Plagiarism

[Lynn Robson]

I'm about to show you the opening paragraph of my website at www.thebridesmother.co.uk
I have used this for about two and half years.
I recently did a crawl to see who else in the locality amongst my competitors had a website and I found almost exaclty the same wording on their index page.
Here goes with mine:
"Congratulations.
You have just found the best collection of individual ladies fashions in the north-east. Our designer collection of Mother of the Bride outfits and dresses, Mother of the Groom outfits, and special occasion dresses and suits are from leading fabulous fashion houses. If you're wondering where to buy your outfit then is the best you can expect to see in any boutique in the UK, let alone the north east.
We only buy our stock on trust for you, as it is you who must be satisfied with it more than us. It must therefore fulfil three essential criteria. It has to be superb in style, perfect in quality and above all it must represent the absolute best in value for money. Although we stock many labels, we only choose those items from each suppliers range that matches our own exacting standards.

We make no compromise on this as we don't just want your business today, we want it tomorrow as well. More than that we need your personal recommendations to friends and family. Some of the labels we stock can also be found in the high street clothes shops department stores where they are generally much more expensive. Let's face it, the high street rent and rates have to be paid by someone. This means you. Anyway clothing stores on the high street don't have the same commitment to their customers as we do. The best fashion items are generally sold by independents."

The content of the competitrs site is as follows:
Congratulations. You have just found the best collection of individual ladies fashions in the north-east. Our designer collection of mother of the bride outfits, mother of the groom outfits and special occasion dresses and suits are from leading fabulous fashion houses and is the best you can expect to see in any boutique in the UK, let alone the north east.

Although we stock many labels, we only choose those items from each suppliers range that matches our own exacting standards. We make no compromise on this as we don't just want your business today, we want it tomorrow as well. More than that we need your personal recommendations to friends and family. Some of the labels we stock can also be found in the high street clothes shops department stores where they are generally much more expensive. Let's face it, the high street rent and rates have to be paid by someone. This means you. Anyway clothing stores on the high street don't have the same commitment to their customers as we do. The best fashion items are generally sold by independents.

As you can see, the text is almost verbatim from my site.
While I don't worry at all about the other site taking business from me because the site is so poorly designed in the code, it just doesn't appear on the searches, I am a bit miffed that I have had some of my content stolen.
As we are getting ready for the big season for the sale of mother of the bride outfits I don't want to lose any advantage.
Is plagiarism an actual offence or can it be construed as a copyright issue, although I have no copyright protection as such.

[JKomp]

If you wrote it first then you own the copyright. Of course you have to be able to prove you wrote it first.

I had a similar thing happen to me, one of my domains expired and the people thought that bought it thought that entitled them to use the content i had on there. It doesn't.

I would recommend sending an email and pointing out the breach. If you look here http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=57647 dutter gives a good example of the sort of tone you should take.

Good luck!

[MsLeigh]

Your content is due for a re-write anyways sugar. ;)

People will steal content, you can't help that, but you can make your content the best it can be.

I agree with JKomp. If you write a little letter pointing out the stolen copy, they may change it. It's not a 'big' issue but I understand how you feel when people steal your content or your hard work. It is frustrating but I have found people who will steal things like that do not make it in business.

Best of luck!

[profmad]

I have also been the victim of plaigerism, and it is indeed both shocking and maddening. I had written an article called "The Rhetoric of SEO," and so whereas I had been checking for my article pick-ups by searching on my name, I decided one day to search on the title. In going through the SERP, I came upon a forum where a forum moderator, no less, had posted my article, complete with title in place, and no hint of my name as author anywhere.

I immediately did two things, I posted my own very direct comment to the forum thread, and then wrote the moderator an also very direct note. Within an hour my article was removed, as was my post. I never did receive an email in response. Surprise, surprise. In retrospect, I was lucky to find the article, and lucky that it was removed pronto.

Okay, well, in pondering this miserable practice, and I underdstand the web is rife with it, I think there are several things we can do to monitor use of our text. First, we should perform a weekly check of the search engines, using the title of the article, as well as a unique text string, both in quotes of course. The next thing is to always, always, always put the copyright symbol, the date (month and year is standard practice in print, but with the pace of the web, the actual date of article completion will register you as the indisputable writer.) Follow the date with your name or the name of your company/organization, whoever owns the copyright. By placing the copyright statement on the text/site, you are officially "registering" your work, giving you inarguable ownership.

[adbart]

Threaten them with legal action and they'll probably take it down.

But why don't you chop and change your text in the meantime? Make it more snappy and more keyword-dense and you could improve your content dramatically.