, you’re probably wrong. Remember, I got my start in this industry as a poet, a field of writing that highly values originality, so pretty much any industry and any site can be victimized by bad actors.

How you respond is up to you, but it’s importnat to understand that the risk is out there, that it can affect you and that there are ways to respond if you wish.

In the end, always remember that no industry is safe from plagiarism and content theft issues, so it pays to take a look at your site and your content specifically as every creator is different and every site is in a different position.

Panic Button Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

The reason for the problem is that most search tools, including image search tools, don’t actually look at image, they look at the text around it. So unless the title of your work or the file name remain the same, there isn’t much hope for spotting a duplicate via traditional means.

However, in 2008, Tineye changed the game by introducing an image-based image search engine that would fingerprint images found online and match them against files uploaded to their service.

But, while Tineye’s matching technology is and always has been great, it’s been limited by Tineye’s rather small database. While that database has grown over 2x since I first wrote about the service (currently at just over 2 billion images), it hasn’t kept pace with the images being uploaded to the Web (Photobucket alone has 9.5 billion images).

However, last year Google entered into the fray, adding the ability to search for images by uploading or linking to another one, as with Tineye. The feature, which was initially an extension of Google’s previous Similar Image Search function, wasn’t very successful at first. However, over time, it appears Google has gone a long way to improving the tool as, in a recent spate of tests, it drastically outperformed Tineye in finding matching images consistently.

So, for artists looking to find their images on the Web, there seems to be a new king in town and it’s the same one authors have been using for years.

How to Use Google Search By Image

The easiest way to use Google Search By Image is to install either the Firefox
or Chrome extension, which simply enables you to right click an image to search for it.

However, barring that, you can simply visit Google Image Search and click the camera icon in the search bar.

That will open up the window that prompts you to either upload an image from your computer or provide the URL for one already online.

After you submit your image, Google will present a set of results. However, rather than being a “grid” like a regular Google Image Search, the results are ordred, first by exact matches and then by similar ones.

For example, I uploaded my recent image of the cover of Ocean’s Donkey Kong unlicensed port (from my recent article on video game plagiarism) and Google returned not only my article but other images containing that exact image.

In some cases, if there are multiple versions of the images but at different sizes, Google may suggest you look for alternate sizes of the image, as it did with the Limbo of the Lost cover from the same article.

If so it’s worth clicking the link to get a good breakdown of the other sizes (and places) the image appears. However, the real results, especially for images that have been widely copied, are below and you can see them by going through the various pages, as you would with a regular Google search.

But while Google Search By Image is cetainly easy to use, how well does it stack up against Tineye? The answer, is very well.

Comparison Tests

To test the two services head-to-head, I decided to have them both look for five different images used in recent articles on Plagiarism Today. These images are all either freely-available stock photos or are widely-used cover art for video games or records.

With that in mind, here’s the results of the tests:

Test 1: Angry Farm Image

Tineye Results: 1
Google Results: 558 (about)

Test 2: Generic Chart Image

Tineye Results: 4
Google Results: 555 (about)

Test 3: Facepalm Image

Tineye Results: 21
Google Results: 850 (about)

Test 4: Skull on Grave Image

Tineye Results: 1
Google Results: 3 (Not counting matching “Very Similar” results)

Note: Google’s “Very Similar” results were useless in this case as it just found other black and white photos without much regard for things that looked like the original.

Test 5: Bing Crosby White Christmas

Tineye Results: 173
Google Results: 883 (about)

Please note that the greatest limitation of this test is that I had to rely on both search engines to self-report how many matching images they had. However, I checked several pages of results with each test to make sure that the results were as accurate as possible.

Clearly though, the winner is Google, which found, in many cases, over 100x more matching images than Tineye. My suspicion is that, while Tineye’s matching algorithm is better (much fewer false positives), Google’s large database simply makes up the ground and then some, making it a much more valuable tool for image detection.

However, this doesn’t mean that Google’s perfect, there are still a few concerns and problems I have with it.

Limitations of Google

The biggest problem with Google is that, currently, there is no way to do a bulk search for a lot of images nor is there a way to do a recurring search. Though Google has an API for its Google Image Search, it doesn’t appear to work with Search by Image. Likewise, Google Alerts doesn’t allow you to create an alert for a Google Image Search at all, text or by image.

In short, there are no tools to make such searches easier and there aren’t likely to be any in the near future.

Meanwhile, Tineye has a very robust and well-established API that enables toe construction of just such tools.

Still, given how simple it is to use Google Search By Image, even with having to do the searches by hand, it’s still faster and easier than most methods, it’s still free and, in the end, just more effective, even more so than many paid-for tools.

There’s little reason not to integrate Google Search By Image into your checks and to use it at least some in your searches.

