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!

Though I’ve kept up regular posting all month, I’ve reached the point where it’s definitely crunch time and I can’t maintain both the posting schedule here, client work and haunt preparations. There’s a lot to do before Friday night and I need to spend less time on a keyboard and more time with a paintbrush.

So, starting tomorrow, I’ll be largely taking off from normal PT duties. I’ll still be doing the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show at 5 PM ET tomorrow and posting it Friday, but there will be no 3 Count columns and no regular posts until Monday, when I’ll have my final “Creepy Copyright” segment, this one focusing on great public domain horror movies to check out on Halloween night.

Everything should return to normal come Tuesday, November 1st though I may decide to recover that day and just come back on the 2nd.

In the meantime, enjoy a brief respite from Plagiarism Today and enjoy your Halloween!

The article takes a look at the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defense Minister who has had his Doctorate revoked and may lose his job over allegations he plagiarized his dissertation. The article compares attitudes toward plagiarism in Germany to those in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The article, which appeared in the international edition, was written by D.D. Guttenplan and does a great job looking at many of the intricacies and complexities surrounding plagiarism, especially on the global scene. It’s a great article and one well worth reading.

On that note though, a big thanks goes to Mr. Guttenplan for including me in the article and for taking such an in-depth look at this very thorny subject, and one many newspapers and reporters shy away from…

The list includes dozens of other great blogs such as ReadWriteWeb, Boing Boing, Mashable and their number one on the list, The Inquisitr.

All in all, it’s a great list of blogs and I’m happy to be among such great names. A big thanks goes to the team at Regator for the honor and for compiling the list. There’s a lot of great blogs on there, including many on my RSS list and a few that I’m going to have to add.

Most importantly though, a big thanks to all the readers and supporters of Plagiarism Today. You helped make 2010 a banner year for the site and here’s to an even more exciting 2011!

I will be joined by a variety a slew of heavy-hitters in the tech field as they talk about everything from why video games suck to cyberwarfare.

As usual when I attend such an event, I’ll be reporting on it live, tweeting out notes and images over my Twitter account so feel free to follow along with the action there.

Also, as usual, with permission from the conference organizers, I will be posting the slides of my presentation online for everyone and licensing it under a Creative Commons License. So, expect that sometime either later this week or early next.

In other site news, I will also be resuming the 3 Count column tomorrow and will be keeping limited office hours during the down times.

Finally, if any of you are in the Phoenix area and want to meet, drop me a line. I’ve already gotten to meet long-time friend and former Copyright 2.0 Show co-host Chris Matthieu and am hoping to meet a few others while I’m here.

I hope to see some of you at the TechForum and will be keeping everyone up to date on my Twitter account.

My talk, which is entitled “The Technology of Plagiarism: A 30-Year History of Cat and Mouse” will be detailing the most powerful tools in plagiarism and plagiarism detection, including many of the various tricks plagiarists have used over the years to get away with copying content and what the detection companies are doing about it.

It will be a very different talk for me, one I haven’t actually delved into before in a presentation, but I’m looking forward to it and to possibly meeting a few good friends while I’m in Tempe.

So, if you’re in the area and interested in going, registration for the conference is open and I hope to see some of you there!

For the next month I’ll be putting long hours into the haunt and working hard to make sure everything is ready for opening night, Oct. 28th. There are walls to be put up and painted, scares to be built and much to do between now and then. Fortunately, we’re actually a bit ahead of schedule.

Still, with haunt season in full swing, I’m probably going to be easing up on the posting just a bit. For the next few weeks the change should be barely noticeable but the last week of October (and likely first week of November) I’ll be almost silent on this site.

However, you’ll be able to find me on the other places that I blog including BloggingPro, BloggingTips, and my law column for FreelanceWritingJobs.

On that note, if anyone is interested in guest blogging for Plagiarism Today to help me pick up some of the slack, feel free to contact me and let me know. I’ll be very interested in guest bloggers for the next few weeks, especially toward the end of the month.

Otherwise, feel free to follow me at the other sites and stay tuned for some great posts on PT these next few weeks, even if there might be slightly fewer of them.

