Yesterday, I randomly decided to go to the “Ukulele” tag. As I mentioned in a Post last week – I’m always looking for new musicians on the platform that I can encourage and help out. I wasn’t sure if anyone else actually uses the ukulele tag…but I thought it might be a fun way to find fellow uke players! I was pretty surprised to see my FACE and TITLE on someone else’s post.
Here's a shot of the stolen content – it was my ukulele cover of “Cheap Thrills” by Sia
The post didn’t make any money, so I wasn’t overly upset about it … but does that make it any better? This was not a post saying “Hey – go check out this Ukulele Player!”, it was literally a copy/paste of the text from my post and a link to the Dtube video. The funny thing is, that the link clearly shows that the video was plagiarized because it takes you straight to my Dtube Channel.
This was an obvious and poorly done plagiarism job… because the cover art shows my face and the video links back to my post; but what about people who post mainly written content and use photos that aren’t personally identifiable? How horrible would it be if someone ripped off their post and ended up getting paid for it? The people voting on the plagiarized post, may have no idea that it was ripped off. They would just see a well-written post by a new user and might decide to support them with a vote.
This Kind of Behavior Harms the Steem Eco-System
We are a pretty inclusive and accepting bunch – but stealing others content is completely unacceptable. It really degrades everything that the rest of us are trying to build here. It just makes me scratch my head, because even if their scam worked on a few posts… people would eventually start to notice all of their content was plagiarized and they would get down-voted to oblivion. What’s the draw? I’d love any insights you guys have.
What Can We Do About It?
How people decide to deal with plagiarism will be a little different for everyone. I used to be shy about downvoting because I didn’t want to waste my voting power on people that are not providing value. I’ve had a bit of a shift lately though as I’m starting to think that this may be the best way to send them a message. I’m still not spending very much of my vote power on spammy or plagiarized comments/posts… but even a little nudge can hopefully be enough let them know that kind of behavior is not appreciated.
Message to Plagiarizers
Please stop. Seriously, you are not doing this community or yourself any favors. You have a voice, and we want to hear form YOU. Please use it.
What do you guys think? Is there value in calling out plagiarism and talking about this more openly as a group… or am I just encouraging plagiarizers by even acknowledging them? I honestly grappled with this and would love to hear your thoughts.
Xo, Lea
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
Thanks for raising this issue! IP is a racket, but that doesn't mean that posting someone else's content as your own isn't fraud. It's great to see that on Steemit, we have nonviolent ways of dealing with plagiarists. Keep up the great work and the community will keep innovating!
Wow, thank you for your support and thoughtful response! I definitely think we have more “good apples” than bad and it’s great to see the community come up with ways to fight this kind of abuse.
just WOW
Ha, I know right? I was pretty surprised!
Unfortunately this type of thing happens all the time and even more so on decentralized systems. I know of one cryptocurrency soon coming out that will track plagiarism im not sure how far reaching it will be but id be curious if steemit could adopt it into their system or create their own internal system.
Sorry this happened to you but keep cracking out awesome content and you will continue to be rewarded. Its also good you add your own picture etc to it perhaps even think about adding your steemit tag to your pictures or some type of watermark that people can see that shows where the content belongs to what account could also be a move in the positive direction to combat this type of behavior.
Ooh interesting! Finding plagiarism is one of the hardest parts of controlling it... and so it would be awesome if there was a way to automate so e of that work.
Also, great idea to use some kind of watermark or personal logo. I can see how that could help deter some people from stealing.
There is a bot cheetah that does this check no?
its okay... it happens... you should feel honored...
Sad but thats the truth...
All the best for the rest... i hope they dont get stolen :)
I don't think you're encouraging them with these sorts of posts.. but I don't believe for a second they'd ever read this. This post allows your fans to flag them too, which should hurt their reputation and hopefully make them reconsider stealing someone else's work.
These sort of posts do often get upvoted by votebots really close to the 7 day payout time... so unfortunately the flag is really the only weapon at our disposal.. and reporting them to Steemcleaners via their abuse report form
I'm sorry this happened to you... but like you said... it was probably only a matter of time... Your stern face is pretty great though.
Hahah I appreciate the comment on my “stern face”.
Also thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject. If even one plagiarizer sees this post and starts to rethink their strategy, then it is worth it. :-)
Thanks for the Steemcleaners link. I actually forgot we even had that service!
bunch of cowards!
danggg that is pretty pathetic... but yes it is bound to happen eventually. I think it's great that you made this post to call them out. Perhaps some flags will rain down upon their account.... Maybe ALLL the content is stolen...
Haha who knows! I checked out their account and the content is pretty random... it wouldn’t surprise me if it was all stolen!
Pathetic is the right describer word here... I’m posting this not to just call out one person, but to open dialogue that this kind of behavior is not okay. Not sure any of these plagiarizes will even see this post... but you never know!