Bottom Line

When Google first launched this product, I tested it and found it to be less-than-useful. The algorithm was too flawed (based on the earlier and more limited “similar” search feature) and the number of false positives simply too high. Clearly, Google has made some great strides in the last six months and pushed this service to the point where it’s database and accuracy combine to make it the most useful image search tool available to the public, especially for free.

In the end, while I like Tineye as a company and as an offering, their database is too small and too limited to compete right now. Hopefully though, this competition will motivate both companies to improve their offerings and create a set of solutions that make things much easier on photographers and artists everywhere.

Plagiarism Today is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA license. This means that you are free to copy and reuse content on Plagiarism Today as long as you attribute the article (with link if possible and appropriate) and that any derivative works you make based upon the article are licensed under the same terms.

This license is for both commercial and non-commercial use.

Please bear in mind that you can do this without asking for permission. Though I appreciate all of you who have written to ask my permission and I understand wanting to be doubly careful when dealing with a site dedicated to plagiarism issues (I know I would be), one of the goals I had with this site was to educate as many people and give out as much information as possible. That is something I believe this license helps me achieve and I wish to encourage the content to be distributed as freely as I can within reason.

The only caveat is that the images that are displayed with the articles are licensed under different terms. Though most are either screen grabs from relevant sites, logos or images from free stock photo sites such as Morguefile and sxc.hu, some are licensed just to Plagiarism Today. So, while the text is available for copying, please use caution with the images. The same is true for comments, which are copyrighted by the people who submitted them.

Bear in mind that I made this choice years ago because I believed it was right for myself and for this content. I don’t believe it is right for all content nor will I use the same license for every work I create. Part of being smart about copyright means looking at your work, your situation and your goals to find the right license for you.

Still, with Plagiarism Today I believe strongly, as I did when I first made the choice years ago, that this is the right move for this site and the goals I have with it.

Plagiarism Today Elsewhere on the Web

Finally, there’s also been some confusion as to where you can get access to Plagiarism Today content elsewhere on the Web, in particular what accounts are used for what purposes.

When it comes to social media, I keep two kinds of accounts, hybrid site/personal ones and strictly site-related ones. The hyrbid ones will include most site news but will also have personal updates from me. Site ones are strictly site-related and will contain no personal tweets or updates.

Here’s where you can find the various accounts:

Hybrid (Personal/Site):

Twitter
Facebook (Subscribe available)
Google+

Site Only

Facebook
Google+

There is no site-only Twitter feed at this time as I’ve had issues in the past with RSS posting. If there’s interest in such an account, I will create it.

All in all, if you want just the site updates, you can add the site-only social media feeds. If you don’t mind my bad jokes and personal postings, you can add any of the hybrid ones.

Hopefully that clears up those two issues and I return you to your regularly scheduled posting on Monday! Have a great weekend!

Pirates have a long history of adapting and evolving to respond to new threats and challenges. Whether it’s a matter of adapting an existing system or creating an entirely new one, where there has been a will to obtain illegal copies of files, there’s been a way.

But while the old means haven’t truly died off, people still buy bootleg DVDs and trade files on Usenet after all, the new methods become more popular and become the focus of both pirates and anti-pirates alike. But these changes do more than provide new ways to access the same files, they actually change the nature of piracy and how people approach it. This, in turn, changes how it affects content creators and how, if they choose, they fight it.

While the potential impacts are literally too many to count, here are five of the bigger changes in piracy and what they likely mean for you.

1. Long Tail Piracy is Growing

With traditional P2P networks and Bittorrent trackers, one of the limitations was that there had to be some pretty significant interest in a work before piracy of it was practical. If there wasn’t at least a certain number of people interested in sharing the file, you probably couldn’t find it. As such, for a creator, piracy was almost a good problem to have as it was a sign of popularity.

However, with the shift to cyberlockers, it’s practical to share fies with much less interest. A link on a cyberlocker site can just as easily be downloaded by one person as a million.

The Impact: Niche content that often escaped being traded illegally online is now being swapped freely. Smaller and niche content creators need to look harder at piracy issues and decide if and how they want to respond.

2. Moving Away from the U.S.

Though the U.S. certainly hasn’t had the most piracy-friendly laws for services hosted in it, it’s domains (.com, .net and .org) have been popular among pirates and U.S. hosts, noted for being cheap, reliable and close to the bulk of the target audience, have been favorites among such sites.

However, the recent domain seizures and the shuttering of Megaupload has pirates rethinking this. Not only has The Pirate Bay moved to a .se domain, but other sites are bailing out of the country. New ones are less likely to start up within it.

