The vast majority of hosts seem to take these issues seriously and pull down any spammy or infringing content quickly. Others seem to ignore any such requests and others reply with polite, but clearly stock, letters saying that they can’t help.

And then there is Joyent.

Joyent takes things to a new level. Not only does the site not help when someone is misusing your content, but they actually support scrapers and defend them in email responses.

Though many hosts have a policy of inaction against infringement, something that is legally dangerous and ethically dubious, none that I have seen have spent the time and energy Joyent’s representative did to protect them and defend them.

What Happened

Sunday, during some of my testing of FairShare, a system officially launched yesterday, I was notified about a site on a .info domain that had used nearly 100% of my recent article about U.S. Copyright Law.

I looked at the site in question and it appeared to either be a spam blog or a misguided aggregator. It was displaying the full content of dozens of entries on one page, using hotlinked images and the only original content was a pair of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons with each article that seemed to do nothing.

Though it linked to Plagiarism Today in the headline, it was not linking to or referencing my CC license nor was it referencing the “Share Alike” attribute. When combined with the hotlinked images, I decided to take action, filing a DMCA notice with their host, Joyent.

However, that was no simple process. Never having encountered this host, I searched their site for information about their DMCA agent. However, all I found was a postal address (Note: Link is to a privacy safe harbor, not copyright safe harbor). I checked for a registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, but found nothing. Since all other abuse requests seemed to be routed through their “Support” account, I emailed it and, since it was a weekend and they had limited support hours listed, I did not expect to hear back.

However, I heard back relatively quickly (within an hour), especially amazing considering it was also Super Bowl Sunday. The letter was from Linda Derezinski, who identified herself as the “Director of Support”. Her letter was short and said in part that:

“That is just a RSS feed aggregation site which is properly identifying as such, it is not taking your work and showing it as theirs…. If you do not wish them to show your RSS feed you of course are able to block them from reading it.”

In short, Derezinski was telling me that it was my responsibility as the provider of the RSS to “block” this site from republishing my feed wholesale on their site. Even though that is impossible with FeedBurner and impractical without knowing more about how the site is obtaining the feed.

I’m used to working with and educating hosts about copyright issues, but never have I had such a strong defense for a spam blogger. I responded back with some basic information about the DMCA and links to information on the law, including the Chilling Effects FAQ.

There was a slightly greater delay in this response but, after about an hour, Derezinski wrote back a second time saying the following:

“You have your site identified as creative commons…. They properly identify that the article is from your site. This is not DMCA issue.”

I wrote back a second time, this go around linking to my article about using Creative Commons to Stop Scraping, which includes a discussion with then-VP Mike Linksvayer. I pointed out that the site did not complete the license, neither linking to the license or mentioning the share-alike element.

That was the last I heard of the matter. As of this writing, the article in question is still up on the page in question (though it may cycle off any time now, after being up for a week) and dozens of other articles from different sources are still up, all with full text and hyperlinked images.

To recap what happened. I filed a DMCA notice in what seemed to be a straightforward scraping case, Joyent first defended the scraper saying that it was my responsibility to block them and then, after I showed that was not the case, then tried to tell me there wasn’t a copyright issue since I had a CC license. Once I showed that the site was in violation of my license, there was nothing but silence.

Needless to say this has me frustrated, but not defeated.

Offering a Defense

In the interest of fairness, I’m going to offer some potential defenses here.

1. Splitting Hairs: I’ll admit openly that the representative was correct that I do have a CC license and the site in question did link back to PT. Though the use was a violation of the license, something I feel very comfortable saying, it is understandable why someone unfamiliar with the details of CC might think that the use was compliant.
2. Questionable Spam Blog: There is room for debate if this site was a spam blog or an aggregator. Though it clearly violates the best practices for aggregation, it does seem to attempt to add some value. This doesn’t make it less of an infringement, for a host that specializes in applications, it might have been seen as a defense.
3. Incorrect Person: Though it was the only email address provided, it is clear that Derezinski is neither familiar with nor accustomed to DMCA complaints. I could have sent the complaint via postal mail (I find it stunning that they don’t even offer a fax) but it is likely that the article would have scrolled off or changed URLs in that time.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is not an appropriate way to handle a copyright complaint (as I said in the title, the worst that I had seen) and that this company violates many of the best practices of the DMCA (Not registering their agent with the USCO, not having an email address, not having a direct copyright policy, etc.) but I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope that this was a misunderstanding and nothing more.

