Rearing It's Ugly Head:

Plagiarism.

One of my many lists had a reminder post over the weekend to periodically check copyscape to make sure your site content stays yours. I've checked a few times now and the only thing that has come up to date is an ad I have in a VA Directory.

Not so yesterday. Some unknown person was so lacking in originality that rather than take the time to create an original bid/proposal on unnamedfreelancejobsite.com they wasted what was probably hours drilling down through search engines to find my site an lifted my home page opening copy damn near word for word, other than changing the suffix on a couple verbs.

And, of course, unnamedfreelancejobsite.com is based in a foreign country and requires you to set up an account with them to register a complaint. Uh, no. All my email to webmaster or hostmaster at unnamedfreelancejobsite.com bounces. So I did the WhoIs thing and sent a complaint to their web host. I felt bad doing so, but couldn't find another way to handle it. I know the people at unnamedfreelancejobsite.com are not the plagiarist, but they made it impossible for me to get in touch with them about it. I'm betting their hosting service won't have that problem.

I wish I were flattered, I was for about 5 seconds (til I saw how bad the rest of the bid was). As it is I'm just annoyed. I've already had to waste way more time on this than I should, with no satisfactory conclusion as yet.

Oh... Bad Dy... I also wiggled around their site and the user's listing and found an email addy for him and sent a personal cease-and-desist asking him to remove the content himself (yes, him, I was just trying to be oblique before).

Oh, yea, and I got a little more NaNo-ing done last night after posting and broke 5K words before I went to bed. Yay me!

U P D A T E:

I heard back from the site and their host, who was able to get in touch with them. The ad the person using my content bid on is closed but the page is still publicly accessible so I thanked them for their help and asked them to remove the four sentences of my content he used and expressed a fervent desire that they reprimand the user for this behavior. We'll see...

U P D A T E #2:

Woo Hoo! The overseas site has suspended the plagiarist user and removed his bid with my content from their site! Score one for the original (ink) thinker! ;-)