The Impact: Most of the world has a reasonably strong notice and takedown system and, as the recent seizure of ex.ua in Ukraine shows, there aren’t too many true safe havens for pirates in the world. However, enforcing copyright may become more difficult, especially with sites that move into unfriendly territory. Regardless, it’s going to require becoming more familiar with working within a greater number of countries.

3. Appearance of Legitimacy

Pirate-friendly sites have routinely made claims that they are “just like Google” or other legitimate services. However, such sites have made a greater effort in recent months and years to promote this image, claiming to comply with DMCA notices, even when they don’t (as with Megaupload) and put on a more “corporate” face.

Much of this is in hopes of keeping law enforcement and attorneys at bay, but it’s also part of an effort to appeal to other businesses and consumers to secure advertisers and direct payments.

The Impact: This can create a sense of confusion among some consumers, who at least at times, think that the services are legitimate. Though someone who visits The Pirate Bay isn’t likely a lost customer, someone who Googles for a product and forks money over to a cyberlocker site for an illegal download may well be.

4. Spam, Spam and More Spam

Though spammers have always targeted pirate-related keywords and continue to do so, those efforts seem to have been accelerated in recent months or years as various services use spam keywords to target almost any work you would want to download.

If you search for a work in Google the results are going to be cluttered with fake “download” results that do any number of unscrupulous things including tricking customers to pay for a file that isn’t there, obtain information for identity theft or simply cram more spam advertisements at the viewer.

The Impact: This, in some part, mitigates the first and third changes. Finding pirated content is harder, especially on long tail items, because of these spam results. While the unethical and illegal things they do certainly don’t justify it, this is possibly the only time spammers have ever helped legitimate content creators.

5. Mirrored Uploading/Multiuploading

Finally, one trend that has been growing in recent years is the increased use of tools that automatically upload one file to multiple services. With these tools, one user can upload one file and have it appear on a dozen or more cyberlocker services.

While these tools aren’t new and have been popular in some circles for a long time, many hubs are starting to demand their usage to improve reliable access to files and their use among pirates is likely to grow.

The Impact: Obviously, this is going to make it much more difficult to remove works from the Web. Rather than dealing with one infringing copy, you may be dealing with a dozen or more. This means more work and, in some cases, more expense.

Bottom Line

On one hand, the future when dealing with piracy seems pretty bleak. Pirates are targeting different types of works and doing so in ways that is more difficult to stop. However, there are also reasons to be hopeful. Not only do the techniques for removing content remain, overall, fairly effective but new business models are being created by legitimate companies that may help compete with piracy and deal it a stronger blow.

All in all, these steps are just the next evolution in piracy and it’s an evolution that’s been going on for a long as there have been copyrighted works.

Piracy has been a part of being a content creator since day one and it isn’t going to go away. However, with time and effort, it may become more of a nuisance than a major concern and that, in the long run, should be the end goal. Not the elimination of piracy, but the mitigation of it.

Pirate Flag Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

According to many webmasters, the DiggBar was an attempt to steal search engine benefit by having all outgoing links point to digg.com rather than the source domain of the content. It also created questions about potential advertising in the Diggbar and possible visitor interference by encouraging people to link to the Digg version of the story rather than original page.

After an outcry from webmasters, Digg scaled back the use of the Diggbar so search engines and non-logged-in users wouldn’t see it. A year later, in 2010, Digg announced they were killing it completely as part of an overhaul of the site.

All seemed quiet from Digg on this issue, that is, until last month with they announced a new Facebook social reader that would include a similar frame. While, at first, it was just for logged-in users, a week later Digg announced they were extending it to all users, logged in or not.

However, this time there’s been no great outcry from webmasters. In fact, I only learned about the DiggBar’s return last week on accident when I visited Digg out of curiosity.

The DiggBar has returned but does anyone care? If not, what makes this one different?

The Fall of Digg, the Rebirth of DiggBar

The removal of the Diggbar in 2010 came at the same time Digg was re-launching its site. However, the relaunch, dubbed “v4″ was an unmitigated disaster, wildly unpopular with visitors and regarded as a community killer.

Digg’s traffic and audience plummeted. Though initially the drop was blamed on the removal of Diggbar reducing the number of pageviews, the trend continued well past the loss of Diggbar. Other social news sites, most notably Reddit, rose in prominence at the same time.

According to Alexa (admittedly not the most reliable source) Digg traffic stabilized some in 2011 but has not grown and seems to have continued to drop (albeit more slowly) according to some metrics. Either way, Digg remains well below it’s pre-v4 traffic levels.

Digg is clearly not the poster child of social news that it once was and it appears that this partnership with Facebook, which is from where this new DiggBar arises, is an attempt to right the ship. However, if Alexa is to be remotely trusted, the early indications are that it isn’t helping much, if at all.

