Duplicate Content and Copyright Infringement
70© Copyright 2009 Patrice Walker All rights reserved
It Happened to Me, Too
For some reason, I never thought I'd be a victim of copyright infringement, but I was. The hub that I wrote about Neville Goddard, which I deleted from the site I had previously published it on before publishing it on HubPages, appears on a site called Professional Self Improvement Articles Directory (I've since learned that these sites are called "scraper" sites).
I have to confess that I forgot it was one of my blogs (which I've since taken down) and is probably the reason HubPages kept insisting that the hub was duplicate content (sorry HubPages!). Once I deleted it from the blog, I asked HubPages to check again for duplicate content. This time, they came back with a link to a website I'd never heard of. And there it was, in all its glory, word for word.
What is a "Scraper" Site?
There is a brief, (unauthorized) bio of me at the end of the article, which clearly indicates to me that the article was taken directly from my blog; there is a link included in the bio back to my blog, but this really doesn't help since the entire blog post is on the site, so why would anyone then go to my blog to read it again?
"Revoke" My Article, Please!
Here is what the site says about "some" of its articles:
some articles of the site are from free article directory, if a violation of your rights, please e-mail to me, I will revoke the relevant articles. Thanks
you can email to me : admin at selfimprovementdir.com.
Hmmm ... sounds like it was written by someone for whom English is not his or her first language. That's probably neither here nor there, but I'm suspecting it's a site set up solely for the purpose of generating income from Google Adsense ads. I've written to the email address provided, asking them to "revoke" my article, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for a response.
Duplicate Content Re-Defined
HubPages does indeed let you publish duplicate content as long as there are no profit-earning outbound links in it. I discuss this in more detail in the first hub I wrote when my Neville Goddard hub got flagged. But HubPages will penalize your hubscore(s?) if they see a "pattern of publishing duplicate content."
(UPDATE 9/28/11: This policy has since changed. You can no longer publish ANY content on HubPages which is also published elsewhere on the Internet, even if you are the author of that content.)
In that hub, I defined duplicate content somewhat inaccurately given this turn of events. I can now say that duplicate content is content that appears on another site as well as on HubPages at the same time. If the Professional Self Help Article Directory site ever "revokes" my article, I'll ask HubPages to check again for duplicate content. If it's gone, then theoretically, the duplicate content flag should disappear, assuming it's not on any other site.
Lesson Learned
I deleted the Neville Goddard hub, but decided to re-published it since it's the last "duplicate content" hub I'll ever publish. Believe me, I have learned my lesson. I still have a lot of articles from the blog and from the old article submission site I used to publish on that I could publish here. But will I? No. Instead, I'll either take the time to re-write them or use them to generate ideas for new hubs.
If I do hear from the site that my article was "revoked," I'll let you know. Thanks for listening!
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Don't get to many of those duplicate hub warnings, treaseryw. I would definitely suggest updating it or rewriting it if it appears elsewhere. Take care and aloha!
Thanks for the info. Maybe you can answer a question for me. I just wrote a review this morning and I got flagged for duplicate content. My article is original but I did copy and paste the nutritional values from another webpage. I didn't think would matter but I think that had to be what caused it. Should I delete the article and start over again or should I just go back and edit it some more? I would hate to have to start over again...
@ amymarie_5. Thanks so much for your question.
Is there a way you can edit those nutritional values so that they don't duplicate the original content? I would try that first before rewriting the entire article to determine if that was the cause of the DC flag.
You could also put put quotes around that content and provide a source so that it's clear you are attributing the content to the original writer and not yourself.
Finally, I would carefully read what HP has to say about duplicate content because there are 2 instances of DC that they describe at http://hubpages.com/faq/#duplicate_content which is a little confusing (at least to me). There should also be some information along with the DC flag that you should also read carefully that may assist you in your rewriting. Hope this helps.
Let me know if those changes work.
Thanks for the helpful information. I was thinking of duplicating my hubs into my blogs. Voted up and useful.
You're welcome, Brinafr3sh! Thanks for your positive comments.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us here. I intent to publish some of my articles in HuhPages and these will be very useful for me.
I'm glad you found the hub useful, joriechew. Good luck with your writing. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Thanks for sharing, indeed. My quandary right now is, I want to publish an article here on Hubpages; but this one had been published at Squidoo — but it was incomplete then and Squidoo reverted it to work in progress. I got pissed, I deleted the article entirely and am transferring, finishing and publishing it here. Strictly there's no duplicate content since the other article had been deleted, but there's this search result at Google with portions of the text in it: a dead link. Still, I'm not yet sure if I won't get the 'duplicate content' flag. A false positive with this kind of flag was the main reason I left Squidoo (got a bit of trauma from it, lol). I guess I'll cross the bridge when I get there.
Hi diyomarpandan, as long as you have deleted the article from Squidoo and it's no where else on the Internet, you should be okay. On the other hand, the flag is created by an automatic program, so it might flag your article by mistake. But, even if you get one, you can always contact HubPages and talk to a human being about the situation.
Hope this helps, and thanks for reading and ocmmenting.
treasuresyw 2 years ago
Yeah I see that with one of my articles. Since it is my work I can always refresh it with a new motivational message. Thanks for the hub. Peace