Copied Content Syndrome (Or Why I Got Disabled/Rejected for Adsense)

In the last few weeks we've seen an increasing number of AdSense publishers in the forums with disabled accounts. While we see disabled publishers pretty often, the number of publishers being disabled for having blogs with no original content is increasing.

AdSense has been cracking down on the copied content issue - or so it seems. So why is copied content an issue?

COPYRIGHT

There is of course the obvious reason; content copied from other authors and bloggers is copyright content. If the blogger or author has not given permission, and has not licensed their article using the Creative Commons designation, then the author has every right to expect exclusive rights to their work. That means you can't just borrow or re-use, re-purpose or redistribute the work that someone else has done. Authors discovering their work on someone else's blog will find it necessary to file a DMCA complaint, and this entails work for the author as well as investigation on the part of AdSense (or Blogger) staff. It's time that shouldn't have to be spent when bloggers and webmasters respect each other's creative work. For the author who writes their own original work, it means that they may be subject to having their AdSense account disabled because of duplicated work - in other words, even though they've written their own articles if others have copied their article to hundreds of different places, they may face disablement due to someone else's behaviour. Generally, if an author can prove their work was original they'll have a decent chance of retaining their account, but it causes a great deal of trouble for the authors of original work to have their work copied.

From the AdSense Program Policies (which all publishers must adhere to) we have this excerpt:

AdSense publishers may not display Google ads on webpages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Please see our DMCA policy for more information.

PLAGIARISM

When  you use someone else's work without giving that author credit for the work, that's considered plagiarism. Although you may not directly place your own copyright or name name on the work, omitting the credit for the original author is seen as taking credit for the work yourself.

Not only does this put you and your AdSense account at risk, it gives you no credibility at all in terms of knowledge or experience. If you have a blog full of articles about marketing, then you need to have marketing skills and experience to write about it. If you don't, and you are simply copying what someone else has written, how do you know the information you are providing to your readers is even correct?  As an example, I have seen many blogs written by AdSense publishers - some of those have little experience with AdSense, or are new to AdSense and some of the "advice" they offer is not only wrong, it can get a publisher disabled.

ADSENSE POLICY

Regardless of the foregoing, AdSense sets the rules for the type of content they want to see in a publishers blog. By that, I don't mean they'll tell you what you can write about - that's up to you, but they do get to choose based on content whether or not a publsiher even gets approval for an AdSense account.

AdSense expects it's publishers to work for their income - nobody gets money for nothing in today's world. They look for original work - whether it's articles, artwork, photos or other types of information, they want their publisher's to add something original to the internet, rather than just regurgitating someone else's work. They want your own unique thoughts and articles - and most likely, so will your readers and visitors appreciate a thoughtful article you've written yourself over some canned article from an article catalog.

One of the items in the AdSense Program Policies is a link to the Webmaster Guidelines - publishers must also adhere to these, and AdSense expects publishers to read them, and follow their suggestions.

An excerpt from those guidelines:

Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

 This doesn't mean that you can't use an article, or a part of an article as a reference in your own written work (as I've done here by quoting the guidelines directly), it means you can't simply "scrape" the content from other sites and expect AdSense to accept that. Using a paragraph from someone else's article (with references & authorization) is an acceptable method of including content you'd like to highlight or discuss from other sites. Just don't make your entire blog from non-original work.

REJECTIONS FOR CONTENT

Besides the active publishers being disabled for copied content, we are seeing more and more rejections from AdSense for sites that appear to have no original work. For those of us who write original articles, we can only see this as a good thing. It means that AdSense is beginning to value originality...or more likely that the AdWords advertisers (they pay the bills, so they do have a say) are beginning to demand their ads not appear on sites will a lot of copied stuff.

But whatever the reason, AdSense is rejecting applications more frequently for sites whose contents are nothing more than articles copied from other sites. If you are having a problem getting an AdSense application accepted and you are submitting a site that you've filled up with work that you didn't create then you might try writing a blog full of your own articles, and submitting that instead.

References:

Webmaster Guidelines
AdSense Program Policies

Using "No Right Click" Codes - For Those Who Think They Need It

Lots of people seem to want to use the "no right click" on their web pages. The code is simple, but for the most part, it's a fairly useless protection against image thieves. Anybody who really wants the image will know how to get it (even I can do it) even if the code is present.

