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How to Keep Your Written Work from Being Copied and Plagiarized

by jackdeal

It's happened to most of us that write and if it hasn't happened
to you yet it will.  It's only a factor of time and exposure.

Someone has stolen your labor intensive work and put their name
on it.  Or, taken your work and rearranged the paragraphs and put
their name on it.   Or, taken all your good ideas and reshuffled
the words and put their name on it.  Or any combination of the
above.

If you publish and distribute on the web you may have hundreds
of articles on a large number of websites, blogs and article
databases.  That's a lot of exposure.   If I google the articles
name I might find one that has not given proper credit.  Usually
they are novices and correct the problem.   This type of
plagiarism is easy and simple.

It's also a question of monetary gain.  My own personal cases of
plagiarism did not amount to any monetary gain.  Nobody sold my
content and made money.  So if that is the case, back off and let
it go.  Notify the infringer and let it go. If big money is
involved, talk to a lawyer.

But there are several ways I have found to protect myself.  The
first is that if I am going to put the article in a public place
in the public domain, I want to post the article on my website
first.  This is proof it is mine.

The next is a bit more involved and it has to do with the
content structure.

When I first started writing business articles I wrote nuts and
bolts types of articles; what is a balance sheet, what is direct
marketing, etc.  The problem with these types of articles is that
they can be rearranged rather easily and become a 'new' article. 
There is actually software out there now that purports to do just
that.

That's right.  There is software out there that can take linear,
step by step nuts and bolts articles and rearrange them so
someone else can put their name on them.

And of course people can do the same thing.   From one hundred
dollars down you can buy an article on just about anything from
someone else and put your name on it.  The only problem is the
quality is so bad you may want to use a pen name, which defeats
the whole purpose in the first place.

Fortunately this rearranging software only works on content that
can be broken up easily.  What if the content can't be broken up
easily?  What if the thread or train of thought of the article is
such that it can't be reshuffled and still make sense?   What if
the text has lots of fragments and subtly intertwined
expressions?  Ha...just think of the headache of taking it apart
and rearranging it.  The truth is it takes so much time and is
such a pain that it's easier to just write the article from
scratch.  Go figure...

I also try to spice up my content with slang, offbeat
expressions, punctuation and whatever else happens to be handy. 
Poke, jab, kid, enrage, prod, insult do anything outside the
linear behavioral model and your content becomes very difficult
to repackage as well as livelier and more interesting.

My strong suspicion is that a lot of these rewrite and write
services are offshore, especially in India where English is
spoken.   So if you add a lot of local zip and slang to your
content they won't know that is.   It has to be straightforward
and linear for them; otherwise they can't do it.

Here's an example.  I'm writing an article about the
Revolutionary American flag with the snake on it that says 'Don't
Tread on Me'.  The title I chose was" 'Don't Tread on Me' Snake
Motto is Foundation for the Modern Free and Inquiring Mind."

Rearranged, it going to have a lot of rough spots.  It's even a
tough title as it is...

In the text I open up freely and let it go.  The bodacious and
frolicking text is very hard to duplicate and repackage.  I also
consciously try to make the story thread or trail a convoluted
and unpredictable one.  It can only go this way or it makes no
sense.  At this point I have probably beaten all the copiers. 
They of course can take the general idea of the article, but to
get another article they will have to write their own.

And so it goes.  We all get copied and we all get mad.  I just
try to make it harder to copy.  With fragments.  Lots of
fragments.  Don't forget the fragments.

Think fragments.  Mucho fragments...

Jack D. Deal writes promotional marketing articles and is the
owner of Deal Business Consulting. <a
href="http://www.jddeal.com">Related articles</a>may be found at
http://www.jddeal.com and
http://www.freeandinquiringmind.typepad.com

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