Conclusions

One of the jobs that I do in my consulting practice is work with hosts on these kinds of issues. I’m often recruited to check for any flaws in their DMCA system and even do test runs of their takedown process. I have a lot of experience in this area.

This is the worst response that I have seen in seven plus years of handling DMCA issues. Though I applaud hosts for looking at DMCA notices and considering copyright issues, this was not a case where the notice was clearly false, the use raised fair use questions or had other common issues that arise with erroneous DMCA notices.

What makes it worse is that the host came down clearly on the side of wholesale RSS scraping and republishing. Meaning that, if you are a spam blogger reading this that engages in RSS scraping, Joyent is likely a natural choice for you as their staff, at least judging from this correspondence, feels that you are doing nothing wrong or illegal.

My hope is that this was just a miscommunication but it has been over 48 hours since my last correspondence with them and no action has been taken on my ticket. If I do not hear more within the next 24 hours, I will look at calling them or filing the notices with Google, provided that the work hasn’t scrolled off or naturally disappeared.

Update

At about 5 PM central time the day this story was posted, I was contacted by Peter Watridge, who said that Derezinski has “escalated” the ticket it to him and he had not been able to get it in a timely matter. He is going to work with the owner of the domain to get the work removed.

Though this is great news and certainly puts Joyent in a better light. The initial response was still not what I would characterize as appropriate. I will update again when/if the content is removed.

At issue, specifically, is PhotoBucket allowing users to print the photos of strangers, including photos that were uploaded illegally, and the lack of a take down stay down system on the service.

PhotoBucket, through their PR agent responded by saying the following:

“Photobucket is committed to protecting and empowering content owners and creators. The site offers features that give users the ability to set private and public settings for their photos and videos. The company also strictly adheres to government DMCA guidelines to protect copyrights through the prompt removal of infringing material and action against repeat offenders.”

It seems unlikely that the response will do much to quell the concerns of the signatories of the petition, which is now over 5500 signatures, or address the issues raised.

I will report more on this as I get more responses and feedback.

Interested in improving relations between copyright holders and hosts, I initiated a conversation with my newfound Xanga contact. In a lengthy email, I told him both my full story and addressed several concerns that I had with him on copyright matters.

Though he was very nice and grateful for the information, his response was not what I had hoped. It appears that Xanga’s issues with abuse problems are not related anything unique to my case, but rather, a much broader problem that affects the entire company and all of its members.

A Math Problem

Xanga’s difficulties are related to a very simple math problem. The company, by most recent estimation, has over 45 million accounts. That makes it easily the second most-popular social networking/blogging site on the planet. It also, according to Alexa, is the 42nd most popular site on the Web.

The problem is that, despite these incredible numbers, Xanga only has “about a dozen” employees according to my contact. Even if we are gracious and grant them twenty employees, the number mentioned in a recent ABC report, and that all of their employees work actively on abuse-related matters, there are over 2,250,000 accounts per employee.

If we continue with the math and calculate that some 90% of the accounts are unused, which is fairly typical of Web services, that leaves 225,000 active user accounts per employee. Then, if only one percent of those sites needs attention from a member of the abuse team, that still leaves a whopping 2250 cases of abuse for each member of the staff to handle at any one time.

Please note that these numbers do not reflect several critical variables including the continued growth of Xanga, other types of user interaction including customer support and that few Xanga employees are actually going to be dealing with abuse matters.

