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02 December 2013

How do you stop wholesale copying?

I have come across instances of plagiarism before, both professionally and personally. It seems to be endemic. Two of my blogger friends, Cinematters and Songs of Yore, dealt with it when their posts were lifted without so much as a by-your-leave. In the latter case, I was also the person who spotted the similarities and informed the blogger. 

But while I have the usual admonition on my site that what I post on my site is my own writing, and anyone who wants to quote something from my posts is free to do so as long as they give me credit, and provide a link to my site, I have never really gone about looking to see whether anyone has stolen my thoughts and ideas.


So it was a more than a shock when I was trawling the web and came across a site which has posted an entire post from my blog without asking for permission, giving me any credit, or linking to my blog - it's not just a couple of paragraphs here or there, but the whole post including the title and the little collage of flowers that I used! In fact, he /she was brazen enough to post it under his own name. (I took these screenshots for proof that I wasn't just dreaming this happened!)
Check out the name of the blog on the top, and the 'Posted by' name at the bottom of the post.
Check out this link - this post was published on April 18th, 2013.
Further proof, if proof is needed

Here is another screen shot:
Now check out my post on songs of remembrance which was posted on April 5, 2012.

Now I wonder how many of my other posts are making the rounds of the Internet under someone else's name...

I have posted a comment on the post asking him to remove the post completely. If he/she won't, what is my recourse? Any one know?

This is enough to make a bad day worse. :( 
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6.50pm
You think the above was bad enough? I just posted a paragraph of my post on character archetypes, and guess what? There it comes up, same blogger's name (he is bmmann instead of bombaymann), different blog! This one is called Filmy India, and the idiot has even used my Blog's title and the little tea cup logo. Only, he/she/it hasn't figured out that I had hacked my blog's html to customise it, and so 'Conversations over Chai' is bleeding all over the page.
I suppose the question I asked earlier '...how many of my other posts are making the rounds of the Internet under someone else's name...' is answered. Though I'm scared to actually search for paragraphs from other posts - who knows what I have uncovered? For all I know, this chap has many more such blogs, each with a different post from a different blogger. Or many posts from each blogger, because I cannot be the only one targetted. 

My headache's just gotten worse!
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