Stolen content - what's the Best Practice for reporting?

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Every time one of my Usage articles gets rebought, I make sure I have a Google alert for it so I can see where it comes up. As a result, I've become aware of several stolen content/plagiarism/missing or misattributed by-line situations concerning one of my articles.

The article: "Web Hosting Options: Shared Hosting or Dedicated Server?"
The link on Constant Content to it: http://www.constant-content.com/MoreDet ... erver_.htm

It has been sold for Usage 6 times. Usage licenses do not give permission to leave off my by-line or replace them with another person's claim to have written the article. I always include my by-line underneath the title in the full article.

I have four links to stolen/plagiarized content. Two appear to be duplicates of each other. Those two and one more are mis-attributed or not attributed, content ripped from my article's sale page. The fourth is the entire article as though the customer didn't know, or ignored, the terms of the Usage license. As I am only allowed 2 URLs per article, I'll post them all in separate forum posts as replies.

So what's the best practice here? I sent an email about 2 weeks ago to support@constant-content.com, and upon receiving no response, I used the "Contact Us" form to report it. I still have received no response whatsoever, and I'm really feeling abandoned here! What have I done wrong in reporting this? I can't believe that CC doesn't support these sorts of stolen content requests - if that were the case, and the distinction between a Usage License and the more expensive licenses had no enforcement teeth in it, what would stop people buying Usage and acting like they bought Full Rights?

Thanks for any help that may be forthcoming! I do appreciate it. Best wishes.

[JKALLEN]

As a fairly new writer to CC with a fair number of articles under my belt already, I'm interested in hearing the answer to your questions...

Jenn

[HayleyWriter]

I'd try Support again. I am actually surprised you haven't received a response - Support usually jumps on stolen content very quickly. Maybe with the change in the website - the email got lost or caught up in all the other emails. Try Support again - I've always found them very helpful.

Hayley

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Hayley, to tell you the truth, this isn't the first time I've attempted to get a response from Support regarding stolen content and missing by-lines. If you look at my posting history, there's about two years when I didn't upload any articles at all - that was because I was so very, very discouraged at getting absolutely no support from CC while my articles kept popping up in random places with no by-line or even someone else's name attached.

But I shall remain optimistic! Is it possible that I'm just using the wrong email address or contact form? Goodness knows, to get to a Contact form at all, I had to go under the CUSTOMER help page. What steps would you use to report this sort of thing? I will do whatever you suggest!

Here's the first pair of links:

http://www.positivemoneyideas.com/learn ... ry=Hosting
http://comparewebhosting.site88.net/web ... ook-for-2/

There's only one PositiveMoneyIdeas Url after all; I got confused because Google Alerts found their article index instead of the article itself. IN ANY CASE! These two URLs are where someone clearly ripped all the content off the Article Sale page and appended a false attribution.

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Nicole,

I click on the CONTACT US button at the top of the webpage when I am logged in as an author. An email form appears with the subject Author Problem. You type in your email address and explain the problem in the body of the form. Hopefully, this should work. Include the links, plus explain to Support when the articles were purchased for what licences.

Good luck,

Hayley

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

I will try that. Thank you so much! It's good to have this proceedure confirmed.


In the interest of completion, here's the last link:

http://www.ithighway.co.uk/web-hosting- ... server.asp

Entire article, but my by-line is absent (no by-line at all); possibly a customer who didn't understand (or ignored) the terms of the Usage License, or content was stolen from a legitimate customer's website.

[Celeste Stewart]

I don't mean to bring bad news but I found this copy of your article (by searching one of your phrases) on ezinearticles:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Web-Hosting-- ... &id=264419

So unless you're this Pallab character, the article is posted on a site that allows/encourages free copying! This guy really needed to purchase a full rights license. (I am so not a fan of usage for reasons just like this).

When using the Contact Us link, make sure to include your email address and both your real and pen names. I also include the order number(s) for the transaction(s).

[jrichards]

Hi Nicole,

Thanks for bringing this up. I'm sorry that I haven't been more responsive. Things have been pretty busy with the change over to the new site design. I can hardly believe that it's only been a week since we switched to the new design. Feels far longer.