Myspace, by comparison, has an estimated 250 employees and 65 million accounts. They have, theoretically, less than 12% the accounts per person (roughly 260) that Xanga does and has been significantly more responsive to copyright infringement and other abuse matters as a result.

It becomes easy to see, when you look at the pure numbers, why Xanga has been so impotent on abuse related issues and has had so much bad press surrounding it regarding it’s policies for dealing with users that infringe.

No Signs of Improvement

What’s disturbing about the matter is that Xanga has done very little to actually correct the matter. Though the ABC report on Xanga, dated November 10, 2005 brought many of these issues to light, as of my conversation with Xanga last week, these matters have not been addressed. In fact, my contact with Xanga actually reported lower manpower numbers than ABC did.

As disturbing as Xanga’s handling of abuse matters is, its unwillingness or inability to do anything regarding them is nothing short of mind boggling. It has had ample time to bring in new help and tackle these matters, six months to be exact, but, for whatever reason, has failed to do so.

Instead, all that we’re offered is the same promises to recruit new staff and improve the situation someday. For right now, and for the foreseeable Xanga remains one of the worst Internet neighbors on abuse matters.

When, or even if, these matters will be resolved remains a mystery.

How to Handle Xanga

For the time being, getting Xanga’s help with abuse matters, especially copyright matters, is going to be extremely difficult. Abuse emails are largely ignored and calls to Xanga’s headquarters are fruitless (save for one very determined commenter to the original story). Until things change, if they change, I’m sticking to my original advice of asking people to mail in their complaints to the address listed in Xanga’s whois information.

Though it’s far less convenient, less efficient and more costly than sending in a regular email, it seems to be the only way to get in touch with Xanga reliably and be reasonably assured of a reply.

While this is sad and worrisome considering some of the kinds of abuse that have been reported on Xanga’s servers, it seems to be the lay of the land right now and the way that things will remain until Xanga either increases manpower or, as unfortunate as it would be, goes out of business.

In the end, we can not count on Xanga as an ally against plagiarism or, sadly, other kinds of abuse. This could mean bad things for the future of Xanga, especially as splogging branches out to new services, and certainly means nothing good for the rest of the Web.

Until Xanga addresses their fundamental problems, we will all pay the price.

[tags]Plagiarism, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Xanga, Myspace, Abuse[/tags]

Yesterday, shortly after noon, I received confirmation that at least one of my DMCA notices to Xanga had arrived. Just a few hours ago I received an email from Xanga, my first contact from an employee there, saying that the matter was being handled and that the accounts involved were being given warnings to either remove the work or be closed down.

This still leaves several unanswered questions, including why they haven’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and why the first abuse reports were ignored. However, I have replied to the email in hopes of opening up a dialog with Xanga on these matters and I will report back what I find. I am hoping that Xanga, like OpenDiary, will promise to change its policy for the better or that, better yet, this whole matter will be just one giant misunderstanding.

In the meantime, I just wanted to quickly post and let everyone know that I had heard back from Xanga and that, for the time being, one should mail in any copyright infirngement complaints that they have involving Xanga servers. It’s the best way to contact them right now.  

[tags]Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, Content Theft, Copyright Law, Copyright, Xanga, DMCA[/tags] 

As many of you may recall, previously wrote about my difficulties in getting Xanga to remove copyrighted works. Then, a few days later. I followed up with a post about their late and useless reply.

On Monday, April 17, 2006 I sent two copies of a DMCA notice to Xanga’s address c/o their legal department. The notices contained fifteen infringing links across 13 accounts. One copy was sent via priority mail with delivery confirmation and the other via first-class mail with signature confirmation. Both copies are expected to arrive either today or tomorrow.

I will follow up early next week to see what, if any, action was taken. I will post again to let everyone know what happens.

