Plagiarists rely upon the anonymity and the vastness of the Internet to hide their activities. Almost always, they know what they’re doing is wrong (at least morally) and though they seem very bold about their activities, they’re always banking on the fact that you won’t stumble across their misuse of your work.

What plagiarists don’t realize is that the same tools that make it easy for them to find works to steal also make it easy for you, the copyright holder, to retrace their steps and catch them. Because, even though the Internet is vast, it’s so well indexed that separating the needles from the hay is a very easy challenge.

Non-Blogging Writers

If you’re a writer looking for copycats, Google is your best friend. Google’s huge database of sites, combined with it’s ability to search other types of documents (including Adobe PDF and Word DOC) make it a very powerful tool for tracking down thieves.

However, to use it successfully, you have to learn how to use it correctly and in there lies the greatest challenge.

The first step to a successful Google search is to NOT use the title of your work. A lot of copycats, to hide their activity, will change the title of your work while keeping the body. Therefore, the best thing to do is to find a distinctive line in your piece and search for it, first placing quotes around it and then, if that doesn’t turn up anything, without the quotes for a broader search.

If nothing turns up at all, it is a sign that your site hasn’t been indexed yet nor has anyone else’s with that content. It would be wise to wait a few days and then try again.

However, if results do show up, the next step is to look closely at each link that is not from your site or somewhere else you posted the work. Check each link and see if the use is within your guidelines and prepare to take action against anyone who has infringed upon your rights.

It’s important to note that, when performing these searches, Google will give you a message similar to this one:

“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”

If you get this message, click the link and repeat the search. This means, quite literally, other pages on the Web have content almost identical content to your own and you definitely need to follow up. While it could be another page on your site, it could also be a plagiarist.

However, as powerful as Google is, it has limitations. For one, it tends not to index some of the most rampant places for plagiarism, message boards. Sites such as EZBoard.com are rarely indexed in Google because of the constantly changing content and any information you get from Google on these boards is likely to be out-of-date.

To greatly speed up this process, you can use a tool called Copyscape to make the process of searching through Google much more efficient. To use Copyscape, you simply punch in the URL of the work you want to check and click submit. Copyscape will do the rest.

Copyscape uses Google as its backend so it will have the same limitations as the search engine itself in terms of what it picks up. Also, the free version may be too limited for some users since it only returns ten results. However, their paid service starts at pennies per search and offers unlimited results.

A great tool all around.

If you wish to use Google but would like to automate your searching, use Google Alerts to detect plagiarism on your behalf. Simply set up search queries as describe above and instruct Google Alerts to email you daily with new results. The service is completely free and is ideal for sites with a large volume of works to check.

Bloggers

Bloggers have special challenges when it comes to detecting plagiarism. The dynamic nature of their work makes it impractical to check every single work for infringement. Worse still, with RSS scraping and spam blogging on the rise, their content is often lifted as soon as new works are posted.

The easiest way to detect RSS scraping is by adding a digital fingerprint to your feed. A digital fingerprint is basically a string of unique characters that do not appear anywhere else on the Web. If your feed content is scraped, your fingerprint will be scraped with it and you can simply search for that phrase to find suspicious sites. Even better, you can create a Google Alert, discussed above, to automate the process and email you when new matches are found.

To add a fingerprint to your feed, you can either manipulate your template files directly, use a plugin or use a service like FeedBurner.

Though these tools will enable you to detect most RSS and automated scraping, they will not protect you against the more traditional “copy and paste” plagiarist. To that end, the tools above, especially Google and Copyscape, are much better suited to help you detect those plagiarists.

It may be wise to set up Google Alerts for keystone pieces and static content outside of the traditional blog stream on your site.

Artists/Photographers

Artists have a significantly more difficult time finding plagiarists than writers. However, they do have some very powerful tools, including the writer’s best friend, Google, to help them out. The only difference here is that rather than doing a regular search, you’re going to want to do an image search by clicking the “image” tab at the top of the search area before entering your terms.

However, since you can’t search for a distinctive line, the best place to start is by searching for the title. Even though a lot of copycats will change that, many others won’t and will probably turn up very nicely in this simple search.

Also, consider doing an image search for the file name. If you take the time to give each of your images a very original file name (and certainly not just a number), there’s a good chance that plagiarists will leave that untouched when posting the work. This works even if they edit the file, for example, to remove a watermark or shrink the image and is an easy mistake for even the most careful plagiarist to make, regardless of how easy it is to correct.

In the end, while all of the regular Google limitations apply (see above), the image search is a very powerful tool for artists to track down those that would steal their work.

But, where searching may be less effective, referral links are infinitely more powerful. A lot of people, especially those posting message boards, won’t take the time to save and repost your image. Instead, they’ll simply link to the image file hosted on your server and, if you have access to server logs, you can check referrers for individual images and catch people who are linking to it illegally, not only taking credit for your work, but also stealing your bandwidth.

Of course, if you control your own server, this is probably an issue you’re going to want to nip in the bud, to save the cost of bandwidth if nothing else. As such, there are several methods to eliminate hotlinking images using both scripts and by editing server files.

If you don’t run your own server. there are other steps you can take, just many of them will not be as effective.

The main thing to remember is, as an artist, it is infinitely more difficult to track down thieves than it is for for a writer. However, as you’ll learn in another essay, you do have significantly more proactive measures that you can take to stop thieves and I recommend that you focus more on those than trying to chase down those that do steal, it’s time better spent.

Musicians

In my experience, music files, though frequently shared and copied, aren’t commonly plagiarized. Most people are just happy to be able to listen and, since very few people are capable of making music, the credibility of anyone that claims credit for your work is likely to be very small. Couple that with the fact that the bandwidth and storage requirements for hosting MP3s are beyond the capabilities of most free sites, blogs and message boards (where most plagiarism takes place), and most likely your songs are safe from the average plagiarist.

But this doesn’t mean that a quick search is a bad idea. You can definitely use the same techniques artists do, including title and filename searches, using the normal Google search rather than the image function. As limited as these tools are, they can help catch most plagiarists and, when coupled with the above mentioned referral log checks and system tweaks, can go a long way to both stopping and preventing plagiarism.

However, the main concern you should probably have as a musician revolves around your lyrics (if you have any) and you’d probably be wise to follow the tips I gave writers to see if anyone has taken your words. After all, song lyrics are among the most commonly stolen poems on the Web. If people are bold enough to claim the lyrics to number one hits as their own, they’re likely to try and claim yours as well.

Videographers

Much like music files, video files are rarely plagiarized. Though sharing them has become infinitely easier with sites such as YouTube, plagiarism is still very rare. Most are simply wanting to watch the clips and have no interest in taking credit.

Furthermore, though uploading and sharing video is easier than ever, editing and modifying it is still a complicated process above most people’s heads. If you include proper watermarks, title screens and credits in your video, the odds of anyone seriously attempting to plagiarize it are slim.

However, it may still be worthwhile to do regular searches for your videos. Using the same techniques musicians do, check the Internet for the title of your video as well as any text information you provide with it. Also, target your searches on popular video sharing sites, especially those that the search engines may not be parsing already or those that pay dividends to uploaders.

If you follow the potential motives of a plagiarist, your chance at catching one go up drastically.

Help With Detecting Plagiarism

Copyscape: A great tool for quick plagiarism searches.
Google Alerts: A free service that can automate basic plagiarism checks and email you results.
Digital Fingerprint Plugin: A WordPress plugin to detect RSS scraping.
FeedBurner: Offers feed modification and analysis tools that can make detecting RSS scraping much easier.