There are times, especially with International cases, that doing all the right things simply isn’t enough. The plagiarist doesn’t respond, the host isn’t cooperative and there’s no legal leverage to make them.
These are far and away the most frustrating cases to deal with and, often times, go completely unresolved.
However, there are things that you can do, the situation isn’t hopeless and, often times at least, you can still resolve the issue to the satisfaction of everyone. It just often involves more creative thinking.
Search Engine Warfare
According to NetMarketshare, Google, Yahoo and Bing combined equal well over 90% of the world’s search engine traffic. They are all also American companies bound by the DMCA and will both accept and act on notices filed with them.
Since search engines are the lifeblood of new traffic for most Web sites, being removed from them can be catastrophic, especially for a business. However, that’s precisely within your power as a copyright holder.
It is possible to get the infringing pages removed from the search engines and, in cases where many notices have been filed, the entire site may be banned. Though Yahoo, from what I’ve been told, will not notify the infringing site, Google does and even posts copies of the DMCA notice on chillingeffects.com.
If a infringer doesn’t respond to a legal threat nor their host to a takedown notice, the plagiarist is very likely to take notice when you threaten to cut off their lifeline of new visitors. Even if the site isn’t a business, the goal is usually still to gain traffic and that’s nearly impossible when the major search engines refuse to carry you in their databases.
Furthermore, it adds teeth to any threats that you make and gives a whole new level of credibility to your standing. Many people who are willing to brush aside threats will back down immediately when real harm comes to them. To them, it’s not worth it for a piece they didn’t create.
Contact Other Copyright Holders
Very few plagiarists target just one site or one person. If your work has been stolen, most likely others have.
You can use the same search techniques to trace other works back to their original source. You can then notify the other copyright holders about the infringement and tell them what you’ve learned.
Often times, one complaint of infringement isn’t enough to get a reaction, but several is. A host that doesn’t respond to your notice is very likely to pay attention when half a dozen other angry copyright holders come knocking. It’s also possible that one of these other copyright holders have resources and contacts you don’t making their arguments much more weighty.
Long story short though, if you use the mentality of strength in numbers, you can often times simply overpower plagiarists.
Consider Legal Action
Most of the time, legal action isn’t a viable option, especially with international cases. The cost of litigating is simply too great to justify the amount of damages one can hope to claim.
However, if you have a lawyer friend who will let you use his letterhead, you will often get a better response by repeating your requests in that format. Any kind of letterhead from a law firm is definitely an attention-grabber and lets the people involved know that you are much more serious.
This is a great approach to use on unwilling hosts or even the plagiarist themselves if you have an address available (such as when they secure their own domain). Sending the letter certified mail also adds to the attention it gets. The basic idea is to find ways to ratchet up the seriousness of the issue without breaking the bank.
After all, most plagiarists and hosts ignore your letters because they don’t believe it to be a serious issue. If you let them know that it is, they usually back down quickly.
The Sad Truth
The bottom line is that a small percentage of plagiarism cases never get resolved. The cases are simply too minor, too difficult or too old to deal with effectively. Though it’s possible to crack well over 95% of all plagiarism cases one way or another, there are always a few that are going to elude a practical solution.
Short of hiring an attorney, often in a foreign nation, there’s not much that you can do sometimes.
The best thing you can do in those cases is resign yourself to fight the incidents that you can and take comfort in that, by defending your copyright so vigorously, you are removing any doubt about who the original creator is.
After all, the only way you can completely lose control of your work is to do nothing and let the plagiarists run free. If you stop most of them, even those you can’t block will never have any credibility behind their claims. Despite the losses, you preserve the value and integrity of your work.
Which, in the end, is exactly what fighting plagiarism is about. Preserving your work and your efforts.
Other Information
Here are links to the various search engines and their DMCA pages.
