It is very annoying when somebody publishes your work as their own.
It feels even worse when they monetize their site and earn without giving you credit.
Copycats are a threat to your work and if you don't want to be a victim of plagiarism then read on.
I will categorize the process in three parts-Prevention, Detection and Action.
PREVENTION Unfortunately you cannot do much to prevent plagiarism.
The methods used for prevention disturb legal users more than protecting the work from copycats.
They are pretty useless.
Still you can follow a few prevention techniques for your satisfaction.
Generally content consist of images and text.
In order to protect images, you can add a watermark logo to it.
There are many free watermarks creating software available on internet.
Picture-shark is one of them and it is free for personal use.
Also if you don't want to download software then you can go to watermark creating sites like PickMarkr.
PickMarkr lets you create watermark logo for your images for free in easy three steps.
Preventing text from being copied can be done to some extent.
Disabling right click is one method which can be used.
In this, you have to add a JavaScript code to your blog.
There are two types of code available on net.
One which shows a message on using right click and one which does not shows any message.
I advice you not to add this code to your blog since it will do more harm to you than the plagiarist.
It is very insulting and annoying for your legitimate users and can bring down your traffic.
If you are desperate to add the code then use the latter code which does not displays a message.
Note that disabling right click does not guarantee total protection since content can be copied by other means.
The best solution is to copyright your work.
Creative Commons provides a free copyright.
It cannot stop plagiarists but can help you in taking legal action against them.
Also you can place a Copyscape banner on your site or blog which is available free of cost.
DETECTION There are some methods by which you can catch copycats.
The advantage of these methods is that they do not irritate your valid users.
Also these methods are very easy and practical.
1.
Use Copyscape to find duplicate copies of your work.
2.
Use Google image search using specific keywords.
3.
Search by your keywords on popular blog directories.
There are other methods too but these are the best.
ACTION Imagine this, you spent your precious time making a useful article and published it.
You feel good about the hard work you have done and then you find that somebody has copied your entire content exactly without even citing about you.
You feel irritated; you are pissed off and want to teach him a lesson.
Follow these steps: 1.
First contact the person directly.
Inform him that plagiarism has been detected and tell him to remove thepost.
2.
If he does not takes you seriously then take legal action against him.
3.
First collect the plagiarized work.
4.
Contact the advertisers of his blog and tell them about this.
5.
File a DMCA report to ban his site or blog from search engines.
6.
If you have Creative Commons License then you can take legal action againsthim easily.
These steps will be enough to teach him a lesson.
In most cases, your work will done by first step only.