I was going over the articles submitted to PowerHomeBiz.com today from other writers. One article sounded so familiar to me that I had to double take and re-read it.
True enough, I was reading my article that I wrote way back in 2000 entitled Evaluating Your Business Ideas and Products http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol13/evaluateideas.htm . The first three intro paragraphs were removed, but the rest remained the same.
As proof that the article was published as early as 2000, InternetArchive.com’s Way Back Machine (your best friend in proving plagiarism cases) has a record of the article for August 16, 2000
The so called writer (er, plagiarist) named Trina Newby of Womenaboutbiz.com even had the gall to publish the article in her website under HER own byline. Compare her article with MY article . The Way Back Machine shows no record of the article published on her site, which implies that she copied it fairly recently, but the InternetArchive shows that her site was launched sometime July 2002.
As such, how can she claim to be author of the article when the article first showed up on the Web in August 2000 and her site showed up only two years later?
I sent her an email warning her of her plagiarism and letting her know of the Digital Copyright Millenium Act. Web hosts and search engines such as Google http://www.google.com/dmca.html takes DMCA complaints seriously, and if you follow the process, will take down sites of those who steal your content.
If you are a writer and want to use your article to promote your site, please create your own original article. And do not be stupid enough to submit your plagiarized article to the original writer of the article! That’s stupidity at its finest.
That’s kinda terrible, but funny at the same time (that she submitted it to you, the original author. Duh!). Hopefully she’ll stick to original content next time, which will work much better for her anyway.
That’s kinda terrible, but funny at the same time (that she submitted it to you, the original author. Duh!). Hopefully she’ll stick to original content next time, which will work much better for her anyway.