What to Do About Copyright Violators
Continuation of Lesson 19 from You Can Make
Money Writing
We wrap up this lesson with a look at what can be done about
copyright violators. I include a letter that we sometimes send,
but I have to repeat that you cannot expect much in the way of
results. Fortunately, there normally won't be much in the way
of damage from the thievery of your writing either.
A Sample Email to Copyright Violators
Below is a letter I sometimes send out to violators. You can
copy it and use it as your own, modifying it in whatever way
you like. Make the process systematic, though, or you'll spend
way too much time chasing after thieves.
To webmaster: (insert domain
name here)
You are using an article written by
me in violation of my copyright. I have only authorized the use
of this article by others if it is unchanged and the link to
my website in the author's resource box is active. The details
of your violation are as follows:
Article title: (as it appears
on their website)
URL where the article is located:
(exact page where your article is)
Violations: (check those that
apply)
___ Wrong author's name on article.
___ Resource box is missing.
___ Link is not active.
___ Article has been changed.
Other details and necessary corrections:
(be specific about corrections required)
I understand that this may be an unintentional
violation, but it is serious nonetheless. Please correct the
problem immediately or remove the article from your website.
A copy of this email is being forwarded to my attorney in case
legal action is required. Thank you for your immediate attention
to this matter.
(Your name)
This fill-in-the-blank email should get their attention, and
resolve most problems quickly.
Are You Ready for This?
Every day my wife and I get Google Alerts notifying me of
new pages with my name on them. From these, at least several
times per week, we discover a "butchered" article of
mine being used somewhere, as I explained in a previous lesson.
I just found another example that I thought you might enjoy.
Here are a few altered paragraphs from an article I wrote called
"A Forty-Five Second Meditation:"
If you haven't meditated prior to,
you competence consider it's as well most difficulty to sense.
If you do discuss, you know it can be formidable to find the
time to do it consistently. So is there unequivocally the imagining
you can sense right right away which can be finished in 45 seconds?
There is.
Now, this won't get you in to the
low pondering state, generally if you've never meditated prior
to. Is this the reason not to do it? Not during all. You'll get
what you get out of it, as well as which roughly positively includes
the clearer thoughts as well as the rebate in highlight.
Don't be concerned if the little
contend this isn't "real" imagining. You travel prior
to you run, as well as not all has to be formidable to be of
worth. Because not do the forty-five-second imagining right right
away?
Let me assure you that this is not how I wrote it. I couldn't
write that poorly even after three beers. And never mind what
it originally said - this isn't even close.
I am going to speculate on how the this happens. In addition
to the use of "article spinner" software, which I discussed
previously, there are people taking English articles and translating
them into other languages. I have had requests to do this, but
many times it is simply done without permission. I suppose I
wouldn't mind if the article was still linked to my website (they
usually are not).
But then it get's bizarre. Apparently others are taking those
articles of mine that are in other languages and translating
them back into English. They probably think they don't have to
worry about copyright violations that way; they assume the article
was written in that other language to begin with (and those doing
this obviously don't speak much English).
The process of translating them twice makes for some funny
stuff. Here is another example of a possibly double-translated
paragraph from an article I wrote titled, "A List Of Inventions
I'm Waiting For:"
Insult bureau paper. Who do you impoverishment to have and
foretelling downbound the toilet? Politicians would belike be
substantially represented on the itemize of faces printed on
this bureau paper.
Again, it isn't important what it said originally. My wife
emails these users, giving them the original (with the proper
link), and asks them to make the appropriate changes or remove
the article. You might want to do the same if this happens to
you, but I wouldn't worry too much about these articles hurting
your reputation. I think anyone who reads English can tell that
there is something other than bad writing going on here.
One last note about this. These are undoubtedly translated
using a program (there are some free ones on the internet). Keep
that in mind if you are ever tempted to translate your own pages
or articles for use in another language. For example, my wife
(a native Spanish speaker) uses babelfish.com to translate some
of my articles into Spanish, but she assures me that they are
virtually unreadable without a lot of further editing.
One last reminder: The thieves and copyright violators will
generally not do much damage to your traffic. They use your content
on low-value rarely-visited websites most of the time. Those
who steal for a living are generally too lazy to build a website
that gets much traffic.
Continues with lesson 20 here... Write
for Money
Note: This is part of the book, You Can Make Money
Writing. There are links to all the all the lessons/chapters
on the home page.
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