Someone Stole My Article, And It Went Viral. It Might Be Happening to You Too.

I was shocked to learn that one of my articles paid only $0.28 from 7.9 K views, and 2.1 K reads. Asking some publication’s editors about this, they told me sometimes an article goes viral on Google, but not in this platform. I thought, tough luck, and continued writing.

But the other day, while I was Googling an image, I found my work posted on different sites. Not only in a separate website, but my image was also selling somewhere else.

The whole article had been copied and pasted without my authorization or mentioning my name. The worst part was it was posted on various sites in different languages using Google Translate.

After calming down, I started the problematic path looking to solve the problem, and this is what I found. I hope it can help you if you suffer the same ordeal.

How can you find out?

If you are wondering if someone stole your work, you can do like I did. Look for a specific text in your article and then Google it, or if you created a special artwork for the cover, look for it using image search.

If you find them someplace you didn’t put it, then you have been plagiarized, or in the worst case like me, your work has been stolen.

Before you bang your head on the monitor or throw your laptop to the ground. Take a paper and a pen and write the places you found your unauthorized work. This information will help you in the next steps.

Navigate the page looking for a connection link to the web manager. Most certainly you won’t find where to get in touch with them, but if you do, write it down.

If you didn’t find your work or art somewhere else; congratulations, you haven’t been plagiarized, and then your lack of views and read is because paying members haven't found it.

In this case, ask the publication’s editor or some writer friend to share it with their followers. It helped me with an article, which by December had 5.5 K external and 128 member views.

After the editor post it on his social network, it gained member reads and though I still have 57% of external views, I’m making some money with the other 43%. Now the story has been seen by fifteen thousand people.

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Other articles with the same problem are:

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

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Stop Being a Toxic Parent

10 signs you might be one and how to fix it.

medium.com

Where can you search for help?

If you find someone stole your work, gather all the information you can, and then submit a request at the help center, with the following:

Your email address

Details of the stolen work and the fraudulent website’s information

Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, etc.

The original work URL

The allegedly Infringing URL

State if you are the copyright holder or an authorized representative, and that the use of the material was not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law?

And finally, that you swear that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner?

If you have additional information, attach the files.

Or you can mail the previous information to the email, or physical address posted in the “Report copyright infringement or plagiarism page.”

If the delinquent page is based in the United States, they will help you to take your work down from their website. Unfortunately, if it is in another country like China, Russia, or someplace in South America, then your next option is to make a claim against them for copying your work. Since there is no contact information, try a Whois lookup to find any other information on the site’s DNS registrar, as copyright violation should be against their terms.

They will also ask you to fill a form with mainly the same information listed before, and with a little help (which was not my case), you will hear from them and if the planets align, and the good fortune is on your site, they will take down the plagiarized work.

Also, you could try to sue them, but unless you are a copyright lawyer, have a family member who is, have one on retain, or you are married to one, the chances are you won’t win since they have the time and the money and overpower you.

What can you do to prevent this from happening?

As I explained before that it is not much you can do if you write for yourself and don’t have an agent or a publishing house behind you. And till our site, doesn’t change the pay per view method to include all reads, and not only those from paying members, these are the options I found. I hope they help you.

Thanks to an article by

Yael Wolfe

on the same site my work was stolen, here are the key points I discovered:

Since you plan to keep writing, your work might be plagiarized again, so create a template you can use to address copyright violations and learn about copyright law.

Schedule time each month to run plagiarism searches, either from the text or the images, especially if you sell art, photographs, or paintings.

Credit your own work by including a copyright notice at the end of every article, regardless of what others might think. Remember, these sites will automatically copy and paste your work, trying to remove the author info, but if you include your name at the end of each article, then their copying software will also copy-paste your name, and you’ll be credited for it.

File a DMCA takedown notice, which is essential to this process. You can find the information in Kiff’s “The artist’s JD” webpage.”

To read Yael’s article, click here, “What I Learned from Having My Writing Stolen.”

If you want to get at least some profit from the non-member readers, you can use

Burk

’s advice, and join Simily or Vocal media and post your article there. The pay is not much ($20 per 1000 unique views), but is better than the thousands of free views you are having today.

Just add a liner at the beginning of your original article, asking the readers to either subscribe (with link to your promote membership link) or read the article for free here (with the link to Simily or Vocal article).

Take away

This is what I learned on my road to resolve the problem, and though it doesn’t seem much, at least I feel I’m doing something about it.

Also, if you experienced something similar, share your thoughts and what you’ve learned in the process, so fellow writers can benefit from your knowledge.

We are in this together and as a community, we should help each other. I hope my ordeal will help others to avoid piracy, or at least be prepared.

As for me, I’m still writing every day, posting at least 3 times a week, and hoping that the algorithm gods favor me soon and curate my articles, so I can make at least as much as my thieves are making from my work.