On June 13th, 2005 I posted the first blog entry for the site that would eventually become Plagiarism Today. Though the site itself would not actually go “live” for another month and a half, on August 2nd, I was blogging on this topic in semi-secret beginning on that day.

The first post wasn’t much, just a praise for GreatestJournal, which is now defunct, and their handling of plagiarism matters.

I had no idea what would become of PT then or what it would grow to become. Now, five years later, the site is updated an average of 8-10 times per week, plays host to a weekly podcast, with my co-host Patrick O’Keefe and also saw the genesis of my copyright and plagiarism consulting practice, which is now my full-time (and a bit beyond) job.

It’s been a long and strange ride for me but has definitely helped bring me some of my greatest moments and favorite memories. I am eternally grateful for this site and, even more so, for the people who read it and support it.

So, to those of you who have been reading this site the whole time or just arrived, thank you for your support. Your feedback, your comments and your business have meant the world to me. Thank you all.

For those that want to know a bit more about the story of PT, as I take the time to look back over the years, feel free to read on. To the rest, thank you again for all of your support and time and I will be back tomorrow with a more traditional PT post.

Getting Started

I began thinking about Plagiarism Today in the summer of 2005. I had been dealing with plagiarists of my work for several years and had become quite good at it. However, I was starting to get into blog reading and was enjoying my first experiences with an RSS reader.

I was eager to find a Web site that dealt with this topic as it was at least a important part of my life and something I felt strongly about. However, after days of off and on searching, I found many static resources but no blogs or news sites.

So, at the encouragement of my significant other, I decided to create a site on the topic and see what happened. However, I didn’t want Plagiarism Today to be a blog that was worked on for a few months and then abandoned so I resolved to blog in private for a period of time to make sure I had enough to talk about. So, I set up a WordPress installation in a subfolder of my then-existing site and went for it.

However, I made a goof in that I didn’t disable pingbacks or search engines and was stunned to find my “hidden” blog getting a modest amount of traffic. I decided to push it live early and did so August 2nd. The blog, at that point with its hideous “desert” theme, which you can see here got its own domain and own update schedule. The site was, years later updated to the “Knights” layout that you can see here before finally moving to the current theme (I believe I’ve traded up each time).

The timing for the launch could not have been much worse though. As a New Orleanian, August 29th, just four weeks later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and turned the lives of me and my wife upside down. Though our home was unaffected, it destroyed previous career plans and forced us into a month-long exile, three weeks of that evacuated and another week living in a city without much in the way of access.

But during the evacuation time, I largely credit Plagiarism Today for keeping me sane. Though I was deep in the upstate with only dial up access, I threw myself into the site almost 24/7 during those weeks, updating daily and trying not to think about the devastation to my city and, quite possibly, losing everything.

After getting back from the storm, I spent the next six months leading a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. Working various jobs to help rebuild New Orleans and, eventually, Key West. I lived in three different states over those months and routinely worked 12-hour days, yet, I still found time to keep up PT as much as possible, working on growing the site during down time and off hours.

But even though the site was seeing decent growth, it didn’t seem to be gaining any significant traction, that changed in May of 2006.

First Publicity

On May 8, 2006, reporter Maura Welch talked about Plagiarism Today in her article about online plagiarism for the Boston Globe. This was only possible thanks to the efforts of Beth from Cursed to First, who I had helped with a plagiarism case before.

The story caused a spike in traffic to Plagiarism Today and opened a floodgate of other media mentions (only a fraction of which are actually included on that page).

This traction led to a spike in traffic and subscribers to my blog, leading to a nearly 3x jump in the number of visitors and subscribers.

The momentum has remained upward ever since. To this day, I credit both Beth and Maura for much of the success of the site as, without their mentioning of PT, it is unclear when, if or how PT would have gained the following it did.

Starting a Business

Many people ask when I decided to open up a consulting business related to PT, however, there is no firm date for that decision.

When I started Plagiarism Today, I never envisioned it being a money-making site. My goal was to help like-minded people in similar situations and it remains as such. But companies and businesses began to approach me for more and more complicated and hands-on jobs and it became necessary to charge for my time.

Eventually, I was hired full-time by the copyright services firm CopyByte, a company I have since broken apart from its parent and taken the helm of myself.