- Google.com: Google DMCA Information
- Yahoo.com: Yahoo DMCA Information
- MSN.com: Microsoft DMCA Information
I want to thank you for this insightful information. It has served to assure me that I did go about protecting my property rights in the right way.
I sell a unique set of instructions on eBay that are completely my own work of authorship (including photos), and they have sold for several months now. I discovered that I could reuse the refills for a commercial product (akin to refilling printer ink cartridges). One eBay member purchased the instructions from me, then plagiarized and sold them. After more than a month of emailing and faxing proof of my ownership, this person’s listings were removed from eBay, and from two other (classified ads-type) websites where she had advertised them using ad copy plagiarized from my eBay listing. (And, to add a bit of interest, this eBay MEMBER also sells an e-book at one of the classifieds websites that instructs others how to get around an eBay suspension!)
As anyone knows who has to fight for their IP rights, it can take a huge toll on a person’s energies. In my case, I am disabled, unable to work, and live on a very low income. But, my mind is very capable, and when I discovered how to reuse the product, I was happy to save some money. After much thought, I searched the Internet extensively to see if anyone else might have discovered how to do this, and had posted it anywhere. I then conducted research to be sure that to sell such instruction was ethical and legal. When I was sure that everything was legitimate, I spent a good deal of time to carefully compose, photograph each step of, and to list the instructions, and I am very proud of the result. To have my hard work plagiarized and to have to make and prove claims of infringement has taken a big emotional toll on me, and I did almost give up at times out of frustration and exhaustion.
I do have a website that advertises my product, and, as of yet, it hasn’t been plagiarized.
It is sad that in this digital age, plagiarizm is so rampant, and seemingly inevitable. It does puts everyone but the plagiarizer, it seems, in a very difficult position. What is perhaps the most infuriating is that a plagiarist can bring so much grief upon those who try to do things the right way. I’ve learned some hard lessons, but have come away with some very valuable ones.
Thank you again for this site, and for giving me the opportunity to ‘speak my piece’.
P.S. If you would have any use for my comments here, in full or in part, I grant you full rights to their use. And, should you choose to use any of these comments, perhaps you would allow me to link to them?
[...] In conclusion, doppelbloggers do what they do for a variety of reasons inlcuding fortune and fame. They are lazy and risk not fame but infamy. To paraphrase Plagiarism Today: fighting plagiarism is about preserving your work and your efforts as your own. Don’t let others make money off of your words, thoughts, and ideas by calling them their own. [...]
One other aspect to using shame to deal with plagiarists is that you can go after their egos with a little SEO. What I mean is that if you determine the plagiarist is an identifiable person or company, you can improve the effectiveness of your shaming attempts by making sure you use SEO to get your page describing the plagiarism to the top of search engine results. Eventually, the person or someone who knows the person will come across your page because search engine use is so common. That’s the tactic I’m trying now.
I read this and feel it makes allot of sense. However your advice clearly points out the steps one should take which include attempts to notify the person or company who you believe is at fault. I’ve just been accused of this myself and the accuser followed all your steps but choose to skip the first few that involved notice and a presumption of guilt was applied without examining the facts or just plain giving someone the chance to say anything before allot of damage is done. I fear that much of this is being done like in my case for the theatrical value rather than a sense of actually being harmed. This has happened to us before when the accuser had in fact given written permission but just forgot. Buy the time we found out it was already lore and thus ‘true’ in the blogging world. In real cases where one feels harm is being done the first natural thing to do is ask the harmer to stop. That’s what I”ve attempted to do here myself. Its only after they don’t cease that you can reasonable asses their intentions or even if there were intentions. This is allot more complicated than it would first seem to those who are new to the world of blogging. I agree with virtually everything you’ve said only wanted to add my voice and experiences as a note of caution and to say dont get carried away with a mob before you learn the facts.
http://pontiff.wordpress.com/2006/08/31/blindside-theatre/
[...] When All Else Fails [...]
[...] 5. When All Else Fails [...]