Over the past couple of months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring ways to deal with plagiarism (otherwise known as the cut & paste problem or CPP). Given it’s a growing problem, there is a fertile opportunity for tools to monitor content on blogs and Web sites. Obviously, the most common tools are Google and Technorati (for blogs) but there are many others being developed.
One of them called RepTrace was recently highlighted on David Jones’s blog. Jones, a PR practitioner with Fleishman-Hllard and an active blogger, was impressed by Milton, Ont.0-basd RepuTrace’s ability to quickly find freshly-created content.
“One thing that really caught my attention was their search engine’s ability to find anything new within a maximum time of 5-7 minutes of posting. They claim it’s better than Technorati and Google as far as search goes. Conceivably, this should return new blog postings faster than Google due to the fact that it’s an actual live search and not indexed. I’m no SEO expert, so I’ll take their word for it. The very nicely organized search window, which allows you to look at all web hits, or just news, blogs or consumer sites was very interesting.”
Another player on the horizon is Attributor, which has some high-profile investors such Draper Richards, Selby Venture Partners and Sigma Partners. The company, which received $10-million of venture capital in December, is developing technology that will show publishers how their content (text, video and images) are being re-used online. You can apply to the beta by sending an e-mail to beta@attributor.com
Another new tool on the anti-plagiarism front is Blogwerx, a self-funded, three-man operation that recently launched at Demo. A good source for information on combating plagiarism is Plagiarism Today.
Update: Blogging && Tools played with two anti-plagiarism tools – Copyscape and Sentinel.
Mark,
Interesting post.
In education it will always be important for teachers and professors to connect ideas, thoughts and work to students for the purpose of assessment. The mantra of “if you did not write it, then you should site it” has important meaning as teachers try to instill a sense of ethics, original thought and resonsibility in their students.
In the commercial blogsphere I find it interesting that the concept of “plagerism” is poping up and there are companies right there to help see that authors “get their due”. When words and ideas suddenly have value beyond a letter grade suddenly the line between plagerism and piracy are fuzzy.
In an age where content is everywhere, I am interested to see how online authors deal with posers cutting and pasting their words and passing them off as their own. Do readers really care where the ideas came from, or just that they are out there at all?
Justin
Hope the new little ones are doing well. Say hi to all the Toronto crew for me
Mark,
Thank you for the kind words about Blogwerx. We see plagiarism as a growing issue as more user generated content is delivered to the web.
Keep checking back on us either at http://www.blogwerx.com or http://www.iwerx.com the parent site of Blogwerx. We have some interesting things planned for the future.
Tony Moura
Iwerx
Thats new information! Would like to try out Raptrace and Attributor. Should be fairly new ones ?
Mark
Thank-you kindly for the RepuTraceâ„¢ product mention. A very insightful post on a matter that up until now, I have only ever realized as a problem existing in scholarly pursuit.
The points made by both you and Justin certainly raise some interesting questions that relate to a whole new commercial conception of “minding your own” online, especially when one considers not only the varying types of commentary (blogs, forums, etc.), but also its pervasiveness, and the ease by which rebroadcasting of commentary occurs with the power of light-speed syndication.
In the interests of furthering your exploratory efforts in dealing with online plagiarism, I would like to extend an invitation to preview our RepuTraceâ„¢ product. Feel free to contact me directly by email. Alternatively, you may also schedule an online demo directly from the main page of our website.
Regards,
Joseph
Very helpful, Mark. May I suggest that, for the sake of people new to blogging, the point be made that with proper attribution, some illustrative quoting, say a para or maybe two if warranted by the context, is not only not wrong, but is common practice and – in my opinion – can encourage the reader to go to the source for the whole article. I know it’s a different issue, but I am reminded regularly that some things we more experienced bloggers take for granted are not obvious to people new to the experience.
I sometimes see people basically ripping the guts out of an article, by copying and pasting, say the full ten points from an article about ten ways to do whatever. That is in my view quite improper, although I don’t see a problem necessarily in listing the ten headings: the original author may see that differently, of course.
BTW, the Free Signup “star” in the header on Blogwerx main page gave a page not found response, but clicking on the Solutions tab gave access to a signup form.
Joseph
I didn’t know whether the invitation to preview RepuTrace was just for Mark or more general, so I went to your home page. I couldn’t see anything that looked like a button or form to register for a demo. What was I missing please?
Des
Excuse my delayed response, but we’ve been working on a few large contracts this week and I’ve been in and out.
Thanks for your interest…yes, the invite is open if you’d like to schedule something. Please contact me anytime to set something up or just hit the “Schedule a Demo” button on any of our sites.
The latest giant in this deal is Yahoo India!! Stealt contents from a fellow food blogger, and blames sub-contractors for the reason…no apologies…no compensation…just removal of the content after chain of mails on copyright infringement.A silent protest is on March 5th, against Yahoo India!! Join us!
Refer here for more info:
http://myinjimanga.blogspot.com/2007/02/bloggers-protest-event-against-yahoo.html