Anyways, let me see what I can do and get back to you. I'll tackle this first thing tomorrow and get back to you via email.
Thanks,
-jrichards

[Constant]

Hey Nicloe-
First off I want to apologize that our support department was not as responsive as they perhaps should have been. It is my fault in part because I started making sure that all emails to support were being placed in a folder for stolen or mis-attributed articles. It has been clear that it is easier to deal with articles in batches, so we can have a more organized follow up. We are trying to develop better techniques for pursuing article theft, and we are becoming more successful as we learn some of the tricks of the trade. We are also developing a better relationship with www.associatedcontent.com, which will help us to track articles more quickly. As for your articles, I identified one of them as legitimately purchased and have requested that your byline be added. The others have been added to our "go get them" list. Please make sure to keep writing us and we will keep working hard to make sure that your articles are protected when you post them on the site, and when they have been let loose into the wild.

David Kool

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Wow! David, jrichards, everyone, THANK YOU. I hadn't even gotten around to following Hayley's advice yet - my week hasn't been as long as yours, goodness, but it's been long enough - and was astounded to see such an outpouring of support when I refreshed the forum thead in my browser.

At this time, do you need more info from me concerning this particular article theft (and I presume you've included in your "go get 'em" list the link that Celeste uncovered? Thank you for finding that, Celeste! No, I'm not Pallab, or admin, or any of the above...)? Should I just wrap it up in one more email so that you have it all in one place, or will this thread suffice? (In the interest of Getting Things Right, the legitimately purchased article should have the byline "by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little" although I won't quibble if they at the very least put NicoleJLeBoeuf up there.)

I very much appreciate knowing that the emails I sent before were indeed received, and I will email again if I have future problems.

Again, thank you.

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

Nearly two months later, I have just got a brand-new Google Alert pointing me to the URL Celeste (ezinearticles.com) mentioned a couple of posts back in this thread.

I've sent another email to support about it and I hope for a response.

[Lysis]

Nicole, I'd contact ezinearticles also. They are pretty good about bringing down plagiarized material. I've never had it happen..yet...but some of my writer friends have contacted them and the articles were brought down.

[LindaM]

I'm new to CC but have been selling on the Internet for quite a while. I must admit that I have not been vigilant about hunting down any plagiarized work. I typically Google for all of my articles after they've been purchased, but they don't always show up, since titles change, etc. Can anyone suggest the best, most effective way to troll for stolen content?

Thanks,
LindaM

[Ed]

One method to help you is to set up Google alerts, as discussed here:

http://www.constant-content.com/forum/v ... =9&t=13932

Thanks,
Ed

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

I give up.

Google Alerts just turned up another instance of my full article, which has sold via the usage license some 6 times since I posted it in 2005. The article was missing my by-line, in direct violation of the usage license terms.

I contacted support, because I have been told repeatedly that by the terms of use of Constant-Content we authors are not to contact purchasers under any circumstances. Besides, we authors don't even know where our content can be legitimately published; we only know our purchasers by their CC login. For all I know the whole article was stolen.

Support wrote back to me thusly:

This article has been sold 6 times since 2005, so it is difficult to know the status of the poster. If you want to spend the time getting them to add your by-line please do so.

David
Support

So Support totally disclaims any ability to know whether Constant-Content content HAS been stolen, and seems to believe that enforcing the terms of our content licenses is a waste of time. And apparently the exception to the rule that authors must never contact purchasers is, "unless they want to spend the time it takes to actually enforce license terms, because CC can't be bothered."

I'm sorry, Ed, Celeste, Hayley, everyone, but at this point I give up. I consider this evidence that CC's attitude is not author friendly, that in fact CC denies any responsibility to enforce the terms of the licenses under which customers purchase content, and thus effectively hangs a "steal these articles" sign on the door.

I will not upload another article, and I would like to remove all my articles from the site. And close my account.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to do either of these things. The author's FAQ doesn't cover it. The only articles with delete buttons are those that never sold; it seems I'm not allowed to make my content no longer available for purchase. And there certainly isn't a "close my account" button. If anyone knows how to do these things, I wouldn't mind hearing from them. At this point I'm not holding my breath on Support helping me out with this.