Technorati : Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, DMCA, Plagiarism, Xanga

The message was a reply back to the follow up letter I had sent on March 22. The letter, which is already over two weeks old, was a follow up to the five DMCA notices sent a week before that and said, in part:

"On March 16th I filed five DMCA notices using your abuse form on your site…. As of this writing, I have not heard back regarding these notices and the infringing works are still up. I am seeking a place to submit my DMCA notices and hope that you will inform me of what it is that I need to do to get these matters resolved"

Xanga’s response to this fifteen-day old letter was not to send me an email answering my questions or explaining the situation. It was to send me an autoreply.

The first few lines of their reply, dated April 7, says it all:

"Thanks for your email about Safety and Abuse on Xanga! We get so many replies to this address, we decided to write up an autoreply to cover the most Frequently Asked Questions."

The rest of the email goes on to list addresses to the various FAQs, which I have already poured over many times before and found to be of no use.

So now, after nearly a month of trying to work with Xanga, the only reply I’ve gotten is a useless autoreply to a two-week old message. Needless to say that I am not amused nor am I satisfied. If anything, I have taken this as an additional slap in the face.

I am continuing work on my letter to them, which will be ailed Monday. I will be sure to post again and let everyone know the reply that it gets, if any.

If there were a ranking lower than "Villain" on my scale, I’d be working to put Xanga in it.  

[tags]Plagiarism, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, DMCA, Xanga, Villains[/tags] 

Update 4/21: This story is rapidly developing and will be updated shortly. Xanga has responded to me via email and much of what is said below could become obsolete information very quickly. See more recent posts on the subject for additional information.

If you ever have to deal with someone plagiarizing your works on line, hope that they aren’t using Xanga. For Xanga, without a doubt, is the least cooperative host that I have ever worked with. Their copyright policy is, in a word, reckless and shows absolutely no consideration for Webmasters who have had their content pilfered and even violates U.S. law.

Worst of all, Xanga, as a social networking site, is growing rapidly in the number of users as well as the number of cases of plagiarism. If the policy remains as it is, Xanga could easily become the plagiarism capital of Web 2.0.

The Silence is Deafening

During my most recent rash of plagiarism fighting, I discovered about a dozen misuses of my work taking place on Xanga. Though some of the uses were older, indicating that, possibly, Xanga blogs are only recently being picked up by the search engines, most were new and some even belonged to users actively plagiarizing my works.

Since many Xanga accounts have limited, if any, means of contact the account holders, I found myself seeking out contact information for Xanga. First, I discovered that they were not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, a requirement of the DMCA (PDF), and then sought out to contact their abuse team, the typical next step when official contact information isn’t available.

That search, in turn, lead me to their abuse form, which I then used on March 15 and 16 to file six different complaints against infringing accounts. In each case, I used a full DMCA notice, to ensure that they could act upon the complaint, and provided all pertinent information. I then waited for a reply.

Nothing.

Nearly a week later, long after all of the other hosts written at the same time had responded, I checked to see if there had been any action on the Xanga links. All of the infringing material was still up and I had not received a letter from the Xanga team. Unless all of their replies had somehow been chewed up in my spam filters (I use GMail for handling all of my mail), they had done nothing about any of my complaints.

Sadly, that was only the beginning of the stonewalling.

No Signs of Life

Concerned that, perhaps, my abuse reports didn’t go through, I decided to call Xanga and try to speak with them. I did a whois search for Xanga’s info and dialed the number that came with it. 

I got a voice recording thanking me for calling Xanga and then to dial my party’s extension. Not having one, I waited for more information. Instead, the recording just told me that, if I had a question about an abuse problem,  that I should email their abuse account.

The recording then hung up.

Frustrated, but not defeated, on March 22 I emailed the account informing them that I had sent in the DMCA notices and that I was looking for an update on them. Days passed and I heard nothing back. By this time, almost two weeks had passed and I had not heard a single word from Xanga, despite nearly a dozen letters via different channels and a phone call.

Eventually, the logjam of plagiarism cases stalled by Xanga was so great that I had to create a separate folder for the stalled cases to keep them out of my usual queue. When I did that, the number of cases marked "awaiting reply" dropped by ninety percent and most of the ones remaining were cases that involved cease and desist letters, not DMCA notices. 

