Today, while I was blog hopping, I read an article about protecting your website’s content specially written content from being copied and used by someone other than yourself. The article has a link to Copyscape which is a website that provides services to protect your own website from online plagiarism and content theft.
While I was there, I decided to try it. I used their search to look for copies of my website’s content and, unfortunately, I did find one.
I found my homepage text, which I have been using since 2005, at a fellow Filipino designer’s website namely jmolde.com. The text is:
Website Design services are as common as the common cold but those who caters to small/medium enterprises, start-ups, NGOs and individuals are still very rare. This is where I come in.
I will design you a website at a fraction of the cost of what your normal design agency charges. It’s fast, inexpensive and you work directly with the designer himself.
I am a web designer based in the Philippines with more than 5 years experience designing websites both for local and international businesses.
Upon looking at his profile I learned that his name is Joseph Alinadel Molde of San Pedro, Laguna. He is also a web designer and based on his job experiences, which are posted at his site, he had some good experiences as a web designer already. In fact, he might be earning much more than me but what I can’t understand is why, an established web designer like him, copy and use text from my website? Is my text copy that good?
I’m not a copywriter but at least I try to write my own copy myself. I’ve been using that particular copy since 2006 (even earlier, I’ll have to check) and I never thought that it’s good enough to be copied and used by someone else. To be honest, I don’t know if I should feel flattered, insulted or ripped off.
(Web Archive of www.ROMELO.com 2005)
(What’s my copy doing on this website’s homepage?)
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Tags: copied text, plagiarism, plagiarized, theft
You should always protect your content. I’m teaching my Filipina wife basic web designing and various admin control panels.
hima i 1lokking for a freelance web designer.. i have a couple of projects to be complete. If you are interested contact me on http://www.greenfin.ae. many thanks
Sorry usha for the delayed response. I don’t really check comments that much coz I get too much spam comments.
What the… that’s a plagiarism indeed, it’s really hard to protect your own articles in the internet, i checked the theft site but its not available anymore, guess he’s not doing anymore web designing, anyways i know what your feeling dude, i have gone to a same trouble, someone copied my articles on one of my blogs, and that really sucks dude, anyways you are really good in the articles keep it up, I’m also a freelance web designer and also a Filipino.
Masasabi ko lang nkakahiya nmn ung gnwa ng online theft na un, grabe un ah professional web designer na sya and still he copied an article, did you contact him? and what did he say? ok lng dude kht di ka n mag reply hehe just want to say na gs2 ko din labanan ung online plagiarism, i’m not born to be a writer and i know it’s really hard to write even 150 words for one article, kaya di patas un bro ung nanakawan ka ng article, i hate that stuff, well hope you could get the justice bout it, and btw nice portfolio, good luck again and keep up the great work
proud to be pinoy hehe – Von
Yay! that sucks bro. hehehe maybe because you’re number one sa google Filipino freelance web designer na keywords. He thinks it might have to do with your content. ask ko lang, nag SEO ka rin ba? thanks.
nagustuhan nya ung content ng site mo… ingat na lang sa susunod…wag kang mag-aalala hindi ka nag-iisa… ganyan talaga ang buhay
nagbago na ata sya ng site Digital Web Design Studio
Hi Mike. It’s more than a year now since this incident has happened. I’ve forgotten about it already until now. Some of the screenshots don’t seem to load anymore. Imageshack is not very reliable it seems.
Too bad that the old comments were lost when an upgrade to WP 2.6 before messed up my database. I got some not so friendly comments from them but fortunately they were commenting from their place of work and I was able to trace it back.
http://www.romelo.com/2008/05/09/look-what-i%E2%80%99ve-discovered/
My content was copied and yet I was the one attacked by these people for blogging about what I found while trying out Copyscape. The discovery was purely accidental.
Anyway, it’s been more than a year now and I guess it has been forgotten already. It seems this post still appears in searches. Ha ha ha!