My content is being stolen !!!


Update: digitaljournal.com have banned this user. Read below the post for details.

It came to me as a surprise as I found an article published by me on digitaljournal.com by a guy using the name Critical_Conformity. He exactly copied and pasted the article without giving any credit. Look at the guts this guy had. He has made $200+ by publishing stuff which other people write and taking credit for it. He also has a fan base who admire him for the articles I wrote. Yes I am MAD!!!

He stole the piece I did on Learning Annex. You can look at it here. If the URL is not working then take a look at the screen shot below.
The second piece he stole was the article I did on Standing Up for your Thought. You can look at the thief's work over here. He republished the article here by changing the image. If the URL is not working then take a look at the screen shot below.
On digitaljournal.com, his profile and after digging around a bit I found his technorati.com profile, where his real name is listed as Danny Downey. He has a bunch of blogs. I have no personal problem with Danny except he stole my articles and gave no credit and responded to people's comment like he wrote the article's. To me he represents the internet scum and free rider, who want to make the money at other people's expense.

I would warn all of you to search digitaljournal.com to make sure you are not being robbed.

Also to stop Danny Downey and all other thief's like him, we need a social blogging system(like MyBlogLog) which blacklist's such people and degrade their internet reputation. A system in which people can report plagiarism from all over the web and then the community blacklists those people and report it to Google and Yahoo so they are no longer listed with the search engines.

What are your thoughts ? What should be my next steps?

Biggs

Update: I made a complaint to digital journal community and got a great response from Christopher Hogg. Thanks Elaine and Jonathan Bailey of plagiarismtoday.com and digitaljournal(DJ) community members( GotTheScoop, cgull and Bocephalus) for your support and direction. The email I received from DJ's Christopher Hogg clears digitaljournal.com of any wrong doing in my books but still leaves me searching for a better system to fight plagiarism and create awareness.

Hi Ash/Biggs,

Thanks for contacting DigitalJournal.com. Of course, we take this very seriously and I'm sorry you had trouble with one of our users. We were not aware he was doing this.

We treat this type of offence very seriously, so I wanted to let you know I have personally contacted Critical Conformity and we have closed his account. He has been barred from the site. If you find any more content published under his name let me know and we will have it removed immediately.

We also saw your blog, and please note we do not, under any circumstances endorse this behaviour. It's entirely against our User Agreement to copy others' work, so it is not us stealing your content as the headline on your blog reads.

Thanks again for letting us know about this, please confirm you got this email.


Best regards,
Chris

Update 2: Danny has left a comment explaining how it happened and has removed my articles from other sources. I appreciate his honesty and courage to accept his mistake. If he can promise to be more careful I think he deserves a second chance at DJ. Ofcourse it is Christopher's decision to renew or not but I can request Chris to renew his account.

9 comments :

  1. Anonymous8:50 AM

    I took a quick look at the site and there seems to be several things worth noting:

    First, it appears that this is a user on Digital Journal, not the site itself. It appears to be a hot like just about any other.

    Second, DJ is a Canadian site and, thus, does not follow US DMCA law. your copyright is respected in Canada, but the procedure for getting works removed is different.

    I looked at the Terms of service at the DJ site, they do not allow copyright infringement and they encourage people noticing such infringement to write them via their contact form here:

    http://www.digitaljournal.com/contact_us.php

    I would do that as your next step, write a friendly, helpful letter explaining the situation and see if they act upon it. They likely will.

    I hope that helps you out! Feel free to let me know if there is anything that I can do to help.

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  2. Anonymous1:24 PM

    I've looked over the article and read what you have said...I've looked at the article...no where does it says that this person wrote the article...it does highlight that it was posted, which are two different words with meanings.
    If you look at most blogs in Blog world they all share the same stories...what's the beef.
    Even if you look at news articles most of them are the same.
    sites like this digital journal and now public are just posting sites.

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  3. Hi Anonymous, since you have not left a name...I assume you are Danny.

    Danny see the problem is you have taken my exact text and copied/pasted it. I do not have a beef with you and I am sure you are a great guy but if someone is benefiting from my content without even telling me then that is not cool. for instance, the "Stand up for your thought" article You have posted it under your name saying it reflects your inner world. Common now, it is two different things to post sites and post their entire content without referencing them. If you notified me or linked back to the original publication and I gave you permission it would have been fine. I mean you cannot copy/paste the whole article by mistake. News article are covering the same topic but they do not use the same words. It is two different things to write on a topic and copy someone's work on a topic.

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  5. Hi Danny,

    Apologies accepted and appreciate your honesty ! Like I said in my comments above I am sure you are a great guy and it seems like you are. I understand you run a busy web publishing life and are juggling different roles in your life, but I think since your name is on the line you ought to be more careful. As an outsider I do not know if there are multiple people making a post because everything is under you name. Thank you for removing my articles from other blogs and websites as well.

    I did not email you because my article was copied word to word and I did not see any point in asking as my assumption was if somebody would just publish my whole article they would not be bothered by my request to remove it, as they know they are plagiarising. But reason to make it so public was I was not sure who you are, you could have shot back that I stole your articles.

    I have received some emails from DJ members telling me you were the highest earner. Some want me to write an article to permanently outst you, I do not know what is the politics at DJ. I do not care, but if you can promise to be more careful and have your team review articles and make sure they are not copied/pasted, I could make a request to Chris to renew your account.

    Cheers,
    Biggs

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  7. Anonymous6:16 AM

    Hey there, Just curious. How did u get a screen shot of them articles that you got from the digital journal website.
    I'm wondering because that site has some of my articles posted on their site and I want to do a post for my blog.
    I can't believe the nerve of some people. Do you have any advice. I've emailed the person, but she told me to go to hell.

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  8. Contact DijitalJournal.com through their contact form and they should be able to help you.

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  9. Hi there,
    So sorry to hear this, it has happened to me also. I know the pain and frustrastion you go through. It's so easy for people to say, "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't know I couldn't do that". Right!!!!
    Another girl told me everything on the internet is free, what's the big deal?

    Lorelle on Wordpress has some great articles on plagiarism.
    What to do when someone steals your content

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