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Author Topic: Plagiarism - How Do You Handle it?  (Read 993 times)

RPGPundit

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Re: Plagiarism - How Do You Handle it?
« Reply #15 on: November 17, 2020, 03:55:15 am »
Quote from: jeff37923 on November 16, 2020, 01:16:42 pm
Thanks for the input, gang.

I can't do much about the pirated pdf, I can only hope that it makes for good advertising.

The wiki piece bothers me, because it is the chopped up parts of a longer article on the subject. I'm contacting the wiki owner to discuss it.

The latter would piss me off too. The wiki owner is being pretty unethical to have that there. In my case if some blog of mine was being used in an appropriate site and it was credited to me I wouldn't have a problem with it. But if someone cut up bits of one of my posts and didn't say where it came from, that would be a different story.
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consolcwby

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Re: Plagiarism - How Do You Handle it?
« Reply #16 on: November 17, 2020, 11:04:28 pm »
Quote from: jeff37923 on November 15, 2020, 10:02:16 am
Well, this is a subject I never thought I would have to deal with....

I'm small time when it comes to published material. An article here or there, maybe a couple of PDFs. Nothing big and nothing long or involved and extravagant. So, I'm surprised when I find a niche Traveller starship design of mine on a pirate website and an article I wrote for the Traveller fanzine Stellar Reaches chopped up and used in the Traveller WIKI.

I never thought that my stuff would get that level of "notoriety" in hobby circles.

So, published authors, how do you deal with this when it happens? Is there a standard procedure to follow? What do you do to get the best chance of the results you want?
When it comes to pirate sites, you can try a whois lookup: https://www.whois.com/whois
and see if the site or server owner can shut it down. At least you could create a cease and desist letter. Sometimes that works. But, if it's a legit Pirate-y Bay-ey type of site. Not much to do but ask for the stuff to be taken down. Being nice can help in your cause...
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Omega

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Re: Plagiarism - How Do You Handle it?
« Reply #17 on: November 18, 2020, 02:03:46 am »
From the sounds of it this is not a case of pirating his book. Its a case of someone using stuff from his book in a wiki. But copying chunks verbatim.

That is semi-common with wikis. Not all but I've even seen it done on wikipedia.

If it is just being used for reference and database then going after them will come across poorly, or very poorly as noted above.

Now if they are misusing the material in some way then its perfectly fine to go after them or at the very least request they change it to be more in like with the source.
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Chris24601

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Re: Plagiarism - How Do You Handle it?
« Reply #18 on: November 18, 2020, 11:13:51 am »
Quote from: Omega on November 18, 2020, 02:03:46 am
From the sounds of it this is not a case of pirating his book. Its a case of someone using stuff from his book in a wiki. But copying chunks verbatim.

That is semi-common with wikis. Not all but I've even seen it done on wikipedia.

If it is just being used for reference and database then going after them will come across poorly, or very poorly as noted above.

Now if they are misusing the material in some way then its perfectly fine to go after them or at the very least request they change it to be more in like with the source.
Yeah, from the description it sounds like the main thing to pursue would be asking the Wiki to cite them as the source... i.e. adding information to the reference rather than removing it. Given the likely size of the blurbs probably falling under the "fair use" review and commentary limits that's about the most you can hope for in this situation.
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