QUESTION: What do you do when someone plagiarizes an essay and tries to claim it as his own?
Help!
I’ve honestly never had this happen in three years here on HillBuzz.org, but this morning a guy calling himself “Larry Lease” at the site larrysownblog.wordpress.com stole the 7,000-word essay I spent 5 hours on last night and entitled:
10 clear clues in Sarah Palin’s New Hampshire Labor Day speech that she is running for President
This “Larry” guy copied my entire essay and then went in and edited out my name and the HillBuzz.org identifying tags to make it look like he wrote this article himself.
Does anyone know how to report something like this to WordPress?
He changed the title of the essay to “10 Ways to Tell Gov Palin is Running!” and even stole the same picture I used, which was created for use here on HB last year.
Can anyone help file a plagiarism complaint about this?
Have you ever encountered anything like this before?
I still have not slept since yesterday, because I did the transcript of that New Hampshire speech first, and then did the analysis write-up afterwards, working through the night.
And then this “Larry” copies the whole thing, pastes it into his WordPress blog, and then goes in and edits out my name and the HillBuzz.org proprietary credits.
What would you do in this situation?
HELP!
*******************************************************************
UPDATE: 353pm CST Thanks to everyone for their help with one of the strangest things that’s ever happened here at HB.
Larry ended up yanking down the page at some time around 3:40pm CST.
Here’s how we solved this problem:
(1) I completed a copyright infringement complaint with WordPress regarding the plagiarized posting and submitted it around 230pm.
(2) I could not find a contact email for Larry on his own site, so I had to use Google. Through that, I was able to use the info he listed on his site about the town he lives in to find a phone number for him. I called the number and spoke with Larry’s grandmother, who was very sweet and apologetic. I told her that Larry had stolen the essay and was plagiarizing me by removing my name and author credit and pretending this essay was his. The grandmother immediately offered her help in calling Larry’s father to tell him to take this stolen essay down.
(3) At 337pm, I received the following apology note from Larry:
Subject: Appology
Hello Mr. DuJan,
I want to offer a sincere appology for my plagarism attempt on your article. It was wrong, dissrespectful and childish. Im very sorry. I have removed it from my wordpress and my facebook account.
(4) At 3:47pmCST, I responded back to him:
Larry,
Thank you so much for removing that quickly.
I now consider this matter completely resolved.
Please thank your grandmother for her help.
Thank you,
Kevin
(5) Lesson being that if someone ever steals your original content and tries to claim it as their own, you can sometime solve this relatively quickly. In this case at least.
Thanks again to all who helped brainstorm on this one.
Hopefully we’ll go another 3 years without something like this.
© 2011, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Ask him nicely to give you proper credit, then use the L word . (Lawsuit)
First things first: Take a screencap now. Or else he might just delete it without acknowledging what he's done.
Also, it's very rare that someone does something this obvious and blatant out of the blue. Maybe emailing other bloggers about it? They might also have been plagiarised and, at the very least, can tell you what to do.
Wow, good advice Lisette! I posted my own comment after the piece on his website, and it never made it through moderation. Then the entire piece was taken down. Sounds like this guy is just a plagiarizing fool.
If he was running his blog on his own ISP server, you could ask the ISP host to take down the post. But dunno about wordpress.com . . .
http://en.support.wordpress.com/content-theft-wha…
This might help, too! http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/how-to-re…
Did you try this?
http://en.support.wordpress.com/?s=plagiarism
I wrote a comment right on his blog about it. Go right to the source so anybody who looks at it will know!
This may be helpful, as well. WP recommends placing a copyright notice both in the sidebar and at the top/bottom of each post.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/prevent-content-t…
Hah. If you hover over the picture on “Larry’s” blog, you can see that it’s sourced from hillbuzz. So he didn’t even bother to host your picture and/or update the url. Use that as evidence when you make your formal complaint.