However, that doesn’t mean webmasters can or should ignore it as some things simply haven’t changed at all.

Sympathy for the Devil

To put it bluntly, DiggBar was wrong in 2009 and it is just as wrong in 2012. Not only does it raise serious SEO, copyright and trademark issues, but it also comes with ethical problems, namely whether Digg should pad its own traffic stats and extend its feature set at the risk of harming the webmasters they are supposedly linking to?

However, despite the fact the new DiggBar raises all of the same issues as the one in 2012 did, there’s been almost no outcry over it. In fact, the “frictionless” integration with Facebook has been more controversial than the bar itself and even that controversy has been fairly muted, largely because Facebook has many partners other than Digg in the program (though most don’t use frames).

This lack of outcry is due in part to the fact that framing simply isn’t the hot button issue it was three years ago. However, a likely more important factor is that the Digg that existed in 2009 is not the one that exists in 2012.

Webmasters simply don’t care about Digg. The Digg buttons are almost all gone, talk of the “Digg Effect” has died down and no one is paying much attention to what Digg is doing, good or bad.

This is a large part of why, despite Digg doing largely the exact same thing it did in 2009, almost no one has taken notice. In 2009, the DiggBar was mentioned in articles Wired, PC World and Mashable just to name three, the new one has barely been mentioned at all outside of its connection with Facebook.

The question isn’t so much “Why isn’t the world taking notice?” but “Should it?”

Standing Up to Diggbar 2

To be clear, Digg is still a very large site that receives millions of visits per month and is capable of driving a great deal of traffic and search engine reputation to a site. As such, there is still plenty the new DiggBar can do to either harm webmasters or at least limit the benefit they get from what should a great deal of exposure.

However, as the recent SOPA/PIPA protests showed, gathering a large protest against something requires a feeling of importance and Digg, simply put, doesn’t feel important. As such, the best thing concerned webmasters can do is not just write about it, but also contact Digg directly.

We can’t and shouldn’t expect the same level of protests we saw in 2009. The climate, in particular as it relates to Digg, is just too different.

Fortunately though, one way the climate hasn’t changed is in the wider acceptance of framed toolbars. The first DiggBar did not start a trend. Though some other sites do use toolbars in a limited capacity, such as Hootsuite and StumbleUpon, the use isn’t widespread nor does it appear to be growing.

In short, Digg didn’t start a trend in 2009 and it isn’t likely to start one now.

Bottom Line

If I worked for Digg, I wouldn’t be relieved that the new DiggBar escaped controversy, I’d be worried. The ethics and morals around framing have not changed drastically in the past three years, as seen by the lack of growth in the technique. As such, the big change has to relate to Digg itself and going from being the center of the universe to being ignored is not a positive change.

But even though there isn’t an outcry, my hope is that Digg will, once again, do the right thing and kill the DiggBar a second time. It hurts the websites that it links to and it seems to be done to implement a social reading service few want.

DiggBar may be back from the dead, but it’s time to rebury it and, this time, make it for good.

However, a recent trend in gaming news has made that all but impossible.

Plagiarism has become a hot-button issue in video game industry in recent months and years. This interest is in large part due to the rapid growth of the independent developer scene, which itself has been enabled by a combination of digital distribution and platforms such as iOS, Android, online gaming, Facebook and even Steam where smaller projects can often find an audience.

With so many companies competing in the same space, often with such similar ideas, allegations of plagiarism are almost certain to follow.

However, is there more to this recent uptick in plagiarism-related news in the video game world? The answer is yes, but to see why we have to look back in the history of video games and learn how we got where we are today.

A Brief History of Videogame Plagiarism

Video games, as with most new creative industries, began with something of a dubious history on matters of copyright and plagiarism. In the 70s and 80s, video games were so simple and straightforward, usually due to limited computing power, that it was trivial to create clones of games for other systems. Many of the most popular games of the early years of gaming such as Pong, Frogger (see right), Arkanoid, Centepede, etc. were cloned heavily or were clones themselves.

This “wild west” mentality was partially fueled by a copyright system that didn’t respect video games (or other works of computer software). Though Congress convened the Commission on New Technology Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) in 1974, which ruled that computer software did qualify for copyright protection, the definition of a computer program was not codified into law until 1980. However, even with computer software appearing in the law itself, without a great deal of precedent, there was still a lot of debate as to how far that protection went.

As such, unlicensed ports and clones remained an industry standard right up until the video game industry crash of 1983, when two things changed for the industry.

1. Closure of Many Game Studios: The crash, which was brought on largely by the glut of bad and hastily-made games, forced the closure of many of the studios that were engaged in copycat behavior.
2. Improved Lockout Control: Beginning with the Nintendo Entertainment System, console manufacturers used robust lockout technology to prevent unlicensed 3rd-party developers from producing games on their platform, further restricting the behavior.

