Copyscape



  • http://www.copyscape.com

    From what read putting their copyscape banner on your pages will prevent plagiarists from stealing your work and somehow track a person down if they do steal your work.

    They also have what looks like a google search to see if your site is anywhere else on the internet. Its free to search the first 5 times, after that each search costs $0.05.

    This is almost as bad as a service that claims they can prevent anyone from viewing your html using javascript.
     



  • ((((((Miraculously a simple View->Page Source in Firefox allowed me to see the source code of their site.

    Of course the banner is there.))))))

    Yes, I'm a bad reader.



  • I tried the service. I was stunned to see that my blog is copied literally thousands of times everywhere. At least the part of it that says January February March April June July August September October November December.



  • @plazmo said:

    From what read putting their copyscape banner on your pages will prevent plagiarists from stealing your work and somehow track a person down if they do steal your work.

    No, it doesn't say that. It's a search engine that searches for pages whose text matches yours. The banner is just to advertise that you are a user of their service. Where do you see a claim that the banner does anything?



  • @Random832 said:

    @plazmo said:

    From what read putting their copyscape banner on your pages will prevent plagiarists from stealing your work and somehow track a person down if they do steal your work.

    No, it doesn't say that. It's a search engine that searches for pages whose text matches yours. The banner is just to advertise that you are a user of their service. Where do you see a claim that the banner does anything?

    Probably where it says, "Defend your site with a plagiarism warning banner!"



  • @Random832 said:

    @plazmo said:

    From what read putting their copyscape banner on your pages will prevent plagiarists from stealing your work and somehow track a person down if they do steal your work.

    No, it doesn't say that. It's a search engine that searches for pages whose text matches yours. The banner is just to advertise that you are a user of their service. Where do you see a claim that the banner does anything?

    Did you even read the banner? It says "Page protected by Copyscape DO NOT COPY"



  • @plazmo said:

    From what read putting their copyscape banner on your pages will prevent plagiarists from stealing your work and somehow track a person down if they do steal your work.

    They also have what looks like a google search to see if your site is anywhere else on the internet. Its free to search the first 5 times, after that each search costs $0.05.

    This is almost as bad as a service that claims they can prevent anyone from viewing your html using javascript. 


    Well, the banner is obviously rather advertising for copyscape than any kind of protection.

    As for the original service... well, I'm not sure if it is woth it's money. It should not be too difficult to find verbatim copies of websites using Google. 



  • @ammoQ said:

    As for the original service... well, I'm not sure if it is woth it's money. It should not be too difficult to find verbatim copies of websites using Google. 

    They seem to be finding it quite difficult - false positives abound. The prevalence of things like livejournal where people quote other sites and comment on them has ensured this.

    There are two fundamental errors with the whole concept of this thing. Firstly: why the hell do you care that somebody is copying some text that you wrote? Making a fuss over this is incredibly juvenile. We're talking about right up there with "waah, he's LOOKING at me".

    Secondly, and more importantly, there is extremely little original content in the world. Most things are based on other things, rearranged. Even most professional authors/songwriters/scriptwriters have no more than a handful of new ideas in their entire career, and almost certainly no works that are original in entirity. Whatever you write is most probably a variation on something that you've read or heard, even if you don't remember it. While there may be some small amount of new creative content in what you write, a text matching search cannot detect it, and is probably going to match it against some of the things that you copied from.

    Human culture is based on copying; it always has been and always will be, because that's how humanity works. Each person adds a very small piece to the pile while using all the pieces from the people that came before them. The pile does not belong to you. Deal with it.



  • @asuffield said:

    Human culture is based on copying; it always has been and always will be, because that's how humanity works. Each person adds a very small piece to the pile while using all the pieces from the people that came before them. The pile does not belong to you. Deal with it.

    Attributed in one form or another to Pablo Picasso:

    Good artists copy. Great artists steal.


  • @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    I tried the service. I was stunned to see that my blog is copied literally thousands of times everywhere. At least the part of it that says January February March April June July August September October November December.

    You stole that post from my blog!  You probably stole the one with the numbers 1 through 31, too!



  • Oh, look, Adblock blocked all of their banners... oops.



  • There are two fundamental errors with the whole concept of this thing. Firstly: why the hell do you care that somebody is copying some text that you wrote? Making a fuss over this is incredibly juvenile. We're talking about right up there with "waah, he's LOOKING at me".

    Secondly, and more importantly, there is extremely little original content in the world. Most things are based on other things, rearranged. Even most professional authors/songwriters/scriptwriters have no more than a handful of new ideas in their entire career, and almost certainly no works that are original in entirity. Whatever you write is most probably a variation on something that you've read or heard, even if you don't remember it. While there may be some small amount of new creative content in what you write, a text matching search cannot detect it, and is probably going to match it against some of the things that you copied from.


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