Also, this isn’t the only one of these on his blog. Check out his list of recent articles. I typed “Does Rick Perry, Have a Karl Rove Problem” into google, and got back a few hits, including one that has the exact same content in the article: http://glamwire.com/glampolitics/2011/08/does-ric-perry-have-a-karl-rove-problem/
Here’s another one: http://www.whowillwinthe2012election.com/romney-scorched-by-own-global-warming-views/
And another: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/the-muddled-politics-of-libya/2011/08/22/gIQAREdwWJ_blog.html
So this guy is copy-pasting articles from other blogs and presenting them as his own. This is so blatant that I wonder if “larry” is in fact a robot.
On Larry's site, point #8, 3rd paragraph, it says, "In the three years that I’ve been running HillBuzz.org with my firends, I’ve been interviewed by all sorts of people on TV, radio, and in newspapers and have met hundreds of reporters." He neglected to remove the Hillbuzz reference, so he hasn't eliminated all the HB identifiers. Screencap that one asap.
I asked my father about it, and his only mention is that you should never have let it get that far. (He has a lawyer's way of seeing things when it comes to non family members.)
His advice is that in future you should explicitly copyright everything. If you have to add in a note that everything taken from the site has to be referenced and linked, and is subject to fair usage, so be it.
Kevin, contact Big Fur Hat over at iOwnTheWorld.com This kind of crap happens to them all the time except with their graphics. I know he talks about first contacting the person and explaining politely that they have committed intellectual theft. From what I gather, most times this is sufficient to get the situation rectified plus receive an aplogy.
P.S. I wonder if your article was emailed to him with attribution left off? Many times I receive a very good email but find the info has no listed author. Before forwarding I will run a portion of the content thru Google so as to identity and thus credit the proper author.
Here’s the thing, look at this paragraph where he took out my name and HillBuzz.org directly. This could not have been just cut off…he had to go into the middle sentence and take my name and credit out and then post everything. There’s no way my name was removed from this paragraph by accident, and all the other words are in there except what he deleted referring to me.
Here is the paragraph as Larry Lease posted it:
On Labor Day, Governor Sarah Palin addressed thousands of Tea Party Americans at a crowded rally in Manchester, New Hampshire (while, elsewhere in the Granite State, Cocktail Party GOP establishment darling Mittens “Mood Ring” Romney couldn’t coax more than 180 New Hampshire residents out of their homes on a gorgeous day to hear him speak in public…which is just, well, SAD…though, not particularly surprising, all things Mittens-considered). found 10 clues in Governor Palin’s Labor Day speech that indicate she’s not only running for President in 2012, but that her stealth campaign for the White House is already in progress.
Look where there’s the words “all things Mittens-considered). found 10 clues”.
Here is the original paragraph that Larry stole, and see where he deleted my name and HillBuzz.org in that paragraph:
On Labor Day, Governor Sarah Palin addressed thousands of Tea Party Americans at a crowded rally in Manchester, New Hampshire (while, elsewhere in the Granite State, Cocktail Party GOP establishment darling Mittens “Mood Ring” Romney couldn’t coax more than 180 New Hampshire residents out of their homes on a gorgeous day to hear him speak in public…which is just, well, SAD…though, not particularly surprising, all things Mittens-considered). Kevin DuJan of HillBuzz.org found 10 clues in Governor Palin’s Labor Day speech that indicate she’s not only running for President in 2012, but that her stealth campaign for the White House is already in progress.
See how that couldn’t be by accident?
This chart on what to do when you find something cool on the internet might give you some space to laugh. I lol'ed. Make of that what you will:
http://www.notquitewrong.com/rosscottinc/2011/01/…
It looks like he took it down, as the page now returns a 404 Page Not Found error.
I just followed your link, Kevin, with the intention of giving the guy what-for, but it came up HTTP 404. So maybe the problem has been eliminated? Hope so!
Also, I agree you should copyright everything … who knows but you may have a book to publish out of it one of these days, eh?
But the other posts are still up. (BTW, Kevin, did you take a screencap?)
Also, I am willing to bet that this person has done this before. You should send emails to other bloggers (I'd advise you to contact Insty in particular) and tell them that a plagiariser is out there, claiming to be a Tea Partier. It might temporarily boost his numbers, but the only real deterrent the blogosphere has is to set an example and tear plagiarisers to shreds. (Metephorically.)
