Blogging, microblogging and social networking have given more people than ever the ability to set up their own corner of the Web. By lowering the time and knowledge barriers to setting up a page for themselves, anyone can do it in just a few moments.

While this has mostly been a power for good, giving a voice to content creators who otherwise wouldn’t have a means to reach a large audience, it has also had its share of drawbacks. Though this site has well-documented how this growth has caused a rise in plagiarism and deliberate content misuse, it is also causing a rise in “friendly” infringement, bloggers and social networking users infringing copyright without meaning any harm.

These infringements are tricky to deal with. While spammers and plagiarists can be handled brutally without any issues, treating these cases in a harsh manner is rarely the correct way to solve the problem. Not only does it open the door for new drama, but can actually backfire and hurt legitimate sharing of your work.

So how should you handle these cases? Here’s a quick look at my suggestions.

The Problem

The problem appears to be the most apparent with images or shorter text works. Many people create blogs or profiles for sharing content they find interesting. While this is great when they link to works they like, it becomes a problem when they start copying and pasting. There are many blogs, in particular on Tumblr and Posterous, that seem to focus on sharing findings on the Web repurposed in just such a way.

While some of these blogs do a great job of obeying Creative Commons Licenses or, at the very least, providing proper attribution. Many do not. Some simply have a blanket statement saying that the works are not theirs and are owned by the respective copyright holders. Others still just simply label themselves as a blog about things the owner found and make no mention of copyright or ownership at all.

To be clear, these sites can be great if they link to and excerpt content, both creating great blogs and helping content creators out, but the widespread copying and pasting does nothing to support the authors, especially when it comes without attribution. The problem is that the creators of these sites don’t see anything wrong with their blogs, they see it as merely sharing what they like, but they are hurting the authors and artists by competing with them for search engine attention, causing confusion on authorship and doing nothing to drive viewers to the people who made the work.

The most vulnerable content seems to be either photographs/images or short-form text works such as poems. It seems the longer the work or the more effort required to copy it, the less it fits in with these kinds of blogs and the less likely people are to feel good about copying it. Videos are rarely copied as it is easier to embed them legally, but there is a burgeoning use of audio on these sites as music blogs become more popular. Some of the content is embedded legally though much of it is not.

As the recent Blogspot cases have shown, sometimes labels and blog hosts have a hard time telling the difference.

That controversy further highlights why these cases are so tricky to deal with.

Why It’s Tricky

These situations are tricky because, unlike spammers or plagiarists, these sites are not trying to deceive anyone. Though they are infringing the copyright of and hurting original artists, at least in many cases, treating them the same as a spammer creates some serious risks.

There are three risks in approaching these cases to consider:

1. Backlash: Responding too harshly may result in a backlash from the blogger. Though this will not create a problem in most cases, it does create new drama and may result in you being put in a less-than-favorable light. These sites often do a great job making themselves out to be the victim.
2. Fear of Legitimate Reuse: If you earn a reputation for handling reuse too harshly, those who want to make legitimate use of your content, if you allow it, may be frightened off. This can hurt your marketing and other efforts.
3. Burning Bridges: Many of these bloggers can be great promotional engines for content creators. Responding too harshly to misuse can burn some important bridges before they are built. As such, it is important to find ways to encourage legitimate use while remaining at least somewhat cooperative.

In short, when you are dealing with these types of sites, you are going from a world where the sympathies are solely on your side to one where the loyalties are at least slightly more divided. This may or may not be right depending on your viewpoint, but it is the reality of the situation.

How to Handle Them

As is probably becoming clear, you need to approach these cases with a more gentle hand when possible, especially if you allow and encourage reuse of your content with attribution.

Though stern cease and desist letters or DMCA notices may be right for spammers and confirmed plagiarists, it’s a dangerous approach to take in these cases for the reasons above. Instead, I recommend a more personable one.

1. Contact the Blogger Directly: Send a personal letter to the site admin, if possible, and ask them to either attribute the work, excerpt it and/or remove it. This letter doesn’t have to be threatening, but can remind the person that it is a violation of copyright law and not within the bounds of your license. The emphasis, however, should be on being polite and cooperative.
2. Get More Stern: If you don’t get a reply or the response isn’t satisfactory, get more stern if needed. In most cases, this isn’t necessary but give peace a chance to work even if things are off to a rough start.
3. File a Takedown if Needed: That being said, don’t get bogged down. If the person becomes combative or a few emails don’t solve the problem, don’t waste your time and simply file a takedown notice. In my experience, only a tiny fraction of these cases reach this point but if a case does you should not get bogged down with it.

If you try this approach and can honestly say that you gave the person every chance to rectify the situation, then it is unlikely anything too bad will come of it.

