We Wuz Robbed!

by Howard Norfolk
Editor of Aquarticles

In February 2005 Aquarticles had to deal with two cases of unauthorised use of articles - in other words copyright infringement or article theft. Here is what happened:

Case 1
A large website that contained information about all kinds of household activities was found to have more than two hundred articles from Aquarticles in the Pets/Aquaria section. All of them had authors' names, clubs and websites removed.

The website owner was found to be a bank employee in Boston USA who worked part-time as a bartender. Apparently he wanted to build a large website, get lots of hits, sell advertisements, and give up the bartending job.

Aquarticles emailed about a dozen of Aquarticles' major contributors, who were all affected. A special section was set up on an aquarium forum to deal with the discussion that followed. Another of our contributors discovered that articles had been taken from other websites as well, and informed some of them. The site owner was bombarded with complaints from Aquarticles' contributors and from other site owners. Aquarticles threatened to contact his advertisers to advise them of his unethical behaviour.

The owner claimed not to be responsible for the site's content - it was a mistake by his 'staff.'

The site was shut down, and hopefully will not rise again.

Case 2
An Aquarticles contributor discovered that a website, ostensibly about koi health, contained 24 articles from Aquarticles and one from a copyrighted Ohio State University website. Seven of the articles were about fish health, but strangely the others were not, although they appeared to have been carefully chosen by an experienced aquarist as cornerstone articles about fishkeeping that would be popular items to search for. Three more websites controlled by the same person contained articles from Aquarticles. All articles had been stripped of authors' names, clubs and websites.

The owner was a man in Georgia USA, who sells fish medications and supplies, and who claims to control over 400 websites. The many peripheral sites apparently act as a funnel to direct potential customers, via links, to the main shopping carts, and also to impress the search engines as to their popularity. Some of the sites, such as the ones we found, seem to have no useful purpose other than to provide these prominent links.

Aquarticles e-mailed all the affected authors, and discussions were continued on the forum set up for the previous case.

The site owner claimed that his sites were developed by a company in India where they 'don't do English' and had no idea what they were doing. Having visited India five times I knew this was incorrect since English is a second language throughout India. I contacted some Indian correspondents about this insult to their country, and two of them took a particular interest in this case, providing me with lots of background information about this man and his operation. We contacted the Indian site developers who said that they are never responsible for the actual content of sites.

The two worst sites are now 'closed for remodel,' and misappropriated articles have been removed from the other sites.

Comment
Like a home burglar who steals family heirlooms and sells them for easy money without considering the priceless value they have to their true owners, to the developers of these thieving websites it would seem that an article is just a bunch of words on a page that they can appropriate for their own commercial purposes (as long as they don't get caught) without considering the rights of the authors.

All articles on Aquarticles are posted with permission from the authors, or in the case of club newsletter articles, with written permission from the appropriate club official.

Some of the articles are original to Aquarticles and are submitted directly by the authors - they may even be the only article the author has written, or ever will write. Other articles are contributed with an invitation to readers to correspond with the author about questions that arise from the article. Aquarium clubs permit their articles to be posted on Aquarticles on condition that their club is recognised, and reprints and repostings are required to recognise the club as well. All authors are naturally proud of their works and want to receive credit for them.

For authors -
How to find out if your article has been misappropriated:
A way to discover whether your article has been reprinted, with or without your name being credited, is to pick an unusual 3-5 word combination in your article, put quotes around the phrase, and do a Google search for that phrase.

Google will amaze you!

Should you not find your article at all, or get too many results, use a different phrase.

We recommend that you give this a try. Should you find unauthorised usages, particularly where your name has been removed, please advise Aquarticles. There may be more on that site! We will help deal with the matter.

Articles are pre-approved for use as per the conditions below. If all the rules have been followed and Aquarticles has been advised, usage will be noted in the Article Information on Aquarticles for your article. (One exception here is aquaticcommunity.com, by William Berg, a Swedish aquarist living in Moscow. William has added a very large number of articles to his site - too many for us to make note of. He has followed the rules and has advised that he may remove some of them in due course).

Should you find acceptable usages that have not been noted in your Article Information, please also let us know, and we will credit you for them.

For editors and webmasters -
Who can use articles from Aquarticles?
The conditions are laid out on the View Articles page, as follows:

- Articles may be used for free by non-commercial organisations (aquarium clubs or hobbyist web-sites). All authors (or, on their behalf, their club presidents, executives, or newsletter editors) have released their works for this purpose - no further permission is required. If you are a commercial organisation, contact the author or Aquarticles for permission and, if applicable, payment arrangements.

- If you use an article in your newsletter or web site, please credit the author, previous publication or web site (if applicable), and Aquarticles.

In the case of an Internet publication, please also provide live links to Aquarticles and the original web site (if applicable) in a prominent position on the same page as the article, and inform Aquarticles of the usage so that we can advise the author.

In the case of a hard copy publication, please send a printed copy by mail to the author or club at the address given, and also to: Aquarticles.com.

What is commercial use?
If the main purpose of your organisation, website or publication is to make money, either from advertisements or selling goods or services, or if it is connected with a business that sells goods or services, or if you are paid to produce the site or publication, then it is commercial. Our amateur authors don't want to work for you for free! Many Aquarticles articles are also posted on aquarium club websites where the condition for reprinting is non-commercial use only.

There are some grey areas - some hobbyist websites have discreet advertisements to help pay for expenses (including websites and newsletters of some aquarium clubs). If in doubt as to your status, e-mail Aquarticles for our opinion.

Should you be commercial, all is not lost! Write to Aquarticles, or the individual authors, or their clubs, for permission. I have personally given permission for my writings to appear on an aquarium store's website (in India), in two community newspapers, and in a travel company's brochure (a photo).

At Aquarticles we take these matters seriously. We do not want to waste time dealing with any more cases such as those detailed above. Those sites were closed without too much difficulty, but we were prepared to take further steps had it been necessary.