Beware of Copycat Blogs: It Happened to Me!

A little over a month ago, I was attempting to fetch an article I’d written on my blog last year. The easiest thing, naturally, was to google “beirutista” with a few keywords representing the article’s content. Sure enough, the first item in the yield nailed it.

But as my eyes quickly scanned the list, I noticed something strange. The third entry retrieved was an exact replica of my article, but the source was not my blog. In fact, it was a different blog sharing the “blogspot” domain. The blog’s name? Ironically, the title of one of my own posts: “The Long Awaited Verdict on Shake Shack.”

My heart sunk, and numbness soon elevated to fury. How dare he? How dare this Blogger profile by the name of Khan replicate my blog article for article, picture for picture, impersonating me and passing it off to the world as his own! He probably had in mind to introduce AdSense to the blog in order to generate revenue from ads.




I did a couple searches on the Google help forum to see if anyone had experienced a similar debacle. Several had seen instances where their articles were plagiarized in whole or in part, but none had witnessed their entire blog reproduced under someone else’s name. Or, perhaps, none had undertaken the painstaking labor of documenting it to other users.

I eventually stumbled across something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which among other things, heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. It was signed into law by the US Senate under President Bill Clinton in 1998. Fortunately, Google is a staunch advocate of the law and responds to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement.

At length, it took about four iterations of completing this form before Google took ultimate action against the perpetrator. I had to singly identify which articles were reproductions of my own (that’s about 160 articles!), noting both the offending URL and the counterpart Beirutista URL as well as offering a summary of the content. Each form allowed me to detail as many articles as I could manage, and I squeezed in between 8 and 10 per submission.

It was quite evident that a robot was handling my claims, because even though I’d mentioned that the entire blog was a rip-off of my own, it wasn't immediately dismantled. Only the articles and URLs specified in the claims were removed successively, in batches, until finally, the fourth claim sealed the deal. The Google robot must have picked up on the repetition, and the case was escalated. Ten days after the submission of my first claim, the copycat blog was taken down!


I’m still unsure as to how I can effectively protect my blog and prevent such incidents from happening in the future. For now, I've inserted a banner on the website that warns against any copying, sort of like a watchdog. Technically, I doubt anything is 100% safe from potential evildoing. If you have any advice on the matter or are an expert in online proprietary material, please clue me in.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6 Types of Patrons You’ll Encounter at a Coffee Shop in Lebanon

Image
You haven’t really adult-ed if you haven’t flocked to a coffee shop at least once in the past week, am I right? Admittedly, I was a little late to the game. I started sipping on caffeinated brew when my eldest was born, about six years ago. I’d place him in his stroller and lap around the mall for an hour or two, and when he drifted off to sleep, I’d slide into an armchair at Dunkin’ and order a donut, croissant-wich and coffee combo (yep, that was the ultimate trifecta.).  Fresh-brewed dark roast coffee, served piping hot with the steam blanketing my visage to deliver facial-like effects. Those few moments of uninterrupted peace formed my golden hour. I’d sit back, sip on my cup of joe, and quietly take in the scenes surrounding me. To this day, I love hanging out aimlessly at a coffee shop, merely to study the behavior of other patrons and try to deduce their craft. Here are the most common profiles I’ve encountered. My favorite indulgence at a coffee shop: donut and a cup of ...
Read more

A Crowning Iftar Experience at the Crowne Plaza Beirut

Image
It had been decidedly too long since my first visit to the Crowne Plaza Beirut, tucked in the heart of Hamra along the main drag. Standing tall – a formidable 21 floors to be exact – with sweeping panoramic views of the Lebanese capital city, the Crowne Plaza, an IHG (Intercontinental Hotels Group) property, has so much going for it. To begin, the underground self-parking facility cannot be overlooked, as parking is typically nightmare-inducing elsewhere in Beirut. At just 200,000 LBP (USD 2.20) for up to four hours, this is a bargain. Alight the elevator at the ground floor, where a few steps westward will land you at the threshold of the Crowne Plaza. The hotel boasts 190 rooms, and I’m told that you can nab a room with complimentary breakfast buffet including VAT for about $100. You really can’t beat that in or outside of the city! Last Friday, we forayed into Hamra with the aim of trying the Iftar, a traditional Ramadan feast enjoyed at sunset, at Crowne Plaza’s Vivaldi restaurant...
Read more

7 Types of Lebanese Parents You’ll Encounter at School Pickup

Image
For the past three years, I’ve been shuttling my kids to and from school. It’s always a treat to greet them as their scholastic day draws to a close and they melt into your arms, eager to head home.  Right up there after that gratifying reunion is the entertainment value you derive from your encounters with other parents milling around the school building threshold in the minutes leading up to end of day. So amusing is the range of characters you’ll meet – whether they be grandparents filling in for parents tied up at work, or parents able to carve out time to pluck up their offspring – that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to blog about it. Here they are in no specific order. Can you relate?   1. The Haughty Mama : her favorite hand accessory is her smartphone, which she’s either holding to her lips transmitting nonstop nonsense voice notes, or scrolling furiously through her Instagram feed. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, with the essential extensions. She’s got those...
Read more