Someone copied my forum posts!
- Thread starter Beverly
- Start date
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I've seen it happen a couple of times.
All you can do is ask the user who posted the thread to either remove it or give you credit and link back to the original content.
All you can do is ask the user who posted the thread to either remove it or give you credit and link back to the original content.
I've had it happen to me also.
The best thing to do is grab screenshots and links for comparison purposes. Then email/contact that site's staff (root admin preferably) privately to ask for your content to be removed.
Though depending on who copied the posts there may be very little you can do. (I mean if the root admin copied the posts then they may not want to remove them and in that case there might be nothing more you can do there. You'd have to go above them and file a DMCA report with the host to get the content removed. But just because you file a DMCA report doesn't necessarily mean that content will be removed right away. Plus if you file the report incorrectly then your report may be ignored/deleted entirely.)
I personally don't like asking for them to just credit me, I want my content removed. Because allowing them to keep my content (with credit) seems like it says copying is ok provided that if you do get caught, you just have to provide credit and then it's ok again.
The best thing to do is grab screenshots and links for comparison purposes. Then email/contact that site's staff (root admin preferably) privately to ask for your content to be removed.
Though depending on who copied the posts there may be very little you can do. (I mean if the root admin copied the posts then they may not want to remove them and in that case there might be nothing more you can do there. You'd have to go above them and file a DMCA report with the host to get the content removed. But just because you file a DMCA report doesn't necessarily mean that content will be removed right away. Plus if you file the report incorrectly then your report may be ignored/deleted entirely.)
I personally don't like asking for them to just credit me, I want my content removed. Because allowing them to keep my content (with credit) seems like it says copying is ok provided that if you do get caught, you just have to provide credit and then it's ok again.
Ive always seen this type of behaviour especially with general forums, people copy each others topics all the time so it is very difficult to find the original owner of the posts. For more niche forums, I understand where the frustration may lie when it comes to well thought out posts/threads.
That's a good point.
You can't really get someone to remove a topic that's like 2 lines. So a topic like: "what's your favourite colour" is fair game for them to pretty much copy/paste. (Since it's so short and generic that you really can't lay any claim to it.)
But something much more unique and custom? Like if you wrote a thousand word post talking about how to properly implement a level system, in a videogame, with specific examples? That's off the table for copying. And I would completely support a person asking for that to be removed.
You can't really get someone to remove a topic that's like 2 lines. So a topic like: "what's your favourite colour" is fair game for them to pretty much copy/paste. (Since it's so short and generic that you really can't lay any claim to it.)
But something much more unique and custom? Like if you wrote a thousand word post talking about how to properly implement a level system, in a videogame, with specific examples? That's off the table for copying. And I would completely support a person asking for that to be removed.
This happens to me quite frequently, especially with other general discussion forums. This also happened with some articles I had on my promotion forum back when it was alive, so I had to hide the forum from guests.
There honestly isn't a real solution to this without spending money on protection.
There honestly isn't a real solution to this without spending money on protection.
This happened to my admin forum in the past. The offending party copied everything, title and content and I finally found it. I asked the OP to stop but was ignored. Then I made a public post on my admin forum, telling the world about the OP and their forum and their copying of posts. The topic got pretty big full of people bashing the OP's forum and eventually the OP realized what was happening and begged for forgiveness. Of course I forgave them and hid the topic 🙂 they quit stealing too!
It works!
It works!
I think I've only had this happen to me once. We were working on closing a site of mine and I allowed members/staff to "salvage" posts to bring either to their own forums or other forums of their choosing. If they wanted to copy posts I or others had made, that was fine, but they had to make it so it related to their own personal experiences. So for example, say for instance I wrote up a post about an experience with a health issue I had and someone had a similar experience and wanted to use some of my post. I was OK with that, but they had to put the post in their own words. I remember we had one staff member who, despite telling him time and time again to put his own words in posts, he just didn't get it. I can't remember what we did after words because that was some time ago. It was a general discussion forum I had at the time.
I am for going to a forum to get ideas for topics as long as you write it in your own words but cut-copy-pasting them is unethical and wrong.
VirusZero said:
I agree with this approach. With the number of forums and people out there, it's highly probably that there are similar topics or posts lying around. As long as they are not specific, as in editorial or review articles, it's generally okay. But if it's something you produce by special thinking and someone grabs it without proper credits, it's definitely something which needs to be addressed by contacting the poster/site administrators.
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