If you do your part and try to be the better person, even if things do go sour, you’ll be in a stronger position and the other person is much less likely to create problems down the road.

Bottom Line

In the end, there’s nothing in this that isn’t what one would consider good conflict resolution in general. It’s best, when possible, to try to resolve disputes face-to-face and amicably when possible. Though some injustices need a harsher response, it is usually better for everyone when they can be avoided. Sites and profiles such as these, are cases where avoiding conflict is both possible and, usually, the best approach.

Basically, what you have to do is tailor your response to every situation that you face and drop the idea that one-size-fits-all when it comes to copyright disputes. Not all infringements or infringers are equal, making it important to not use a nuke when a handshake would do just fine.

If you can avoid that, you’ll find yourself with a great deal less copyright drama on your hands and that even people with different copyright views will respect your actions. That, in turn, can go a long way to healing the much deeper divides on the Web and start bringing about real solutions.

Microblogging service Plurk dropped a bombshell on its site yesterday when it accused MSN China of plagiarizing its service in the creation of its new product MSN Juku, which launched in November.

Plurk, a small startup in the Microblogging field, has not gained much traction in the U.S., especially when compared to Twitter, but has found success in Asia, especially Taiwan, which they consider their biggest market, and had been growing rapidly in China before being blocked by the nation’s firewall. With that in mind, the opening oif MSN’s Juku service was not just a competitor to Plurk, but competing with them in a market they had been doing well in but were removed from.

But what exactly happened in the case and is the fallout going to be? We’re going to take a look at this case, both sides of the story and try to find out just that.

Background

Sometime in November, Microsoft China launched its MSN Juku microblogging service. Almost immediately, technical bloggers in the area noticed the extreme similarities between the new service and the more established Plurk, as this automatically translated post shows (Note: Plurk provided the link).

However, as Plurk developers began to delve into the code of the new Microsoft service, they began to find that the similarities were not just skin deep. According to their blog post, approximately 80% of the client and product codebase appears to have been lifted from Plurk directly.

The story broke across the Web almost immediately. Plurk, though not widely used in the U.S., is well-recognized, especially in tech circles, and the David vs. Goliath struggle of a startup being victimized by a global giant like Microsoft made it all the more interesting.

But the story left a lot of unanswered questions, including “Why Microsoft would do this?” and “What is next fr MSN Juku?” answers I tried to get the answer to.

Plurk’s Side

I reached out to Plurk for their side of the story and received a lengthy reply from Dave Thompson, Plurk’s Asia Pacific Press Contact.

According to Plurk, the situation runs much more deeply than indicated in the post. According to Plurk, the code reusage wasn’t simply a “copy and paste” job as Plurk’s code is proprietary and not easily accessed. All of the code, both client-side and server-side would have needed to be decompiled and cleaned up to be ready for usage on MSN Juku. As Thompson put it, the process would have required someone to “spend some real effort” to obtain and use the code.

In short, this wasn’t a straightforward plagiarism job, but something requiring time and skill.

When asked how certain Plurk was about the allegations, Thompson said the following:

We would not be going out with this story if we weren’t fully confident in our allegations of willful intent on their part in taking our code.

Thompson also highlighted several other similarities between the two code sets including that both sets of intenal vars use short names on internal code (A, B, C, etc.) and long ones on client-facing code (variablename, username, etc.).

As of his letter to me, Thompson did also say that Microsoft had not contacted them regarding the incident and that they had not been in touch with Microsoft either. In short, the two sides aren’t talking to one another, apart from the public statements, and there has been precious few of those as well.

Microsoft’s Side

Microsoft did not return my request for comment but has issued a public statement regarding the matter.

According to Microsoft, the code was not written by developers working for Microsoft or their joint venture that makes up MSN China, but rather, by a third-party vendor. They say that they are working with MSN China “to investigate the situation.”

Without mentioning Plurk by name, Microsoft acknowledged that “questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service (MSN Juku)” and that they have disabled the service while they look into the matter.

It’s a very ugly, if temporary, end to a short-lived product but it is clear that Microsoft responded relatively quickly to the matter. Still, it may not be an end to the case.

Future Direction

When asked what their ideal conclusion to the case would be, “We were really just hoping they’d pull down the existing site and reevaluate their strategy in China.”

It seems now that the first half of that has happened already and the public black eye for Microsoft may force the second. However, with the two sides not actively talking, it appears likely that the case could easily go to the courts, something Plurk has begun exploring the possibilities of. However, the acknowledge that there are a lot of thorny issues for a small startup to overcome, none the least of which is venue. With at least three countries involved (Plurk is based in Canada, Microsoft in the U.S., MSN China and the vendor in China) it’s unclear what the correct venue would be and if it would be worthwhile.