Haha they must be following you ;)
Just keep being you, you’re the best at you.
Hey @coruscate, I'm so sorry to hear that this happened to you. I had someone go after my copyright name recently, too. It's hurtful and definitely something that feels bad to have happen.
Thanks for letting us know about it happening, though. I think it's great how well this community likes to stand together when we notice that someone is up to this kind of nonsense.
Sorry to hear about the copyright issues you are having. Sounds like a huge pain... not to mention frustrating. :(
Your right, this community is amazing about banding together! Love this place. ❤️
ugh. Don't look forward to seeing this one day. Frustrating for you!
really messed up, the disadvantage of decentralized platforms is that there is no monitoring of plagiarizing and stolen content. I am hoping that the admins can take a look into this for you
Well that's really bad, no one should steal other people's content not on steemit and not anywhere. I think not down voting these people will encourage them to do this again. I think they should be flagged to teach them a lesson so that they will think again again to repeat this in the future.
Couldn’t agree more. Thanks for your support my friend!
This is very unfortunate that people are doing this. But it is understandable since it involves money. Money breeds corruption
Something like this deserves a downvote
I think you summed it up perfectly... Money does tend to breed corruption.
Thanks for the thoughtful response!
I know how you are feeling. Once my content got stolen too even though I'm a newbie in that time. I created my post for a contest and someone just copy paste from me and from the google. Then the contest creator disqualified both of us saying that we plagiarized content from Google. It was so painful, I mentally broke down on that day. But the problem was solved after some time and I was relieved. You must be feeling pretty bad because it's your own video. Plagiarism sucks. If the gentle words don't work on plagiarizers, they should be punished.
Oh no!! I’m sorry to hear about your terrible experience with someone stealing your content. That would be so frustrating.
Downvotes are a pretty good form of “punishment”. Honestly for me, I just want to do what I can to protect this platform from being overrun by scammers. Hopefully bringing up this topic for conversation helps even a little.
And cheetah didn't show up on that person's post?
You can report it to steemcleaners btw
I guess Cheetah can’t be everywhere! Also, thanks for the Steemcleaners tip! I actually forgot that was a service available to us. Reporting them is a great idea.
Its really bad for the steem platform, steeling someones content, how can they do so, there should be taken some serious action against them, flagging isn't enough, maybe steemit has to introduce a thing called privacy.
Can you explain more of what you mean by privacy?
Also, thanks for the thoughtful response!
The content of yours can't be saved or we can say downloaded or even it can't be copied also, maybe steemit should bring such a feature, so that we feel safe that no one is going to copy our posts on their blog for some money
i think such actions deserve downvote
otherwise they will repeat such actions!
Agreed. Thanks for your support!
Just report and downvote them. Upvote for you
Nice post @coruscate, up voted! Cheers
Wow
Nice your post
help me, i just joined in steemit
Welcome to Steemit! Do you have a specific question I can help you with?
I'm not sure of the how-to, but you can notify Steem Cleaners about this sort of thing. And yeah ...I try not to waste too much of my VP on it, but sometimes the wallet is the only thing these scammers understand!
Damn that sucks. You should bring it up and point out that they stole your content. The reputation meter is there for a reason.
beautiful
https://steemit.com/baaghi2/@ahtishamcreation/baaghi-2-official-trailer-or-tiger-shroff-or-disha-patani-or-sajid-nadiadwala-or-ahmed-khan
Put a watermark on your videos, looks like shit at times but better be safe then sorry.
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I deeply agree with you, the plagiarism is very harmful to others and there is no advantage to us, the most interesting thing in your Dtube video is the words of the pen and realize how plagiarism to other steemians, life will be more beautiful if we can respect each other and love each other from my Bireuen-Aceh firefighters enjoy your videos, please support me and "steem firefighter community", in order to rise in this steem world .. thank @coruscate
Their is a culture on youtube of downloading original content and then posting it back up,usually to promote an affiliate offer or similar. I always watermark my videos with my name ,it may not stop it altogether but it acts as a deterrent.I love your music by the way :)
As Steem becomes more popular we'll get more and more of these types of people. Also, I suspect that once DTube starts effecting YouTube we'll start seeing targeted disruption of the social network.
I don't know how to fix that, but maybe alerting people to the looming threats will partially inoculate us.
Yes, there is. Anyone who created anything that has value will easily understand that.
i have seen plagiarism already in my own sphere - electronic music, talked about it with a guy from minnowsupport project and he showed me this site, no need to waste your upvote power on people why steal content, use this site- it specializes in fighting plagiarism etc. https://steemcleaners.org/abuse-report/ , at least as far as i know, i already needed to fill out a report because one guy was stealing content from a yt electronic promo channel. Hope this helps, thanks for posting great content :)