In short though, I’ve been involved with copyright and plagiarism matters now for over ten years, including the over six years I’ve run Plagiarism Today. I’ve learned a great deal about content tracking, removing infringements, spotting plagiarism and helping content creators determine what strategies are best for their content. Over the past few years, I’ve taken that experience and turned it into a full-time job.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what it is that I do for that job and give PT readers a glimpse at what I do here to help pay the bills for both myself and this site.

So, if you’ve ever wonder what I do in front of the computer 10 hours per day (other than post PT obviously), here’s a glimpse at how I fill the time.

What Do You Do?

As I always emphasize, I am not an attorney but I work with attorneys regularly. As such, I don’t handle lawsuits or give out legal advice. Though I am well-versed in copyright law, I focus more on the technology side of things, helping to detect, track and remove content as needed.

Generally, my practice focuses in the following areas:

1. Content Detection: Tracking content online understanding how it’s being used online. This includes text, images, audio, video and other files.
2. Content Enforcement: Removing unauthorized copies of works when possible, including filing DMCA takedown notices, abuse reports and other enforcement actions.
3. Plagiarism Analysis: Determining if a work is authentic or if it is a plagiarism. This service is commonly used by schools but also common for content buyers to want to vet content before purchasing.
4. Expert Witness Work: I often provide reports and testimony for court cases and academic disciplinary boards.
5. Public Speaking: Talking with various groups and organizations about copyright and plagiarism issues.

On top of that, I also do a fair amount of traditional consulting work with various groups including:

1. Content Creators: Including how to better track, license and enforce their work, all with an eye toward maximizing the benefit they get from their efforts.
2. Academic Institutions: How to reduce student plagiarism as well as how to better detect and deal with cases of plagiarism that come up.
3. Developers: Helping those building copyright and plagiarism-related products and services test their products and improve them to make them more useful.

All in all, it’s a pretty wide berth to cover and my clients, past and present, include various content creators, schools, developers, services and much more. In short, I never know what I’m doing tomorrow or the next day.

Myself and My Business

Back in February I announced the relaunch of CopyByte.com. CopyByte, in turn, is the business name for myself and what I do.

Most of the time, CopyByte is just myself and I do all of the smaller to medium-sized projects on my own. However, for larger ones, such as very large plagiarism analyses, I sometimes hire some people I know locally to provide assistance as needed. They work closely under my control, but help a great deal with a lot of the more repetitive and non-specialized work that, while very important, can be delegated to save both time and money.

In the end though, CopyByte is more or less me and that’s the way I’d like to keep it, for now at least.

Relationship Between PT and CopyByte

The next natural question is “Where does PT fit in with this?” The answer is simple: It’s my blog and my free resource. I make it a point to put everything I learn or think that is important on the site for all, for free. Pretty much anything I’m going to tell you in a consulting arrangement, you can read here, though it won’t be tailored to your needs.

Plagiarism Today is my continuing bid to help as many people as I can. I’ve never withheld anything from it because I thought it might “hurt” my consulting work and, similarly, I’ve never lost a client because they found what they wanted from me for free on the site.

That being said, one area that there IS overlap is when I blog about companies and clients that I am either working for or have worked for. In those cases I disclose the relationship clearly in the article at the footer.

However, as I warn my clients, if anything I’m harder on the companies I work for on Plagiarism Today. The reason is they know what I expect and have an inside track to my thoughts. Those companies, if anything, are held to a higher standard than those I’ve never worked with.

Bottom Line

All in all, I keep myself busy with a wide variety of tasks and work types. I wake up each morning with only a small idea of what the day hold in store and that’s part of what I love. While I have scheduled tasks, it’s the unpredictable stuff that makes things exciting.

While that unpredictability can be frustrating at times, especially when dealing with finances, it makes it easier to get up in the morning and gives me something to look forward to every day.

That, in turn, is what I enjoy best about my work…

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!

After several weeks worth of work, I’m proud to announce the launch of the brand-new CopyByte.com.

CopyByte.com is the new home base for the consulting services I offer and serves as a replacement for the old consulting page that was here at Plagiarism Today (the page simply redirects now).

Specifically, there are links to the services that I and those I work with provide. This includes services for content creators, content users, Web hosts, Schools and more.

Some will recall that in August of last year I joined CopyByte as the company’s manager. Vortala, the company’s previous owner, decided to separate CopyByte out to focus more on their core products and I’m taking over as the new owner of the company. However, Vortala is still very close to CopyByte and will remain so for some time.

However, I’m changing CopyByte from a narrowly focused content detection and resolution agency to a full-featured consulting firm that offers a wide variety of services related to copyright and plagiarism issues in the digital world.

The one focus of the agency is practical, realistic advice. We won’t promise to eliminate misuse of your content, to stop all future plagiarism in a school, but rather will focus on effective strategies that can deal with copyright and plagiarism issues without getting mired in many of the pitfalls that can often come with these issues.

Also with the site is a new Twitter account, this one solely for CopyByte. I’ll be using this one primarily for links to industry news and will continue to use my PlagiarismToday account for both personal use and to update to matters as they relate to Plagiarism Today.