As such, in the mid-80s, the industry began to mature and unlicensed clones/ripoffs became less and less common. One interesting example involves the company Ocean, which released an unlicensed version of Donkey Kong in 1983 (see left) but released a licensed one in 1986 (assumedly after being forgiven by Nintendo).

Video game plagiarism remained an issue, but instead of it being focused on clones and unlicensed ports, it became more focused on gameplay mechanics and other non-copyrightable elements. Many of the genres of games we know of today were spawned by widespread “plagiarism” of good elements from previous games to form an industry standard.

However, wholesale plagiarism didn’t exactly disappear. In 2008, for example, the game Limbo of the Lost became the poster child for video game plagiarism after it was discovered that the game, a point and click adventure, used artwork from other, more popular, games such as Oblivion and Thief 3. The game developers blamed the issue on outsourced artwork and the game was withdrawn.

But as big as the Limbo of the Lost scandal was, it has been the emerging market for games on mobile platforms and Facebook that’s been where much of the attention has been lately. Zynga, for example, sued and settled with Brazillian game maker Vostu over copyright infringement in Vostu’s alleged plagiarism of Zynga’s Facebook games.

However, Zynga itself has been in the spotlight as a the alleged plagiarist as the three-person game studio Nimblebit drew attention to similarities between Zynga’s game “Dream Heights” to Nimblebit’s earlier work “Tiny Tower”. There are also allegations that Farmville, Zynga’s most popular Facebook game, is a rip off of the earlier game FarmTown. In fact, just today another developer, Buffalo Studios, has filed similar accusations to Nimblebit, saying that Zynga ripped off their game Bingo Blitz to make Zynga Bingo.

All of this comes to a crescendo with news today that developer Spry Fox is suing competitor 6Waves LOLAPPS claiming that 6Waves’ game Yeti Town is a plagiarism and an infringement of their game Triple Town.

What’s clear in all of this is that video game plagiarism is back in the spotlight and now with more than 30 years of litigation history, it’s become a much bigger legal issue than before.

Why Video Game Plagiarism is On the Rise

The video game marketplace today most closely resembles the marketplace from the early 1980s. Though the console market is very consolidated and controlled, the emerging markets of social networking, online (IE: Flash-based), mobile and direct-download have more in common with the 1982 market than any other point in video game history.

There are few, if any, lockouts to limit 3rd-party development, much of the development is taking place in countries where video game copyright laws are largely untested and there is a tremendous glut of systems and smaller developers to write games for them.

As such, we’re seeing a very similar climate toward remakes and clones. For every successful Facebook or iOS game, there are dozens of clones and imitators that often try to push the boundaries on what is allowed under copyright. For example, Angry Birds has countless clones such as Angry Farm and Angry Animals just to name two.

The frightening part though is that history has shown us that, when the video game market reaches this kind of glut there is Hell to pay and it isn’t just the plagiarists who are hurt. However, tackling this issue is extremely difficult, largely due to the nature of video games themselves.

The Problem with Video Game Plagiarism

Video game plagiarism, both from an ethical and a legal standpoint, are tough issues to crack. A big part of the problem is that all video games borrow from earlier creations.

For example, if you’re playing a first-person shooter on a PC, most likely the game is going to use “WASD” controls. Those are a standard today but that wasn’t always the case. For example, Duke Nukem 3D used the arrow keys by default (PDF). Did the second game to use “WASD” plagiarize the first?

Part of this is because there is no “language” of video games. If I sit down to a book that’s in my language, I know that it will be written in English, the words will be written left to right and that it will likely be structured in chapters. If it’s a fictional work, it will likely be in a three-act structure with a beginning, a middle and a conclusion.

Video games, however, don’t have this common language, at least not one that’s as established as with literature, music, etc. It’s difficult to say what elements will be or are already common with all games because the language of the medium is still being developed and it’s changing with every year and every genre.

Still, much of the copying seems to go well beyond merely taking ideas, mechanics or foundational elements. Often times involving source code, artwork, sounds and other copyrightable elements.

And that, in turn, is where the law comes in. Copyright law makes it very clear that expressions of ideas are copyrightable and that includes many of the elements that make up video games. This is why we’re likely to see more and more video game plagiarism cases end up in court, not because of the fluctuating ethical standards of plagiarism in the medium, but due to the more concrete copyright rules surrounding them.

However, it’s in the gray area between what the law expressly forbids and what ethically feels wrong where many clones, remakes and ports will reside. That is where the debate is going to take place and the industry is going to have to set its own rules about what is right and wrong, hopefully before the flood of imitators and knock-offs destroy the video game market a second time.