Little did I know, however, that the worst was yet to come.

False Identities

It was then that I began to explore alternative means of resolving the matter. On March 27, I did what any journalist would do and contacted Xanga’s press team to inform them that I was working on this article and get their comment. Once again, I heard nothing back.

I then, on March 29th, stumbled across the blog of a (former?) copyright-minded Xanga employee John Hiler and emailed him to  ask his guidance. Sadly, that letter bounced back saying that the mailbox was too full to receive any mail.

It was then that I began to consider sending a fax to Xanga in hopes that leaving a paper trail my garter more attention. I returned to the whois page and made a startling discovery: The fax number is false. Instead of a legitimate fax number, Xanga listed simply "123 123 1234".

While a fax number is not a requirement to register a domain name and private registrations are common (Plagiarismtoday.com uses one for that matter) all contact information provided is supposed to be a valid means of getting in touch with the individuals in charge. So long as the service that handles my private registration is functioning properly, all information in my whois serves as valid contact data.

Large companies, generally, are held to a higher standard than private individuals when it comes to registering domains. Since they host content for other people, they have a higher responsibility to be transparent for the sake of copyright holders, law enforcement and anyone else that might need to contact them.

Though they, supposedly, provide forms for all of those things. It’s clear that they don’t answer them, at least in my case, and have done just about everything they can to avoid dealing with someone who might need to contact them with a copyright matter.

Conclusions

In the end, I am left with but one option, the postal address.  I am currently preparing a lengthy letter that I will send to them via certified mail. I will follow up and let everyone know if that produces any results.

In the meantime though, I’m left with over a dozen Xanga cases and no means to resolve them. For whatever reason, Xanga has made it patently impossible for me to enforce my copyright on their servers and that has left me grasping at straws as I look for a solution.

Sadly, I don’t see any coming and I fear that this could be a very bad sign for what may eventually become of Xanga. I hope that I am wrong about this and everything is just a misunderstanding (which, if it is, I will gladly admit). But at the moment, I don’t see how.

Sad, but true.

[tags]Plagiarism, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Copyright Law, Xanga, DMCA[/tags]

Why Myspace if Vulnerable

First off, in fairness to Myspace, they do comply fully with the DMCA and they are not the only such site out there. I plan on doing a host report on Myspace and several other such sites soon and, from what I’ve seen, Myspace is actually very cooperative. The only reason that I am mentioning them by name is because they are by far the most popular.

On that note though, the nature of these sites can make them very difficult for copyright holders to work with. First, the sheer number of ways one can publish content produces a challenge in and of itself. One can post a blog, publish info in a profile, put up picture, embed audio/video, use custom HTML or post comments on other people’s profiles.

Second, one’s ability to contact the plagiarist varies wildly depending on the site and the person involved. Some members post all of their contact information, including IM names and Email addresses, while others post nothing but vague personal information. Though most social networking sites offer some kind of personal messaging system, one usually has to be a member to access it and the reliability of such a system for handling communication as important as a cease and desist is suspect and, since no paper trail is produced, 

Finally, content spreads like wildfire through these sites and confusion often arises as to who the original author is. Sometimes people get the wrong idea about what they can and can not do with a work. Worse still, any conflict that gets started on such sites can spread rapidly as well, making one’s life very difficult.

These variables make handling plagiarism cases on social networking sites both unpredictable and difficult. Where once, a cookie cutter approach worked 95% of the time, now each case has to be treated as a unique beast. What works in case A can bring a disaster about in case B.

What to Do?

If you find yourself dealing with a plagiarist at a social networking site, you need to first seriously consider getting an account at the site. Even if you don’t use the account or the site ever again, seeing areas that are hidden to the general public could be a great asset, either exposing more plagiarism or offering new avenues of contact. Besides, when dealing with these cases it’s usually important to have all of the information you can.

