Français
+1 514 248-0908 | [email protected] 0
Nuagerie Nuagerie
Find answers to your questions

Documentation

All about Online Plagiarism

  • 0

The Threat of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious and growing problem on the Web. At any moment, anyone in the world can copy your online content and instantly paste it onto their own site. After making minor changes, they will claim your content as their own. 

The Web is built on the hard work of honest people who devote their time and energy to creating original content. The global epidemic of content theft violates people's rights and discourages the creation of new web content. 

Copyscape was created as a free public service to address this growing problem. The resources below can help you protect your rights online and defend against the threats of plagiarism and content theft. 

Preventing Plagiarism

When creating original content, it's important to take the right steps to make sure that your intellectual property is not only safe but attributed to the correct owner (yourself). With the internet making plagiarism even easier, following these 4 easy steps should help deter people from stealing your content: 

  • Placing a plagiarism warning banner on all your pages will demonstrate you’ve registered your site with the proper companies and should therefore not be copied word for word. 
  • Including copyright notices follows the same line of thinking. To create the copyright symbol (©) in HTML, type ©
  • CopyScape has an automatic CopySentry feature that detects illegal copies of your content as soon as they appear on the internet. 
  • If you find out someone else is pretending to pass off your content as their own, take immediate steps to have it removed. Make sure to contact the plagiarist first and collect proof that the content is rightfully yours first before contacting the authorities.  

Detecting Plagiarism

It is up to you to find out whether someone has copied your content without permission. Copyscape provides a free service that lets you easily search for plagiarism online and identify instances of content theft. Simply type in the URL of your original content, and Copyscape does the rest. They also offer professional services for more advanced needs. 

Responding to Plagiarism

It is very important to act quickly if you discover someone has stolen your website’s content. However, before proceeding with the legalities of copyright infringement, we recommend speaking with a qualified lawyer as copyright laws differ from place to place. Here are some things to keep in mind when dealing with plagiarism:

  1. Attempt to contact the plagiarists in question first. Send them a (polite) message asking them to take down your copyrighted content. If you can’t find any contact information on their site, try emailing [email protected], changing ‘domainname’ with their own.  
  2. If they don’t answer or you can’t find any contact information, trying using the Whois service to find out the website owner’s name and telephone number. 
  3. Using that information, contact the website’s web hosting provider and inform them of the copyright infringement of their client. 
  4. Create a formal ‘Cease and Desist’ letter and send it to the offending website, stating that they must remove the stolen content from their site. 
    • In most cases, a Cease and Desist letter will require proof of infringement. You can use the Internet Archive to show that the copyrighted material came from your website. 

If you want more information on online plagiarism, make sure to check out Copyscape’s list of online resources here. 

More information

The ideas in this article were originally presented by CopyScape. For more information about plagiarism or their copyright features, make sure to go to www.copyscape.com. 

For help with a Nuagerie service, open or follow up on a support request in your Client Area. For general questions, use our contact form.

Related Articles

Should you block ICMP traffic? Blocking all ICMP traffic can disrupt normal networking. A suitable policy distinguishes messages required for communication, permitted diagnostics and traffic that belongs only on the local network. ICMP does more than pingPing can help check reachability, but a missing response does not prove that a website is... Suspected account or website compromise: what to do first A page changed without your approval, an unfamiliar administrator or an unexpected change to recovery details deserves prompt investigation. A failed login or an isolated alert does not, however, confirm a compromise. The aim is to limit unwanted access, preserve useful information and organize recovery with the... Set up and maintain HTTPS on your website HTTPS protects communication between a browser and the server it connects to using TLS. It limits interception and modification of data in transit. This is useful for public pages as well as forms and signed-in areas. A valid certificate lets the browser check the server's identity for the requested name. It does... Protect your passwords and account access Your Client Area, hosting panel, email accounts and website administration may use different credentials. Protect each account with its own password and use the sign-in address intended for that service. Create and protect your passwords Use a long, unique password generated by a trusted password manager, or a long... What to do if your WordPress Website was Hacked Unexpected redirects, an unauthorized administrator account or a security alert may indicate a compromise. Login problems, a slow site or a traffic drop can also have other causes. Record the symptoms before drawing conclusions and coordinate the response with the person responsible for the site. 1. Preserve useful...
5646 rue Saint-André, Montréal (Québec) H2S 2K1, Canada