Bottom Line

I don’t expect the issue of video game plagiarism to go away any time soon. The video game industry is growing rapidly and the lower barriers of entry makes this a market that will both get more crowded and draw in more and more unscrupulous developers who simply want to push the boundaries of law and ethics in the field.

While this boom is great for consumers and businesses alike, it could be dangerous as the crash of 1983 showed. For the industry to continue thriving long-term, it needs to find a balance between the wild west days of the early 80s and the lockdown days from the 90s.

Though some of that effort is certainly going to come from the courts, as cases like the Yeti Town one likely will show, much of it is going to have to come from the industry itself, with a code of ethics and best practices that keeps the industry moving forward.

How the industry can do this quickly is tough to say. Other creative industries had decades, even centuries to build their agreed-upon rules. This industry may be looking at a crisis within years if it can’t find an appropriate balance.

In the meantime, I think I have a tower defense game calling me.

Defending against scraping, however, is incredibly difficult. Though some plugins and tolls like Bad Behavior for WordPress and simple blocking of bots can help, they aren’t perfect or complete solutions and in some cases, can deeply drain both your time and your site’s resources.

However, the team over at Distil thinks they have found a better way. By acting as an intermediary between the Web and your site, they claim to not only be able to filter out most scrapers and infringers, but also to speed up your site and improve its performance.

How it works is by combining the their anti-scraping and bad bot technology with a robust content delivery network, this enables them to not only filter out threats to your site, but also serve much of your static content quickly and from servers located nearest to your visitors.

But is Distil worth the time and money? I decided to give it a trial and see what I found.

What is Distil?

The closest comparison one can make to Distil is Cloudflare as both use DNS changes to better protect and speed up your site.

With Distil (or Cloudflare) you edit your DNS settings, which can usually be found at your domain registrar or in your site’s control panel, to direct visitors not to your server, but to a custom nameserver from Distil. Visitors will then query Distil for your site, which first filters out any malicious users and then delivers any content it can from its servers, which are spread all across the world. Anything it can’t deliver, it queries from your server and then provides to the user directly.

The end result, if all goes well, is that most of the content of your site is delivered directly from Distil’s servers, which should be faster than coming from your own, and most malicious users, including scrapers, are filtered out before they ever reach your site or your content. Best of all, the process is completely invisible to end users (other than the potential speed increase).

To find out, if it works as advertisers, I switched Plagiarism Today over to Distil last weekend and, as of this writing, have been using it for the better part of a week.

Setting Up and Using Distil

To start using Distil, you have to first sign up for an account and have it activated. Once that’s done, you’ll be given an address that, using your DNS settings, you will direct both your www.domain.com and domain.com (as well as any other subdomains you want to redirect).

Then, after the DNS servers propagate, you should be using Distil’s service. From there, you can log into the Distil dashboard, which lets you configure a variety of options including:

• Site Acceleration Settings (if available)
• Rate Limiting
• Blocking Known Violators
• Blocking Bad User Agents
• Browser Integrity Checks
• Filter By Country
• Block Bad Referrers
• Whitelist/Blacklist
• WWW/Non-WWW Routing

You also get a bevy of statistical data including information about the number of unique sessions, the total number of requests, total human requests and the total bot requests. Bot requests are then further broken down by the number of search engine requests (which are always allowed) and the number of blocked requests (as well as the reasons for being blocked). The blocked bots are then further broken down by bot type, IP address and more.

The result is that you get an overall perspective of what’s going on with your site, both in terms of human traffic but, more directly, the security threats you’re facing.

But does that make Distil worth trying? A lot of it depends on your needs and what you’re looking to get out of it.

The Good of Distil

The one thing that immediately struck me about Distil is the granular level of control it gives you over security issues. Though Cloudflare offers a good deal of site security, it’s focused on spammers and attackers and only lets you set a broad level of security (low, medium, high or basically off). With Distil, you can set individual options to your liking both to target the threats most relevant to your site and, more importantly, make sure you don’t interfere with legitimate users.

Over the past few days I’ve had no reports of legitimate visitors being hassled by Distil, something that was an occasional problem with Cloudflare, especially for visitors from outside the U.S. and Europe.

So, even though Distil did not block as many bots as Cloudflare (likely because I have the security settings for most features turned down or off), it did a better job staying out of the way and still seemed to stop the most egregious offenders. Over time, I plan on slowly increasing the settings to see if they block more and continue to be non-intrusive.

Beyond security, my first concern after switching to Distil was that my site might take a performance hit. Having been a Cloudflare user for many months, I was used to the power of a robust CDN. However, I did a series of tests both before and after the change and found that Distil was usually slightly faster than Cloudflare, often shaving off 30% of the site’s loading time.

