While checking for the answer to Tony Mindling's mystery yesterday (Tony's Vision), I found that a criminal in India called Harry Yadav has, since November 2013, plagiarised at least 500 of my blog posts.
And I don't mean stealing a sentence here or purloining a paragraph there. I mean every single word of at least 500 of my 1870 posts, each utterly unchanged, plus every single image. Yadav's text even includes every first-person singular nominative pronoun.
Each one of the plagiarised posts is online as "posted by Harry Yadav", without a single attribution to ozTypewriter. Bizarrely, Yadav's Google blogspot title is Phillip Hughes, the name of the Australian cricketer who died last November 27.
There doesn't seem to be a thing I can do about it. I'm so disgusted by this scumbag I'm in a mood to take the entire ozTypewriter blog offline. I was beginning to lose interest in it, anyway, and this might just be the final straw.
And I don't mean stealing a sentence here or purloining a paragraph there. I mean every single word of at least 500 of my 1870 posts, each utterly unchanged, plus every single image. Yadav's text even includes every first-person singular nominative pronoun.
Each one of the plagiarised posts is online as "posted by Harry Yadav", without a single attribution to ozTypewriter. Bizarrely, Yadav's Google blogspot title is Phillip Hughes, the name of the Australian cricketer who died last November 27.
There doesn't seem to be a thing I can do about it. I'm so disgusted by this scumbag I'm in a mood to take the entire ozTypewriter blog offline. I was beginning to lose interest in it, anyway, and this might just be the final straw.
The criminal Harry Yadav.
It will be interesting to see if he plagiarises this post too!
It will be interesting to see if he plagiarises this post too!
19 comments:
You stay; HE goes! (and thank you for all you've given)
I can tell you exactly why.
Harry is using the material (most likely the photographs specifically, as they are what draws most of the hits from google that accounts for your number of readers) to draw the same random hits to his own site. He does this so that when someone lands on his page (and he probably had multiple such pages) he gains income from online advertising.
Automated online advertiser systems pay bloggers by 'click troughs' ie - you don't get paid for the ad being on your page, but rather when someone reading your page clicks on the ad and goes through to the page being advertised. Pages like this are scam pages that are designed so that when a person simply goes onto the page, it opens up the advertisement as a pop-up, and this registering as a 'click through'.
Does he think your stuff is worth plagerising? No. He just wants the random google click through traffic that your page attracts simply because of the high amount of content on your page. It has nothing to do with the quality of the material on the page, and chances are he's never read it.
Did you notice the blog was titled 'Phillip Hughes'? Of course you did. That's probably how he came across your stuff in the first place. He gave the blog that title so that it would attract people googling the 'issue of the moment' that was gemerating a high amount of interest at the time. Eventually he'll change the name to represent someone else he wants to grab search share to.
Google hit-rates improve the more pages you have online to be searched through, and your site attracts a lot of interest specifically due to the quantity of material. As such, your blog was simply a good place to just pull articles to fill a blog out.
So, is there something you can do about this? Yep. Flick me a call sometime.
OK, I understand this (almost entirely) and agree, this is exactly what is happening when you go to his site (click through?). So, at least for the time being, I guess the only solution is to take the blog down, as I have absolutely no intention of doing all this work just to profit the criminal Harry Yadav.
There probably is no "Harry Yadav." The whole thing is probably created 99% automatically by some sort of robot that looks for successful blogs and tries to piggyback on them. This is part of the nature of the Internet.
Don't overreact, Robert, please.
I'm trying very hard not to, but I'd be totally disillusioned if Google can't (or won't) do anything to stop this. Surely they have to take some responsibility and act?
Please leave your blog on the internet. It has been an inspiration to me since I was starting high school. Also, could you post your Royal Safari reviews?
The value of your blog to the Typosphere far exceeds whatever income a criminal use might be making from it. I am sure that your posts are a nearly every day read and inspiration for countless of us. It is your obvious delight in researching facts that is inspiring my posts on the mystery of the tiny photo of the typists. I think it is unlikely that I would have identified William Shirer without that link back to your 2012 post. That information is in turn leading me on to further interesting reading of his works. Multiply the value of that inspiration times the many others you influence, and we wind back to my initial assertion that the value of your blog to us is far greater than whatever nefarious bots can glean from it. Please keep it up!!!
Thank you Tony and Nick for your very kind remarks. I have lodged a formal complaint with google.com and will of course be very interested to see what they have to say about this. The complaint process is set up for individual examples of copyright infringement, so I hope Google grasps that this plagiarism on a massive scale.
Please don't take your blog down! It really is a wonderful inspiration to me, not to mention a valuable resource from time to time(you might not know it, but you've helped me through several tricky repairs). It would be a shame to deprive the world of your writings & research, and I personally would find my world a slightly darker place for the loss of your work.
Sad to hear of your troubles Robert. There are ways around schisters, but sometimes it requires a great amount of work.
Altenately you could turn your blog private and only those with the proper credentials can access it. Anything digital can eventually be hacked though.
Something else would be to put everything in your blog into a book and sell it to those of us interested. You could update the book by selling suplements to it.
Still nothing guarantees schisters will steal it. These days there are many many people without an inkling of respect for themself or others let alone any ethics.
Seems a waste to go through all the work you've done just to remove it. Your blog is a great asset to the Typosphere.
Hope it gets removed, these are annoying happenings I can well image. (Google also should be concerned, this undermines their click-through pricing credibility.)
Like others commented - your blog is a vast and valuable source of information. Especially to the new and novice in tw land.
Recently noticed something related; after posting the RP2 manual online, it now is available print-to-order in Abebooks from some Indian publisher. Quite probably my scans. But then again I actually put it out there to be used + their gain is not my loss.
Hope you get it squashed and stay online!
I've only now discovered your blog here, and did so in pursuit of more information towards getting my old Oliver No. 11 at least functional again. I've only scratched the surface of your posts, and I hope you decide to keep it up for people like me to discover, and learn from.
I have a blog myself, that I've been maintaining for four years now, and I've had to deal with some minor plagurism issues. Though nothing on the wholesale theft scale that you are experiencing. :(
I can only echo what a few of the other people said; that you are providing information and observations that enrich everyone that comes across it. Which can cause beneficial ripples beyond what you post here that cannot be predicted.
Keep up your good work if you can.
If all else fails, just sick us on him. We'll unleash the troll machine :P
No, you have other solutions other than taking your blog down.
Okay. Let's get the ball rolling. How about we start with a report to google that your copyright (photos and content) has been violated. You'll be asked to provide a link to the blog on this, however only you can directly report this abuse.
The process can be started at:
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en#ts=1115645,3331068,1115789,1115864
What everybody else said. Great blog, great info, great pix. It's clear how much work you put into it. I would hate to see it go but I feel your frustration. Good luck with filing the complaint with Google - sounds like Scott Kernaghan can be a big help.
Terry Murray in Toronto (Canada)
Oh Robert! I can understand this is a huge downer for you, but please don't let 'it' win. It only means you are doing something good here.
Robert. Two words: Imitation and flattery.
Robert. Two words: Imitation, flattery.
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