Article Theft…What to do about it?

I have read several articles, blogs, and message board postings concerning the rise of article theft. Specifically, this is where your article is lifted from your site without your permission or pulled from a third party site.

In many ways I consider the internet to be the “Wild West” in terms of lawlessness.  People who Ignore established and set rules is very common, which means that us law abiding folks have our work cut out for us.

It may surprise you, but I don’t take action in many cases of known article theft. Why? Because, I just don’t have the time to police everything. I know of authors who check every link to their site, but that work is both tedious and time consuming.

 

A golden rule: If someone takes my article without my permission and the content and links are still in place, I don’t worry about it. If they take my article and change the content, paragraph headers, the title, or steal credit for themselves, then I will contact the offending party and demand that they make the appropriate corrections. Even for links that are broken, I generally let these types of mistakes slide.

When it comes to writing, time is money. I only respond to egregious violations while letting everything else slip by. I would rather spend my time making money instead of losing that time to chasing down violators. No, my policy or “golden rule” isn’t perfect, but it saves me from being bogged down in what I find to be a wasteful pursuit.

3 thoughts on “Article Theft…What to do about it?

  1. Donna Merrill

    Hi Julia,

    I totally agree with you here. Policing is too much to do. Once, a long time ago before my internet days I was working with a major publisher on a book. Well, long story short, they took my information, ran with it and it became a best selling Barnes and Nobel book. It was about Magick candles, oils and spells. How they really worked and what to do when you were trying to pull things into your life.
    At this time, it wasn’t very popular and I owned a store where I made all this stuff. The book was released, I blessed them and knew karma was a good thing.
    And my products sold like wild fire. I lived happily ever after.
    Moral of the story is what goes around comes around. So If someone steals my content, it will only give me more power in the end.

    Donna

    Reply
    1. Julia Wojdacz Post author

      I completely agree with you there, Donna. Those are words that I live by: “What goes around comes around!” Thank you so much for your comment. I look forward to reading your blog.

      Reply
  2. Lesly Federici

    Hey Julia,
    There’s a guy on the internet, Leo Babauta, creator of zenhabits.net and he wrote about this same topic (can’t find the article) but he has the same attitude. In fact, he doesn;t mind if his content is lifted as long as he is credited for it because its more visability for him, I agree with you and Donna, I don’t have the time, and what goes around comes around – sooner or later.

    Reply

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