Monday, April 20, 2009

My Personal Plagiarist

I've already mentioned this on Facebook and Twitter, and I don't really want to do a full-length rant. But I'm angry, and a Tweet and a status message are insufficient to relieve my frustration.

Remember last fall, when someone alerted me that a guy pseudonymed Wilfred John had mangled and reposted a poem of mine in mutiple places? I wrote about it here:

Laughing, Spinning Changing Lies

Well, guess what. After considerable effort, I managed to get a DMCA takedown of the offending posts on a couple of websites, and a less formal takedown elsewhere. Now it turns out that his version of my poem is still elsewhere on Scribd.com, on a Yahoo 360 page, and even on Blogger!

POEMS OF WILFRED JOHN

The person who alerted me of these latter-day offenses is battling to stop them. Myself, I'm feeling a little battle-weary. Apparently Blogger isn't terribly concerned about this sort of thing, and even if we get these particular postings removed, odds are he'll just find more venues. What I need is a way to stop the behavior, not each individual posting after the fact. Any ideas?

Karen

More about this guy from Dean J. Baker (thanks, Julie!):

Plagiarists
at

5 comments:

  1. Call me PaulTue Apr 21, 05:58:00 AM MST

    Baseball bat?

    ReplyDelete
  2. barrettmanorTue Apr 21, 07:25:00 AM MST

    Have I sent you to Plagiarism Today? I think I may have. However, they just posted an article about DMCA takedowns and Blogger the other day that may be of use to you.

    I also notice there's a "report for abuse" link on his Yahoo 360 page. Make use of it, if you haven't already.

    I'm not sure if you can stop him for good, but you can try. I have another idea, which I'll send you via e-mail.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ShellySTue Apr 21, 11:27:00 AM MST

    My take on the whole issue is that if you post it online, someone will take it and use it in some form elsewhere. The only way to prevent it is to not post anything, or to do so in a private venue where your readers are people you personally know and/or trust only.

    ReplyDelete
  4. barrettmanorTue Apr 21, 05:58:00 PM MST

    "Only be sure to always call it please 'research.'"

    (Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky," http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1316.htm)

    ReplyDelete
  5. PiroskaSun Apr 26, 12:58:00 PM MST

    I'm happy to say that 3 more sites have pulled him:
    --Scribd (the document of 1200+ pages)
    --Corner Poetry
    --Poetryfoundation.org pulled his comments off an article (he had posted at least a dozen poems in a comment)

    Piroska

    ReplyDelete

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