On that note, I don’t expect Plagiarism Today will change much, if at all. Since I started working for CopyByte, Plagiarism Today has been exclusively my personal blog and it will continue to be as such. I’ll use the news section on CopyByte for occasional updates about services offered and industry-related news though the bulk of the analysis and news items will still be here.

So, if you’re enjoying Plagiarism Today now, you shouldn’t notice any changes moving forward but those of you who are interested in my consulting services now have a new home page and a wide new selection of services to choose from.

On that note, if you think you might be interested in any of the services I offer, please feel free to check out the new CopyByte.com and feel free to contact me through there.

bLogics

First, I am proud to announce a new partnership with bLogics, a consulting service aimed at bloggers to help them build their sites and grow online. Owned by SplashPress Media, which also owns The Blog Herald and Perofmancing (two other sites I currently contribute to), bLogics assists bloggers in a variety of areas including hosting, design, content generation and social media.

At bLogics, I will be bringing my expertise to their new Copyright Managements services, which specifically have two functions.

1. Content Tracking: First I’m providing a service where I search the Web for your site’s content, locate the highest-ranking sites using your content and then providing a report that breaks down the kinds of sites they are, what format the use takes (attributed, partial, etc.) and what the recommended course of action is. This is not an all-inclusive report, but rather, a highlight reel of the most important cases to examine. It is designed to maximize the effectiveness of any enforcement you wish to take while minimizing the time spent.
2. Cessation: Second, I am offering assistance in stopping infringers, namely by using takedown requests to remove unwanted copies. This includes tracking, locating the correct information, sending the notice and follow up. This service can be used in conjunction with the first service, but both can be used separately.

These services are identical to ones I’ve offered on my Consulting Services page for years (the first being a part of the “Content Strategy Development”) but with bLogics the advantage is that they can be bundled with other, related services that are beyond my scope.

It is worth noting that the content tracking services are NOT designed to replace automatic plagiarism detection tools, but rather, provide a layer of human analysis over them. For those that wish to know about every copy and stop every case, these services are likely not a good fit and I will gladly recommend a variety of tools that can give you full control. It is more aimed at those that want to reduce the time they spend on such issues while still obtaining the maximum benefit or simply want a second opinion to add to their own information.

Blogging Tips

Today also marks the day I begin a new weekly column at Blogging Tips. The column, which will appear on Thursdays, is going to focus on WordPress and blogging-related tips for protecting, licensing and tracking your content, though it may also delve into other tips I’ve learned over the years.

These columns will focus less on legal issues and more on technology and tools that can assist in handling content-related issues in a bid to be more practical and “ground level” than some of the discussions on this site.

The first column, scheduled to be posted later today, deals with Google Alerts and how to use it to track your feed.

Conclusions

It is always exciting for me when I get to reach new audiences and help new people so today is a great day for me.

I want to say thank you to all of my clients, both current and past, that have helped make it so that I have been able to work on Plagiarism Today full time for the past year and a half without including any advertising on the site. I feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity and, because of it, I’ve been able to help many people at no cost.

Also, thank you all dear readers for your support, without you this site would not be possible.

I’m looking forward to a very exciting 2009.

Very quickly though, I wanted to give a rundown as to what is new and improved on the site.

Tumblr Blog Launched

Earlier this week, I started work on a new microblog on Tumblr. It contains interesting links and videos related to content theft and copyright issues and will be updates as often as I find new things to add to it.

This blog will be different from my other microblogging/linkblogging efforts as it will be exclusively limited to dealing with content theft issues and not general copyright law. Where my Linkblog at Diigo focuses on copyright news and my Twitter account is more personal, my Tumblr will be used solely for issues that relate directly to PT, making it a natural addition for anyone who reads this site.

Below is an updated list of all of the sites you can find PT-related content (other than this site) and what you will find there:

• Friendfeed (Synopsis of all postings, including this site)
• Twitter (Mostly personal, some news)
• Tumblr (Links. videos and images related to Plagiarism Today)
• Diigo (Links related to copyright law, Copyright 2.0 Show)
• Vimeo, YouTube and Revver (Videos for this site, updated rarely)

New Consulting Services Page

As many of you already know, I provide consulting services on top of the free assistance I provide every day. It has been a while since I have updated the Consulting Services page with new information about myself and what I do, so I’ve gone through and done that.

For those who are interested in my services, please feel free to contact me and take advantage of the special offer I’ve added to the page.

Broken Links Fixed

In addition to the other changes/improvements, I’ve gone through and fixed or removed over 400 broken links on the site.

This was made possible by the Broken Links Checker plugin for WordPress, which made the process very easy and helped me to detect/repair links in all of the posts on the site.

All totaled, the biggest issue by far was mainstream media sites that had pulled old entries down after a period of time. This was very frustrating and has made me hesitant to link to mainstream media articles going forward, instead seeking alternative sources.

Other big issues were sites closing down, blogs changing their permalinks (those links were fixed) and errors on my part (also fixed).

The good news in it all is that, while a decent number of links went away and articles had to be updated, the site should be almost completely broken-link-free now.

Hopefully (if we all take our shoes off at the door), we can keep it that way for a while…

Conclusions

There are more changes coming in the next few weeks, including a few additional pages to the site. new hosting and much more.

So please let me know what you think about these changes or if you see any problems.

Thank you very much for your continued support!