Bloggers Against Plagiarism
Author:-Vishesh
Most of us are burning within,by the actions of certain groups, for my head’ sake(headache) I was recently plagiarized.As soon as found out about it I mailed and messaged a few bloggers whom I thought would have faced such plagiarism. Among them were Nita and Anshul – they gave me the necessary links to flag the person and report it.
After which it was time for a few shocking discoveries -I was amazed to see that plagiarism is so rampant online,that it has almost become blase.And there is no comfort in the fact that to write about your content being stolen,you need to fax or send a courier to the hosting service.
Plagiarism is worse than piracy,in the case of piracy(no not the Somalian pirates,I mean pirated goods),they at least give you the acknowledgement(no please I am not promoting piracy! ).So who is going to take an initiative?
Of course the simplest way to deal with this is,this:-
But then we all like to write.And why should we anyway let those bugs win?
And since no one has taken the initiative,we at YU! have decided to start against it.No we are not planning to take to the streets of our cities,rather we going to try and make the plagiarisers know that there is someone who is working against them, by displaying banners. Everything today has a badge/banner.So is this also going to be just another banner among all?
That I leave it to you all.Once you add the banner and still find out that you are plagiarised,come back and tell us.Spread the word ,so that all the blogs have this banner.Of course we all use copyscape,but than that is to tell them,we have a way to find out,this is to tell them to stop it,we will fight you! This is the starting of what we can and should do against thieves.There will be a post soon on how to handle plagiarism from one of us here.If any any non-member wants to write a post on their encounter with plagiarism,please mail us,your post.I also urge everyone here,to discuss the problem and ways to keep it in check.
We have decided to deal with a problem which exists within the blogosphere.And since we all are a part of it,it is left to us!
Chirag created the following badge/banner. I urge everyone to display this(the codes given below) banner.This is the first step,let us hope,what we write is our own! Long live originality!
The code(if the code does not work,remove the quotes(“) and retype them,this happens because we have used block quotes for highlighting the code):-
<a href=”http://youthunite.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/bloggers-against-plagiarism/”><img src=”http://chiragchamoli.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/against-plagrism.png”></a>
Update(30/1/2009) :- To those who don’t know who made the cartoon,it is Anshul.(I thought everyone knew that 
) And if you want to know how to flag a wordpress blog see here.
The Code is buggy: Correct code here:
Thanks man,corrected it in the post -vishesh
Good initiative.
Well this something really a good thing to start with. Something really very innovative.
I often come across with such plagiarisms where people just copy-pate things and then claim them to be their own work. Got to do something with these morons!
I have joined two such ventures already! And had tried one of my own too some time ago and started a site called Bloggers against theft!
It’s all fizzled out now, as lack of time!
In any case, I think its good to know that you guys are doing something. I feel the best thing to do is shame the blogger. That works the best. For example, if a post is stolen everyone in the group should to to that person and write a comment on that blog, everyone should write to the blogger etc. Writing posts helps a lot too.
The problem with a duplicated content is that, the search engines might penalize your site for repeated content around! It doesn’t happen always but sometimes it does happen it seems. Good initiative, this. It is better always to have a community support for such things.
Destination Infinity
V, thaz a cute little badge and I’am gonna use in my blog. Is that ok?
Thats a very good initiative Vishesh! I shall surely join the force!
That’s a good initiative. I remember last year or so there was a blogger’s activism against yahoo and some other portals for plagiarism.
I am going to use this badge.
Thanks Vishesh and Chirag.
Well, as was my habit, I was blog hopping one day and chanced on a well written post. Half way through I came upon a sentence very much familiar to me. Ha, the next two paragraphs were straight lifts from my post. The blogger has thanked one or two other bloggers (no link provided) saying she drew from their blogs. But no mention of me or any link even after lifting straight off my highlighted sentences! I left a comment ‘I see that you have something here from my post’ and the link back to my blog. I think she took it as a compliment!! Ahh well, I thought, some people are born copycats. The surprising thing is she does write good posts and I didn’t have the heart to pick up a fight! (I know, darned silly of me!)
@Nita: we will try to do our best
@DI : yes
@pria: thats what it is for
@sahaja:
@solilo:
@shail: you could have mailed her
Hey, why isn’t the code working?? Help.
@shail: If the code doesn’t work,try removing the quotes and redoing them… that is remove all ” and replace them again…sometimes WP takes it as special character and doesn’t read them properly…so redoing helps..
@vishesh Yo! It worked. Thanks!
Hello,
The code was not working; there is some error probably!
So, I saved the image and provided the hyperlink here.
Thanks. It’s beautiful (I love the yellow colour)! You can see it on my home page.:)
On second thoughts, I think It’s all right! You have suggested to remove the quotes!
I got it, just the same! Thanks.
I have faced plagiarism too. The about me section on my profile was copied word for word by someone else, until around a 100 of my friends reported him on Orkut and he was banned from the network.
It is always a good idea to Google signature lines from your creation once in a while. I don’t know how to check on people copying photographs from my photo blog though. If someone knows of a tool, please let me.
Godspeed!
I got here from Solilo’s blog
And this is a great initiative too. Kudos for this.
I shall take this badge too, and link up to your space! Thank you!
I’ll be very interested to see how this goes..
Sorry! I have removed the badge for the time being.
@shaaakspsyco: yes…
@Vikas: your wish…
I actually want it! But only yesterday I read that if you have more than 100 links on home page, Search engines may black list you. So I removed a lot of links and kiddie stuff that I had loved( with a heavy heart)!
I am planning to change my theme soon and this badge shall soon find a home in my home too! Amen!
.. . and thanks!
@vikas: where did you hear that
no probs 
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#1
Google webmaster guidelines! Timethief (http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/) who has written excellent help for WP told me; she is a very helping lady and this site is highly recommended for blogging help. She had a major accident six months ago or else she could even beat Lorelle!
BTW, I did some google on this and in some fourms I read that this 100 links rule was more applicable in the yesteryear when Google’s indexing capacities were limited!
I ve also removed the badge because my site was taking ages in loading!
Added it to my blog… it isn’t showing!
Trying again …
@Indian Homemaker
Remove the quotes as suggested or just copy the photo, upload in your template, link to this page and paste the HTML in the sidebar!
Hope this helps!
Okay
it’s there now ….. Thanks for this initiative!
@IHM:
@vikas:
I am going to put up the logo..Came here thru IHM’s and Solilo’s blogs…Will link up..Thanks for the intiative..Lets fight these copy cats..
Good day
thanks for putting it up
love your initiative. I am new to this whole thing and would appreciate help regarding as to how i should go about putting up d badge on my blog!
Great
have added it on my blog!!!!
Great idea.. Count me in too… I will put up the badge on my blog.
You just want to know if people copy your posts??
Register here and they will give you a code…put them up in every post of yours and you’ll know who is copying!!
http://tynt.com/tracer/log_in
thanks i agree with you
will sure put the badge up
nice post
there should be something called bloggers for attribution! cause at the end of the day most of us have personal blogs why not get quoted and travel virtually!