About the only people it will deter are those casual surfers who might happen upon your site and think "oh, pretty pic" and hit the right click - they'll get the "right click not available" and move on to somewhere else. Even then, if they want to use it in a blog or something else bad enough, they'll try a screen capture, and there's not much that will stop that.

For those who just have to use it (be aware that "no right click" also means that none of the functions in the right click menu work - none - when you use this you disable all of the right click functions, not just the copy).

So here's a code provided by WebmasterTools 3 (the free version - rather old, but still useful) which they also provided online (last check I couldn't find the site). The part that says "Right Click Not Available" is the part the viewer sees when they try to right click on the images on that page - that text can be changed to anything you want to use.

The script below gets inserted between the head tags of your webpage.



For those asking for instructions on using the code - it's as I mentioned above - place the entire code as shown between the head tags on your web page (the head tags look like this: <> (the beginning of the header section and < /head > (the end of the header section) ). To see the tags you need to be able to access the html portion (the code) of your web page.

Don't Let Your Work Become "Duplicate Content"

In at least one of my recent endeavours I've come to realize that taking time to protect your work online can be pretty important for some things.

Not just images, graphics and photos, but your written work, like blog posts and articles, stories and poetry. Pretty much anything you put on the net.

Some folks won't worry much about whether someone has copied their blog post or photos, but for those who are concerned, there are some steps you can take that help. While there is no real protection for anything you put out on the internet, making the effort can do two things - offer protection from those who just don't know any better, and help to educate them about copyright and plagiarism.

Anyone who follows any of my free blogs will already know that I'm pretty happy to share much of what I do with others. That's just my nature. What I'm not happy to see is other people claiming my work as their own. While none of these methods shown here will really stop anyone who is out to copy your work and put their name on it, some of them will help you find any work of yours that's been used elsewhere.


Copyscape is a service that will search the internet for written work. They offer a free service (limited, but it works) and paid programs for greater coverage. You simply put in the url of the page where your work is displayed (a blog page or website page), hit enter and wait. It will search around the net looking for whatever article or written work is on your page and then list places it found it, if any.

CopyrightSpot works essentially the same as Copyscape, though the service is at present, completely free. It is, however, still in "alpha testing", but it does seem to work reasonably well. Like copyscape, it is designed for the written word. You can also use their logo to show that you check your work against their service on a regular basis. While this won't stop someone out to purposely copy your stuff, it might give them pause if they realize you will eventually find them.

For images, the same folks who put out CopyrightSpot have MyFree Copyright. Here, you can upload a small version of any image or graphic and create a footprint for it, then get a registration number to place on your images, along with the logo if you want. This service also works to protect a file of written work, or text whether it's a web page or pdf or other form of written work. It too is provided freely. Each item you register generates an email to your account, showing the date of registration and registration number. While this is not the same as registering work with the Registry Office, it can provide a "time stamp" for your work, so if it's necessary to provide proof that someone else copied the work from you, this can be helpful. Like any other service, it doesn't stop unauthorized uses (nothing really does), but it has it's uses.

And one more place where you can upload files, including chk sums and other details and get it time stamped to help protect your ownership of your work. Copyclaim is also free, so those who write articles, poetry, tutuorials or upload .pdf files might find it useful. Note: it looks like Copyclaim is defunct.


TinEye doesn't actually offer protection, but it can help you find your images on the internet. It's still in beta, and has a ways to go before it will become really useful, but it too works if images are used in a lot of different places. TinEye is essentially a "reverse lookup tool" for images - you can upload a low res version of your image and it will search around the net and list places where it's found. If you prefer not to upload an image, you can use the Firefox browser plugin, where you simply right click on your image, and it will search from that. Note that with the browser plugin, this won't work if you are using the clear gif method of protecting your image, because all TinEye will see is no image and a clear gif. There is also a version for macs.

The image bank TinEye uses to search is still somewhat limited, so if it doesn't find your image, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't in use somewhere else, it just means that wherever the image is, TinEye hasn't indexed that particular site or space yet. The more people who use TinEye and submit sites for indexing, the better it will get.

Get the TinEye Plugin for Firefox here.

Get the mac version here.

While there are other similar services for protecting your copyrights, many are paid services. If you earn your living with imaging or writing, you might want to invest in a paid service, and/or register your work at the Registry Office for your country or state. But for the average blogger who might have a need to prove the work belongs to them, these free services should be sufficient.

(originally posted by the writer, me, on another of my blogs)