Content Theft

[administrator]

If you really care - launch a DOS attack.

He's hosting on Windows 3.1?

We have had the article from Friday published on three other websites so far! It happens quite a lot. Easy when they are in the UK and are a "respectable" firm of accountants and a warning is usually enough. If an Indian Blog then much harder. You could look up to see where his site is hosted and threaten them with an infringement warning to see if they will put pressure on him.

[SimonMac]

An Indian chap has just copied one of my blog posts to his own server, where he is passing it off as his own work. No link back, not attribution. I have sent him an email. He actually left a comment on another post of mine which is how I found out (it contained a link to his site). It is trivial, but has anybody else experienced content theft over the web?

The guys web site seems to consist largely of Unix interview question lists and answers.

This will only be a problem if he is better than you are at SE...... oh!

[sartois]

I normally help out on the interviews for potential contractors and one we interviewed recently brought up how he is blogging technical articles to pass on his knowledge etc. Made a point of asking him about the name of the blog and looked it up after the interview. Turns out he had 3 articles posted and simply copying and pasting a paragraph into Google revealed they were all direct copy/paste from Technet - even the images. He didn't even change any of the wording, no link to Technet, just a little 2 liner at the end saying that he hoped readers enjoyed 'his' article. If it wasn't for that he might have been offered the role.

[pjclarke]

No names, was once working at a ClientCo A who were working with Bobsultancy B. Part of my deliverable was a package of code, procedures and documentation that comprised a framework of best practice for the particular ETL tool in use.

Was later working at ClientCo B who also partnered with the Bobsultancy, who as part of their offering brought along - you guessed it. There were my documents lightly edited and shorn of all ClientCo A copyright and ownership.

Didn't worry too much, the tool had moved on a couple versions meaning the package needed updating, which I'd already done but they hadn't. Amusingly, one of the PDFs still had my name and LtdCo name in the attributes

[tarbera]

Luckily no women will ever read either of your blogs to compare the depth

[NotAllThere]

I devised some processes surrounding code review and implemented them in one client. A few years later, I shifted to another client and had to be trained on the code review process - it was exactly what I'd written for the first client. However, the chap who'd nicked it was no longer with the new client - but he didn't work there again.

[WTFH]

A bit of a reverse situation, but in the late 1990s I created an Excel spreadsheet that did a series of date conversion calculations, useful when dealing with a particular ERP system.


Just over 3 years ago I started on a new site and their IT finance BA came over to me on day 1 and said "did you once create an Excel spreadsheet for dates?" I said yes. He'd got a copy from another consultant who had claimed the work as his own, but the finance guy looked at the properties and saw my name on it.
He wanted to thank me because he had been using it every day for 5+ years.

[unixman]

This will only be a problem if he is better than you are at SE...... oh!

That's just it. Duplicating an article can displease the search engines, potentially dropping the ranking.

I normally help out on the interviews for potential contractors and one we interviewed recently brought up how he is blogging technical articles to pass on his knowledge etc. Made a point of asking him about the name of the blog and looked it up after the interview. Turns out he had 3 articles posted and simply copying and pasting a paragraph into Google revealed they were all direct copy/paste from Technet - even the images. He didn't even change any of the wording, no link to Technet, just a little 2 liner at the end saying that he hoped readers enjoyed 'his' article. If it wasn't for that he might have been offered the role.

That is genuinely shocking. Shocking dishonesty, and also shocking he didn't realize how easy it was to trace. In my case, the thief replaced the last paragraph with "Hope you like this post ... cheers!". Checking his site, it seems he works, or has worked, for the MOD. They might be interested to learn of his dishonesty, particularly when his clearance is up for renewal.

Didn't worry too much, the tool had moved on a couple versions meaning the package needed updating, which I'd already done but they hadn't. Amusingly, one of the PDFs still had my name and LtdCo name in the attributes

Amusing and enraging, perhaps. What did you do?

Luckily no women will ever read either of your blogs to compare the depth

My blog is about wine and cupcakes.

...the finance guy looked at the properties and saw my name on it. He wanted to thank me because he had been using it every day for 5+ years.

Good on the BA. So there is some honesty in finance.

[NickFitz]

That's just it. Duplicating an article can displease the search engines, potentially dropping the ranking.

I think you'll probably be OK there. Google say they don't actually penalise duplicate content per se, but when content is duplicated across multiple domains, one of them is likely to lose out. As yours is the origin, their algorithm is likely to choose yours to appear in search results and exclude the other guy.

If searching shows the content thief ranking higher than you, then you can submit a DMCA takedown request to Google to have his version removed from their search results.

TBH, from what seems to be the case nowadays, the other guy is using an old and no-longer-valid approach if he thinks he's going to show up in Google's results by nicking content. Google has been wise to that for years, and is getting better all the time at filtering that stuff out.

Here's a pretty good article on the subject which seems to be up to date, with some embedded videos by relevant Googlers: Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google in 2015