Compare these two example results, first before:

And then after:

(Note: While this example isn’t an apples-to-apples test due to differing endpoints, the results were consistent regardless of endpoint. Also, obviously there were other changes made in the four days between the tests, though no major alterations, frontend or back, were made.)

Finally, the support team at Distil is, simply put, the best of any company I’ve worked with. They answered every question I had very promptly, usually within 15 minutes and it didn’t seem to matter what time of the day I was asking it. This enabled me both to get my site set up quickly with Distil despite some confusion and questions and deal with an issue with Google Analytics (that turned out to be my own fault).

All in all, Distil did a good job in providing granular security control, a site performance boost and great support.

The Problems with Distil

The biggest initial problem with Distil is that, in its current form, it is not very simple to use. Not only do you have to wait for your account to be activated by a human, but the process of switching over your DNS is not as straightforward as Cloudflare.

If you aren’t comfortable working with DNS and aren’t familiar with how to edit CNAME and A records, the process is going to be intimidating. Sadly, unlike Cloudflare, there isn’t a great deal of hand holding unless you contact support. While I agree with Distil that’s better to not hand over total DNS control to a third party, as you have to do with Cloudflare, it’s also the much more difficult route for the user.

Another issue I have with Distil is the current pricing structure. The free account, which does not have content acceleration, offers only 5 GB of traffic per month, an amount even a modest blogger will likely blow through quickly. A site Plagiarism Today’s size fits (barely) under the cap for the small account, which offers 50 GB of transfer for $29 per month. However, Cloudflare’s free plan allows for unlimited traffic and it’s pro account, which offers additional statistics and monitoring, is only $20 per month. Other CDNs, such as MaxCDN, charge only $50 for 1 TB (1000 GB) of data.

Distil told me that they are considering restructuring their pricing in the coming weeks, a move that, most likely, will help with this problem.

For now at least, Distil is a terrible deal as CDN though its security features may help to make it more compelling to webmasters concerned about scraping and content misuse.

Finally, Distil, obviously, won’t be able to help with at least some kinds of scraping. RSS scraping likely won’t be blocked unless the bot doing it is already in the system and it is unclear just how many are. However, if you know the bot you can add it yourself in your control panel. Also, any human copying won’t be blocked because the system is designed precisely to allow humans to access your site.

Despite these limitations, there’s still a lot of webmasters who would likely benefit from Distil, even if that number could be a great deal larger down the road.

Bottom Line

Distil isn’t perfect. It’s a new company and it’s product certainly has its share of flaws. Right now, it’s aimed at a fairly niche market of webmasters who are technically savvy, want a great deal of granular control over their site’s security and are willing to pay extra to make it happen.

However, with some changes to its setup procedure, pricing and control panel, it could become a compelling option for many more sites.

In short, Distil is going to be a company to watch in the coming months and years. As it refines its tools and pricing, it could become a major force for helping content creators protect their work.

In the meantime though, other webmasters just wanting a CDN to improve their site’s performance will, most likely, want to look up other solutions, such as Cloudflare and MaxCDN as they are significantly cheaper and, in the case of Cloudflare, provides better analytics, easier setup and at some decent, if simplified, security features.

Still, if you’re in Distil’s niche, which is likely to grow, I can see why it would be a very powerful solution to a complex problem.

The cyberlocker scene, for the lack of a better word, is a bloodbath and it doesn’t show signs of letting up in the immediate future.

However, for right now, here’s a sample of what’s going on as of today, January 24th.

(Please note that this list is the most complete I can make it, if I don’t provide a particular link for a claim, I got the information from the above Torrentfreak article or the comments. Leave further sites to list in the comments and I will add them to the list.)

Shut Down

• x7.to
• Uploadbox
• PDFCHM
• Enterupload (link)
• Minichan (Disabled upload service)

Stopping 3rd Party Sharing

• Filesonic
• Fileserve
• Filejungle
• Uploadstation

Widespread Banning and/or Deletion (Reported)

• Hotfile
• Mediafire (link)
• Filepost
• Library.nu
• Oron

Ending Affiliate Program (Rewards for Uploaders)

• 4shared
• Filesonic
• Fileserve
• VideoBB
• VideoXer
• FileJungle
• UploadStation
• FilePost

Blocking US IP Addresses

• uploaded.to

What’s clear from this ever-growing list is that the cyberlocker scene is in full-on panic mode. The shuttering of Megaupload and the arrests of its owner and employees has shaken the industry deeply. Only two sites, Mediafire and Rapidshare, have remained truly defiant saying that they are legitimate businesses not built on the backs of piracy (though, as the list above shows, Mediafire has apparently been involved in some mass-deletions).

