Internet plagiarism is a bruised cloud looming on the horizon for many website owners. You may have been a victim. After spending hours creating, polishing, and fine-tuning your site’s content, the brutal storm of plagiarism hits. You find out that someone has picked up that content and posted it on the internet as their own. What can be done to prepare and finally calm the storm?

5 strategies to defend yourself and fight plagiarism

How do you defend and combat plagiarism? The following strategies will help prepare for and weather plagiarism storms.

  1. Strengthen – Build a defense by legally fortifying yourself before the storm hits. Have your work officially registered by the US Government Copyright Office. Download the TX form and submit the basic registration fee of $45.00. This will ensure that you have legal protection should you discover that your work has been plagiarized.

  2. inhibits – Clearly state on your website that your work is legally copyrighted to the US government to inhibit word scrapers. This will act as a signal in a house warning burglars that it is protected by a security alarm.

  3. Guard – Strengthen your defense guard by subscribing to a service that will notify you when someone copies content from one or more web pages such as Copyscape at http://www.copyscape.com. This service will be your security alarm alerting you that your work has been stolen. The company offers both free and subscription-based services.

  4. Have a plan – Devise a plan to address the offender when you discover that your content has been stolen. Effective plans include the following:

    1. Contact the infringing site using the site’s contact information and politely ask them to remove the copyrighted material.
    2. If there is no response, contact the web hosting company.
    3. If there is no response, send a formal “cease and desist” letter by certified mail to the offending website owner or company. Sample cease and desist letters can be found on the internet.
    4. If there is still no response from the owner of the infringing website, you can contact the various search engines to report copyright infringement. For example, see Google’s policy on responding to alleged copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, at http://www.google.com/dmca.html.
  5. to take action – Comply with your action plan and keep records. If you are having difficulty obtaining contact information for the offending party or web hosting company, investigate a whois database such as CentralOps.net.

A passionate defense against plagiarism is the first step in fighting copyright infringement. A practical default action plan is a proven and effective solution to combat the plagiarism storm when it hits.