When consulting, I’ve always worked to keep my rates low and still, whenever I do have the time, agree to help others with immediate needs for free, especially if they are interested in learning and doing it themselves. In short, to those who want help resolving their own cases, I’ve tried to make myself available for free as much as possible. To those who want me to take care of things for them, I’ve managed to build a decent consulting and services practice.

In addition to consulting, I’ve also done a great deal of speaking over the past few years, including talks at two WordCamp Dallas events (plus I am speaking at the upcoming OpenCamp event in August), I spoke at the 3rd International Plagiarism Conference in the UK, at an Innovation Journalism conference in the Netherlands, ConvergeSouth and many other events.

Without this site, I doubt I would have made half the friends that I have, travelled to a fraction of the places that I have or had nearly as many cherished memories. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Looking Forward

It has been a wonderful five years for Plagiarism Today and, though it might not have grown as large as some sites started around the same time, it has done very well for me. It has given me all that I ever dreamed for it and more.

Once again, this would not have been possible without the support of you and others like you. Thank you again for all that you do for this site and, through that, for me. It means the world.

Moving forward with PT, I have several major announcements in the works, at least three of which should be ready to launch sometime within the next few weeks, so stay tuned there. In the meantime, thank you all for your support and I’m looking forward to the next five years of Plagiarism Today!

As I mentioned last week, the “Stopping Internet Plagiarism“, has been a cornerstone of the site since day one, explaining the ins and outs of fighting plagiarism and other misuse of your content, but it has also fallen into disrepair due to age and neglect.

Last week, I began the process of overhauling and repairing the damage. I fixed the main SIP page as well as the first three chapters. Today I’ve gone through and done the same for the last three, namely the Contacting the Host, When All Else Fails and The Long Haul pages.

In these chapters the changes were much more minor than in the first as there hasn’t been many significant changes in the law or technology in these areas. Instead, most of the changes were to the formatting, grammar and for clarification.

As with the first round, I wouldn’t call these updates a complete rewrite, most of the original text is still there, even more so in this case.

The changes included in this update are:

1. Updated the Contacting the Host page to better integrate in the stock letters.
2. Removed the section about “Causing a Ruckus” from the “If All Else Fails” as it is no longer a policy I agree with.
3. Updated search engine statistics and links in the “If All Else Fails” page.
4. Added information about Zoho Creator to the “The Long Haul” page.
5. Edited for styling and added images to every page.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts of suggestions for this section as these pages are easily among the most popular on the site and I want to make sure they are some of the best Plagiarism Today has to offer.

Sometime soon, I plan on doing the same to the Your Copyrights Online section but I have no definite timetable now. I’ll post more information as I come up with a more firm plan.

The “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” section of this site has been a cornerstone of it since day one. It’s the part of the site that explains, to newcomers and veterans alike, how to find and stop misuse of one’s content.

However, the section has become woefully neglected over the years and that has led to a lot of decay in the quality of that part of the site.

Some of the problems have been purely aesthetic, as style guidelines on PT changed that section was not updated, but much of it is factual due to new services coming online and old ones dying off.

I’ve finally decided to go through and overhaul the section. Both bring it up to the style codes of the rest of the site but also update the language and information. I’m doing the entire section in two parts split over two weeks.

Today I’m proud to announce that the first part of this process is done. The main Stopping Internet Plagiarism page has been overhauled completely and the How to Find Plagiarism, Contacting a Plagiarist and Finding the Host have also been updated.

I wouldn’t call these updates a complete rewrite, much of the original text is still there, but I’ve updated the styles, added new images, removed outdated elements and added in new ones as needed.

The changes included in this update are:

1. Complete rewrite of main “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” page to act as a link list to the other sections.
2. Added Plagium, FairShare and Tineye mentions to the “How to Find Plagiarism” page.
3. Changed language in the “Contacing the Plagiarist” page and included a direct link to this site’s stock letters.
4. Added WhoIsHostingThis and updated images in the “Finding the Host” page.
5. Edited for styling and added images to every page.

Next week I plan on updating the remaining three pages in the section, all of which should require much less work, and that should bring the entire section up to code.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts of suggestions for this section as these pages are easily among the most popular on the site and I want to make sure they are some of the best Plagiarism Today has to offer.