I have google alerts setup to report back to me when my company name, or things I have written about, are found online. Every once in awhile I get an interesting or very strange google alert. Once I found an article that I had written, on water pressure, and it was posted on an X-rated page surrounded by naked women. I had written the article on one of the "expert" sites so I had agreed that others could republish the article just as long as they gave me credit. In that case I was not so sure I wanted the credit down there at the bottom of the naked page. The most recent google alert takes the cake. I got an alert last night and when I followed the link, someone has filched my contract and posted it to some sort of online document sharing community. Docstoc is the premier online community and marketplace to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform to upload and share documents with the world, and serves as a vast repository of free and for purchase legal, business, financial, technical, and educational documents that can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded. You can see the "lifted" King of the House document right here. Anyway, at this fleeting moment in time, my standard contract has been reproduced, word for word, graphic by graphic and is being shared by someone who had no right to share it. There are any number of hoops you have to go through to get a pilfered document removed from this site, but I will probably jump through those hoops.
Thanks for stopping by, Steven L. Smith
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Good for you! It is a pain, but well worth the trouble of having it removed. And, you may want to report it to the government as well. This site is apparently violating copyright laws...I would think.
Not sure which one I would be most concerned about...probably the naked women! Trying to keep others from stealing is tough..can't lock it up on the Net!
Yikes Steven. Wonder how many of my blogs are floating around out there. Doesn't seem right anyone could republish without your permission but a lot of things aren't right in the cyberworld.
Steven, Sounds really nasty! There are some low-life folks that will stop at nothing for gain while stomping your good name and efforts in the mud. Sad!
Good luck getting through the hoops, Steven. Just because many things on the Internet are free, such as freeware, it doesn't mean that everything is. Ethics is going to need to be a class for K-12 and beyond if we ever hope to get out of this spiral we're in.
Been there, done that, jumped through the hoops. The first time I took some shortcuts. He came back. So I nailed him to the wall, not missing one step. I called in the big guns and it worked.
It is not just a matter of ethics. It is criminal behavior. What the offender has done is break the law by plagiarizing. Refer to The Digital Millennium Copyright Act signed into law by Clinton in 1998.
Wow! Some folks will pinch anything won't they? Good luck at jumping through the hoops...
That looks like a good agreement. I think I'll use it.
I guess it is a back-handed compliment to have it taken. I put my name in the search and found nothing. In other words, I have nothing worth stealing. LOL
Don't worry, Barbara. Somebody will find something of yours to steal, sooner or later.
To quote a Wicked Witch I saw melt, "What a world... what a world..."
Mr Jay,
Are you callin my Godmother a witch?
Nutsy
Nutsy, Obviously there is no risk of your brain being plagiarized.
www.Those-In-The-Know.edu
Nope! And I am glad nothing has been taken from her!
But it is a bad world. Be careful so YOU don't melt...
Evil twin?
Yes, Nutsy is very evil.
Howdy and evenen to ya Steven
I sure do hope ya can get your contract off of that there site.
Nutsy is not at all evil!!! He is very very kind, to everyone he meets!!!