So what does this shakeup mean for the cyberlocker scene and, more importantly, for you both as a user and a content creator who may have been infringed using one of these services? The answers are still being settled but there are a few things we can be certain of now.

What’s Happening to the Cyberlockers?

Over the past few years, the cyberlocker scene has grown by leaps and bounds. Again, acccording to Torrentfreak, in August of 2011, 7 of the 10 largest file sharing sites were cyberlockers, including four that were larger than The Pirate Bay. However, these were just the tip of the iceberg as the cyberlocker scene had also grown wildly in the number of sites with literally hundreds of smaller and often fly-by-night competitors opening and closing.

This growth was propelled by affiliate programs that rewarded uploaders for files that were downloaded m large number of times. While it didn’t matter what the file was, meaning it could be a legitimate file, the most popular content on these services tended to be infringing content, in particular from major copyright holders. These programs helped not only ensure a steady stream of incoming files to share, but a built-in promotion engine that drew links to these sites.

Though some of these sites have attempted to be as legitimate as possible, many, if not most, attempted to straddle the line between what was legal and illegal. As I pointed out in my previous article on Megauploads DMCA policies, this would often involve deceptive tactics to avoid fully removing infringing work, not banning repeat infringers and more according to the indictment.

However, with the closure of Megaupload, the practices of the industry are under a very intense microscope. After all, Megaupload was not just another file sharing service, it was the leader at the time. This has left many of the other services to wonder if they might be next.

The problem is that, all we have against Megaupload is an indictment, not a court ruling. Without a ruling, there’s no way to know what, if anything, Megaupload did that was actually illegal. As such, the other sites are merely guessing as to what they need to do to stay out of the crosshairs of the FBI and other government agencies.

This, in turn, is causing a period of great turmoil where it seems to be “every man for himself” in the industry and everyone is doing what they think is best for their site and their business.

What This Means for Cyberlocker Users

If you’re a user of cyberlocker sites, whether for legitimate or unlawful purposes, the immediate future is one of great turmoil. Even the services that don’t appear to be affected right now are, almost certainly, paying much closer attention to things behind the scenes and will be working more actively to address copyright issues. Likewise, many others are still likely getting legal advice and may be making decisions over the next week or two.

In short, these are mostly just the sites that made immediate reactions, other changes and shifts are likely to follow.

While the situation will settle down some in the coming weeks, there won’t be any real resolution or stability until the Megaupload case produces some precedent, offering some practical guidance to similar sites.

In the meantime, these sites know they are under the gun of various government agencies around the world and that their file sharing scene is very much vulnerable to government action.

What This Means for Content Creators

For content creators, large and small, who are working to get unlawful content off of cyberlocker and other file sharing sites, you’ll most likely find that the companies behind these sites are a bit more cooperative than usual. Not only are they proactively deleting infringing content in many cases, but I expect most will pay closer attention to their takedown processes.

The longer-term impact is going to depend on what happens with the Megaupload case once it reaches court. Given the resources available to Dotcom and his company, it seems likely that they will put up a good fight. Even if they end up losing, any points they win on could become green lights for the rest of the industry.

However, in the mean time, we are going to see a divide in this industry, or rather, the sharpening of an existing divide. There’s going to be a growing division between the sites that work to remain legal and those that openly flout the law. We are already seeing this somewhat with the building of a cyberlocker by supporters of Anonymous and we’re likely to see others jump in as well.

Simply put, as Dotcom proved, the money is simply too good to stay away and others will inevitably jump in while taking extra precautions to avoid Megaupload’s fate. In that regard, the cyberlocker industry will largely mirror Bittorrent sites, which followed a same pattern following a series of Bittorrent raids and seizures in the early-to-mid 2000s.

In short, if you’re planning a major anti-piracy campaign that involves working with cyberlockers, now is likely the best time to get started.

Bottom Line

To be clear, this is not the death of cyberlockers, not for legitimate uses and not for piracy. While it’s true that methods of swapping files have come in and out of vogue over the years, the old methods are still around. People currently trade files regularly on Usenet and even buy bootleg DVDs, there’s no reason why this method of file sharing will go away.

The only thing that’s going to push it into the background is a different method of sharing content that is designed to address the issues with cyberlockers. While there’s nothing on the immediate horizon, as the Napster shutdown showed, a new solution is never far behind. So, even if cyberlockers are fundamentally weakened to the point of near-uselessness, it will only be the calm before the next storm.

The best thing any content creator can do is not look at what happened yesterday but focus on what’s going on today and what will likely be going on tomorrow. That’s the only way to get even remotely ahead of this never-ending curve.

Panic Button Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com