Copy, Steal, Rob, Whatever: Another Violation of Intellectual Property Rights

The Internet is still a bit like the Wild West of American history and legend. The attitude toward intellectual property still seems to be "ah stole this, fair and square!"

A recent case in point is a blog post on domain parking, How To Park Domains and Sell Them (Tuesday, July 24, 2007) 12:17 PM (site's timestamp). The author of this blog noticed that someone had copied her story and posted it without alteration. And, I understand, without attribution.

About 11 hours ago (it is now about 12:30 central time in the USA), the author started a discussion on BlogCatalog, Someone stole my article!! - which eventually drew this matter to my attention.

By the time I reached the pilfered article, the copier, "robstroy" (an appropriate online moniker), had added, before the article, "Net Hustlin’ or Crystal, a 21 year old student from New Jersey and currently studying for a bachelors degree in English wrote an article about how to park domains and sell them. She was so freaking out why I posted it here… and posted thread at Blog catalog…

"Here’s her article:"

After the article is this string of text, "Okay, ayan na… sana naman masaya kana… nag email ka nalang muna sa akin bago ka nag freak out dyan… madali naman akong kausap eh… naka limutan ko lang lagyan ng credit mo for the article… Naintindihan mo ba ako?"

I don't know this language. The rest of the page, advertisements included, is in English. I presume that the copier used this language for the epilogue as a sophisticated ruse to both demonstrate superior linguistic ability, and adequately express whatever thoughts were written.

The copied article, now with attribution, plus whatever the copier wrote as an epilogue, is How To Park Domains and Sell Them (Revised version, with attribution to author, Dated Friday, August 3, 2007, 2:59 pm (site's timestamp))

I did a Google search, and found another copy of this article, with a few added sentences, at How To Park Domains and Sell Them (Tuesday, July 24, 2007) 6:08 PM (site's timestamp)

I'll admit that I'm old-school. I don't copy someone else's work and present it as my own. Ethical and moral considerations aside, my self-esteem wouldn't tolerate it.

I do copy other people's work, but with attribution.

There's a dusty old academic quip about this. "If you copy and name your source, it's scholarship. If you copy and don't name your source, it's plagiarism."

Right now, there don't seem to be many ways for an author to protect work that's been posted online.

Benjamin Franklin introduced the patent system in order to give people incentive to develop new technologies. Copyright exists partly to encourage authors to create useful new works by making it possible for writers to profit from their writing.

I don't have a solution to this issue. However, I'm going to start nosing around for copies of my work.

Someone in the BlogCatalog discussion provided a translation of robstory's non-English statement: "Okay, ayan na… sana naman masaya kana… nag email ka nalang muna sa akin bago ka nag freak out dyan… madali naman akong kausap eh… naka limutan ko lang lagyan ng credit mo for the article… Naintindihan mo ba ako? "TRANSLATION: It's ok now, I hope you are happy,...you should have e-mailed me first before freaking out. I could have readily understood...I just forgot to credit you for your article. Do you understand me?"

I doubt that the victim of robstory's unauthorized copying understood that statement, unless she happens to understand that particular language.

For the multiculturaly sensitive among visitors: I have no problem at all with blogs being written in Spanish, Urdu, Wu, or Swahili, or any other language. However, if I write a blog post in English, with advertising in English, and with host instructions in English, I would not add a few sentences of, say, Gaelic, and expect those sentences to be understood.