From there, you have to make a tough decision. Notifying the admins, either through an abuse complaint or a DMCA notice, will generally get results but several hosts have proved very uncooperative and, in other cases, such a method fails to address the root of the problem.

On the other hand, sometimes contacting the person directly is easy and effective. However, contact information the person might not be available and, even if it is, making such a post puts you at risk of an unneeded backlash or attack. While fear of a backlash should never prevent someone from effectively protecting their work, one certainly shouldn’t introduce unneeded drama into their lives.

Personally, whenever I approach one of these sites, I follow the following series of steps to determine how to handle it.

1. Examine the situation -  Take a look at how the work is being used, where it is being used and in what context. This is especially valuable if you allow some reuse of your work.
2. Learn About the Plagiarist – Social networking sites make it easy to learn about the people who own the site. Learn how old they are, where they are located in the world and how they prefer to be contacted. All of this information can be especially useful if you’re going to write them.
3. Study the Site – Read a little bit about the site itself, its terms of service and how it handles copyright infringement claims. Not only will this help you make a decision about how to proceed, but can offer you a direction if you do decide to contact the host.

From there, you can make one of the following decisions:

1. Contact the Host – If the plagiarism is severe enough (the volume of work taken is very great), and the host is cooperative, then contacting the host might be the best solution. This is also the way to go if a cease and desist letter didn’t work, there is no contact information available for the plagiarist or if the plagiarist has not been active on the site in some time. Also, consider this method if the plagiarist is from a nation with loose or unenforced copyright laws as the host will likely be on more familiar soil.
2. Contact the Plagiarist – If the infringement is relatively minor or could be a mistake, it’s probably best to contact the plagiarist first. The tone of the letter will depend on the situation itself, though most cases will still call for a full cease and desist letter. Regardless of the tone though, one should use caution when sending notices through on-site messenger services. Always request a copy of the letter for your own records and, if one isn’t available, make a backup yourself.
3. Post a Comment – One of the more interesting options is the ability to post a comment. This can be an effective but gentle way of handling cases where the person posting the work is more likely confused than malicious. This can breed cooperation and help promote your own site some. Also, many times the person who posted the works will inform you of another site, often times a malicious one, that is posting your work and muddling the issue.
4. Do Nothing – Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing at all. If the plagiarism is likely to cycle off after a few days and be very difficult to handle, it might be wise to walk away. An example of this would be a minor infringement in a comment on another person’s profile. In those situations, you would have to hassle an innocent bystander to get the works removed and contacting the admins would be an unneeded burden as the comment will likely cycle off in a few days. Walking away can be painful, but if you’re dealing with many instances of plagiarism, it frees you up to handle other cases.

Of course, even with these loose guidelines, there are always exceptions. With social networking sites, more than ever, it’s important to be flexible and look for inventive ways to solve problems. I resolved one stubborn case by notifying the heads of an online group he was a member of and another by informing admins of a variety of other rules the person was breaking.

By keeping your eyes open, looking for alternative solutions and working with both admins and other members, you can resolve cases on social networking sites with minimal time or drama. Still, though there’s never been a set way to handle plagiarism online, now there’s even more possibilities to consider.

Conclusions

In the end, though the shift to social networking sites changes the game, as any such shift does, it’s still very possible to get plagiarism issues resolved.

For the new tools that help both legitimate users and plagiarists alike can work both ways and help you track down/stop plagiarism. All that’s required is a little bit more flexibility and, sometimes, a bit of creativity.

Neither of which seem to be in short supply on the Web. 

[tags]Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, Content Theft, Copyright, Myspace, Xanga[/tags]

However, during all of this, I began to notice a new trend in online plagiarism, It seems that the preferred avenue for plagiarists is shifting once again. Instead of blogs or personal home pages, plagiarists are following the rest of the Web and moving more into social networking sites, the king of which is Myspace.

This presents new challenges for plagiarism fighters and opens up both new possibilities to plagiarize and new possibilities to fight back.