Hahaha … look at his About page … he wants to be in the FBI someday … hahaha
OMG – that's EXACTLY what I was just thinking… wonder how they feel about plagiarism…
Yeah, but Folks? You CAN leave messages as to what "you think" of his blog {click on "About" in the upper left} – idiot's hoping for a career with the FBI? Not on MY watch!
My message to him:
"Yo, SLICK!!
How about providing a little thing called "attribution"? You have the ethics of a bottom-feeder – how DARE you steal an article from HillBuzz, then claim it as your own? You MIGHT want to re-think that whole FBI career thing – see, there are folks around, aware of your pitiful attempts at claiming an erudition that is, in fact, only possible through your THEFT of others' work. And, if WE aren't directly involved in federal law enforcement, a LOT of us know someone who is, and our friends will have NO TROUBLE letting the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc., know of your utter LACK of any kind of moral base.
Have fun flipping burgers for the next 40-50 years!"
Of course, my comment there is awaiting "moderation" !
Semper Fi'
DM
Diamond: I wrote the guy too, and just like you my comment was waiting to be moderated. Now it looks like he got scared and deleted the post. What an idiot!
I think his grandma yelled at him. She was very sweet and said, “I knew he was up to no good on that Internet!”. I felt bad bothering her, but the listing I found for him said his name, but the grandma answered the phone.
DM –
You are so sweet. That made my day. THANKS – K
I left a comment asking why he didn't give credit to you Kevin…….now a 404 Page Not Found error.
Want to see his pic?
http://twitter.com/#!/lmllease
That is just too funny to be true! I can't stop laughing.
"I think his grandma yelled at him. She was very sweet and said, "I knew he was up to no good on that Internet!". I felt bad bothering her, but the listing I found for him said his name, but the grandma answered the phone."
LOL! ! All's well that ends well, Kevin……
Meanwhile, I have been posting and emailing your piece all over the planet!! XO Thanks
He looks like he's a kid ~ late teens, certainly old enough to know better, but probably sitting at a computer in his grandmother's basement, thinking he can get away with all this stuff. Glad you were able to get a response from his grandmother….maybe she whacked his head with a 2×4 to get him to think!
Here’s the part that bugs me.
On other posts he did, where he clearly stole the articles, he at least says “I borrowed this from so and so”, like some football player.
But, with the HB article he stole, he instead copied the whole thing, then went through it trying to take out my name and the HB identifiers wherever he could. He was sloppy and he missed some, but he did remove my name from the middle of a paragraph. So that’s not just forgetting to copy my name as the author, it’s copying that part, then thinking, “Oh, I am going to take this guy’s name out and then say I wrote all this. No one will know!”.
His next post will probably be “The Great Gatsby, by Larry L.”, Chapter One: Larry Wrote This!
At first I thought he was an older person who have never done anything online before and didn’t know they were doing a bad thing, but when I saw he purposefully removed my name to pretend he wrote it, I was vexed.
It was the weirdest feeling, seeing someone trying to take credit like that, especially since it was such a long essay and took so much of my time.
Here are the screen captures for future legal action:
lol…busted by gmom that's rough.
way to go Kevin.
Kevin, It's just another sign of HB growing up.
You will need to find an Intellectual Property lawyer for HB, As the conservative legal councils if there is someone who can do some pro-bono work for you and HB until you make the big time.
Contact WordPress.com to notify them that the content is copied, and they will yank it for you. If it were to happen on a regular website (a .com, for example), you go to whois.org to find out who hosts the website and contact the hosting provider to take the content down. Hosts have zero tolerance for copied content because they have some liability.
Oops, should have read the updates before I comments
Well, I'm glad that it was easy to sort out. Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time.
Very Well Done Kevin!
Search and hit up the source FIRST!
You did, item resolved. I'm sure the young man learned something along the way too. No lawyers, no big time threats, just hey kid, I mean WTF? It's my work not yours. OK Mr. DuJuan, you are correct and I am sorry!
Oh and kid, you can keep the stuff up just don't be claimin it as your own. Aint gonna work out well fer ya!
Love it.
I call them post 1995 "college graduates" or, possibly, online "MBA's".
The kid has still got several other scraped articles he's attributed to himself. So he hasn't learned his lesson yet. He's probably just sorry he got caught.