Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but having your writing and research stolen most definitely is not. That’s abuse. It recently happened here. This is what I managed to do about it.
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Left: screen grabs from parts of my own page. Right: screen grab from part of the offending page. |
At the beginning of January, I planned a different New Month Old Post from the one I used. It was about a guitar teacher called Eric Kershaw who taught an evening class at Leeds College of Music in the early nineteen-seventies. He had been one of Britain’s top ‘swing era’ guitarists of the nineteen-thirties and -forties, playing in leading bands and West End shows, with his own programme on national radio. His 1946 book, Dance Band Chords for the Guitar, sold an amazing seven and a half million copies. He later became a lecturer in jazz guitar at Leeds College of Music. My post recalled what his class was like and how much I enjoyed it. Much of this was down to Eric’s eccentric brilliance.
I first posted it on the 1st August 2015, and, in considering re-posting, I looked around to see if any more recent information had come to light. I discovered a page on a WordPress site which, astonishingly, apart from minor re-sequencing, contained over 1,300 verbatim words and two original images from my own post. That goes well beyond “fair use”. I was extremely annoyed. My original piece had taken considerable time and research.
The only contact channel on the site seems to be through comments on an ‘About’ page, so I left a complaint. That was on the 4th January. Comments are moderated, and my comment was not approved. A later comment by someone else on the 8th January was approved, which makes it likely that my comment was seen. I therefore gave fourteen days notice requesting acknowledgement of my material and a link to my page, with a warning that I would otherwise file a copyright claim with WordPress which could result in the whole of the site being shut down.
You have not responded to my earlier request. You cannot simply steal other people's original content and post it as if it is your own. My piece was published online in August 2015 at https://www.taskerdunham.com/2015/08/eric-kershaws-guitar-class.html My email address is taskerdunham@btinternet.com I now require that you remove all my content from your WordPress web site immediately.
WordPress regards breaches of its terms and conditions as a serious issue. They provide a page explaining how to report content that is spam, unsuitable or abusive (https://wordpress.com/support/report-blogs/), and for breaches of copyright they make it easy to submit a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice:
If your copyrighted material has been used without your permission and in violation of the law, please submit a formal DMCA notice by following the instructions found here: http://automattic.com/dmca
I completed the form giving details of my site, the offending site, and the material involved:
The copyrighted work is a blog page recalling the copyright holder’s personal memories of a musician called Eric Kershaw. The offending site reproduces this material from Paragraph 6 on the offending page, beginning “In the autumn of 1974 …” Practically the whole of the remainder of the page is a verbatim copy of material which begins at Paragraph 5 of the copyright holder’s page, comprising approximately 1,300 words and 2 original images of music.
WordPress agreed and it did the trick. This is what the Eric Kershaw page looks like now.
WordPress will have notified the site owner giving the opportunity to challenge the removal. This has not happened to date. I keep checking that my material has not reappeared on the site. If it does, Wordpress would probably remove the site completely.
Blogger provides a similar way to report offending content at: https://www.blogger.com/report
I have added a copyright notice to my blog using the Attribution gadget in the Layout section. For what good it does, the following now appears at the bottom of every screen:
Original text and images © Tasker Dunham. Copyright will be vigorously defended.