In the end, Plurk will likely leave the decision up to their counsel.

In the meantime, on Microsoft’s side, it seems likely that this is the end for MSN Juku in its current format and it seems likely there may be legal or other action against the vendor involved, which has not been named yet. According to Microsoft, MSN Juku was only in beta but it seems likely that it will remain down until it can be rewritten, if nothing else than to be certain the code is clean.

The end results, as TechCrunch noted, is that Microsoft ends up looking very ridiculous and this may be the best thing to have happened to Plurk in some time, at least from an awareness standpoint. Though Microsoft seems to be fairly far removed from the alleged infringement, which was done by a vendor of a joint venture partially owned by them, it was their name on the service and their reputation to be hurt.

Whether or not this case goes to the courts, Microsoft has a lot of work ahead of them in regards to damage control and Plurk’s status received a huge boost on both sides of the Pacific.

How this will affect Microsoft’s reputation in Asia remains to be seen, especially if the “plagiarist” label will stick, but the short-term effects are very clear.

Bottom Line

Normally I am loathe to encourage shame tactics when it comes to resolving plagiarism disputes. However, it is hard to argue with the results in this case. Not only has Microsoft closed MSN Juku, but the company has taken a black eye over the affair and Plurk is back in the headlines in a relatively positive way.

That being said, this might have been a somewhat unique case. Not only is there no doubt as to the time frame of the two services, but Plurk was able to provide some convincing evidence and was able to be very certain of the infringement before moving forward, part of why it took them almost a month to say anything.

I don’t want to encourage anyone to use their blog as a tool to resolve plagiarism issues. Not only could it have been legally dangerous for Plurk if they had been wrong, but they would have been staring down the barrel of a much bigger opponent. Still, the evidence in this case seems to be fairly clear and public sympathy is on their side. There wasn’t much risk of being wrong or being thought of as a bully.

However, I still would have preferred it if Plurk had approached Microsoft privately about this matter beforehand. Though the results have been positive for Plurk, they come at the potential expense of burning bridges with Microsoft. Given Plurk’s issues within China, Microsoft could have been, or still could be, a powerful partner.

It seems odd to close those doors based upon a misstep, albeit a major one, by a vendor.

In the end though, we’ll have to wait until we hear more from Microsoft to explain what happened, where the failings were and what they are going to do to prevent it from happening again. Even if it is just a shady vendor, it raises serious questions about Microsoft and MSN’s vendor selection and oversight.

This is not a mistake Microsoft wants to repeat, especially if the next person infringed is far more litigious in nature.

There are specifically three changes worth noting:

1. New Page Order: I’ve gone through all of the pages and reordered them, basically moving “Press” and “Contact” to the end of the line. This groups the related pages, “DMCA Contacts“, “Stock Letters” and “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” together in the list. Hopefully this will make the list overall easier to navigate, though it might be confusing to those used to the old layout.
2. New “Other Sites” Page: I’ve added a brand new page under the “About” heading that links to all of the other pages and sites that host content related to this site including the other blogs, microblogs and social networks. It was an attempt to unify all of the different “announcement” posts I’ve made over the past few years.
3. Removed “Host Report”: The Host Report page had not been updated in far too long so I have unpublished it for right now. I plan on reintroducing it soon as something completely different but that project is likely a months off.

It is important to note that, other than the Host Report, everything is still there. I’m sorry for the shuffle but I wanted to make things easier on new readers and may make more adjustments based upon feedback I get.

Thank you for your feedback and your understanding, please keep the suggestions coming!

I’ve been using Twitter fairly consistently but am starting to shift away from it some due to the recent outages and feature restrictions.

So I’m making my FriendFeed account known publicly so people who are interested can follow me there.

Currently, my FriendFeed follows my current presences, with more likely coming soon.

• Diigo (links and bookmarks)
• Twitter (Also, Jaiku and Pownce)
• Shared Items in Google Reader (rarely used)
• Flickr (rarely used)
• Here

Regardless, if anyone wishes to add me to FriendFeed, now is the chance. I can not promise how active I will be on there, it will likely vary wildly from day to day, but I will try and see how it goes.

Look forward to seeing you online!

With that in mind, I’ve created a new Twitter account, username plagiarismtoday, and have started to set things up. I have not added the links to the navigation of this site nor any integration tools though both are in the works. I’ve also only posted one tweet so far. But if anyone is interested in helping me get a head start there, feel free to add me.

I’d love to hear from you and I look forward to seeing what suggestions and thoughts others on the site come up with!