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Internet Plagiarism
Internet Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
Writing a great article or story generates great interest in a topic. In the traditional mediums, publishing a book, article or paper makes a person an instant expert in their field. Likewise, on the Internet, the status of expert comes from publishing articles covering one’s field. With the Internet comes the peril of plagiarized or stolen material that can make the thief the recognized expert.
Plagiarism and copyright infringement is an important issue and one not to be taken lightly. With the advent of the Web Log (blog), it is much easier for the thief to gain the undeserved title of expert in a field they know nothing about. Blogs make it easy to disseminate information quickly and easily, thereby gaining an unequaled advantage over an author who may not use a blog.
Other problems exist with blogs that search engines like Google tend to ignore. According to Google, Web sites with a higher PageRank (PR) value are considered authorities or hubs in their industry. When a person blogs (the act of posting an article or thought to a Web Log) and their blog is programmed to send the post to other sites, Google recognizes the site with the highest PR value as the originator.
This is, in a sense, plagerism. While the receiving site was given permissions to copy the post, it by no means gives them the right to obfuscate or countermand the rights of the true originator. This obfuscation or countermanding of rights isn’t performed directly by the receiving site; rather it is performed by Google giving credits to the wrong party.
When writing an article or paper in college, you’re bibliography should include the references you used to develop your thoughts, ideas and quotations. If you errantly give credit to the wrong author, your paper is considered useless because it should have credited the author with the original thought. This errant attribution is considered fraud and misrepresentation of the facts. In academia, this errant attribution is cause for a poor grade on the paper and possible academic sanctions.
In the world of Google, it apparently doesn’t mean anything to them to give improper credits to a Web site whose authority is summarily gauged by the number of links pointing to the Web site. This errant attribution could be cause for a legal action. Unfortunately, searchers don’t care where they find information, only that they do. If Google is going to provide a reputable service, the errant attributions should be corrected and the original author should be given due recognition for their original thoughts.
Recently I wrote an article entitled Top Dirty Linking Tricks which was published on many Web sites. This article was taken by an individual who changed the title then removed all my copyright information and links to my sites. This was an obvious case of copyright infringement.
The infringing author posted this on two of his blogs. The first was on Tucows’ Blogware software. The second was on WordPress.com’s services. Tucows has complied with my request to remove the infringing article from their services. I’m still awaiting response from Matt Mullenweg and WordPress. In the meantime, due to how blogs operate, the infringing author has attained undue recognition as the author of my work and original thoughts.
While the two issues might seem far apart, the actual nature of blogs makes the two issues jointly offensive. Google gives credit to the wrong author simply because the credited Web site has a higher PR value than the original author or Google visited the wrong author’s site prior to visiting the true author’s site.
Google states they request the Last-Modified date in their HTTP requests. They use this date to aid in determining who first published an article online. However, when this information isn’t available they must use the date of the first instance the article is found regardless of who the originator was. Another method they use is the PR value of the sites on which they find the information.
Both of these methods can cause problems.
While Google insists they are attempting to attribute proper ownership, some authors report that Yahoo and MSN are able to provide accurate attributions. Does this mean that Yahoo and MSN are better than Google? This is a qualitative question. I won’t claim to be the expert or have the answer. I can, however, infer that Google’s inaccurate attribution and dependency upon PR values and links to Web sites is flawed and that fraudulent attributions do not improve nor make for good customer service.
Author:
Lee Roberts, The Web Doctor®, is President/Founder of Rose Rock Design, Inc. a website design company and Founder of the Apple Pie Shopping Cart, an ecommerce shopping cart.
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