A Brief History

Though plagiarism online is probably as old as the Internet, it hasn’t always been such a nightmare for content creators. At first, Web sites were difficult to create and only the most knowledgeable and best-positioned could create one and doing so took a great deal of work. The early sites were plain, tedious and usually only consisted of content deemed "worthy". Few, if any, would waste such effor to plagiarize others.

As the Web evolved, personal home pages became a reality. Anyone with a Tripod or Geocities account could set up a site and showcase it to the world. While this brought some plagiarism with it, the search engines were much simpler (thus eliminating the need to have lots of content) and the effort required was still fairly high. Though anyone could create a site, it was a time-consuming task only attempted by the more technically adept. So, though the Web was exploding, plagiarism wasn’t a major deal, save for artists that produced Web-page friendly graphics, which were often stolen for use these new Webmasters.

However, the rise of message boards and forums changed the game. Now anyone, with the click of a mouse, could publish content to the Web and have a built-in audience. This extension of the classic newsgroups brought on a wave of plagiarism felt strongly by poets and other short-piece writers.

This translated, somewhat slowly, into the idea of blogging. Blogging provided the same point-and-click functionality of forums but with the benefits of having your own site. Where forums were usually moderated, sometimes very strictly, blogging provided a kind of independence that that helped bring on a new wave of citizen journalists and, sadly, the scourge of splogging or spam blogging. Plagiarism, both written and visual, began to take off. Search engines compounded the problem by making content even more valuable and pushing the plagiarism problem to writers of longer works including articles and even lengthier stories.

Now, with social networking sites, the problem has reached a new level. These sites have blogs built into them, but also offer a chance to post photographs, audio clips and videos in the page itself. These sites, like blogs, are largely unmonitored and operate, in many regards, like traditional personal home pages in terms of enforcement.

Basically, that means if a problem isn’t reported, there’s no hope of it being stopped.

While this brings about a new age of personal expression, it brings with it headaches for authors and other content creators, even those that allow reuse of their work. Enforcing copyright and preventing plagiarism in the Myspace age is a very different proposal than even the blogging one.

The Shift

When I first started tracking plagiarists of my work, which is mostly poetry and short literature, about three years ago. Most incidents, around 75%, were on personal home pages and the rest were on message boards with a few full domain sites thrown into the mix.

Then, cease and desist letters worked very well. Most personal sites included contact information, including email addresses, and those cases that could not be resolved that way were handled by contacting abuse teams or notifying message board admins.

As of a few months ago, that same majority, once again about 75%, were owned by blogs and diary sites. Personal home pages, social networking sites and forums shared the rest with the usual sprinkling of domain sites on paid hosting. 

This changed the tactics considerably as many blog sites don’t publish contact information or even offer their users the chance to do so. Where once well over half of all cases were resolved with cease and desist letters, contacting admins, either via abuse reports or DMCA notices, became the most effective method.

However, within these past few days of searching, the percentage has shifted again. Now, approximately 40% of all plagiarism incidents I’ve noticed are on social networking sites, another 40% on blogs and the rest is occupied by a mix of personal Web sites, forums and domains.

This has caused my tactics to shift once again. Since social network sites offer more avenues of contact, cease and desist letters are becoming more common again. However, more than ever, each host and each case has to be taken on its own account No longer is there one dominant method of handling plagiarism, but a strange mixture of several methods ranging from filing a DMCA notice to simply posting a comment.

Because, if this latest evolution of the Web means anything to content creators, it’s going to mean that we have to be more flexible and more adaptable than ever. There is no longer a single solution that fits all cases.

This concludes part one of this series. The second part will be posted tomorrow.

[tags]Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, Content Theft, Copyright, Myspace, Xanga, Social Networking, Web 2.0[/tags]

It’d be nice to see some concrete change taking place on this front, at least in some small part, due to this site.

[tags]Plagiarism, Opendiary.com, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Copyright, Copyright Law, DMCA[/tags]