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Although I have long since come to the conclusion that worrying about plagiarism is probably one of the most counter-productive things writers can waste their energies on, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be ready to deal with that eventuality. After all, the Internet is a plagiarizer’s dream.

If your content is publicly accessible online, face it, you’re vulnerable. Heck, you’re exposed even if you’re a freelancer regularly sending submissions and samples all over the place; whether by accident or design, it’s not exactly unheard of to find one’s work published commercially without consent and remuneration.

I just prefer not to worry about it. That doesn’t mean I’m an easy target (actually, quite the opposite), but that’s neither here nor there.

If you, on the other hand, lose sleep over it, get on over to Copyscape. Its free service lets you enter a URL for a webpage which it then uses as a base for a global search for matching content. I think you’re limited to 10 monthly searches or thereabouts.

For unlimited searches plus the ability to check for copies of your offline work (such as articles you’ve submitted to magazines on spec or as samples), go with their premium service, at only 5 cents per search.

My problem with these is that you have to be quite proactively seeking content thieves for the services to be of any use. Very proactively, considering you’re searching on a page-by-page and/or document-by document basis. [TIP: This is a good way to check and see if anyone's "quoted" you out there, by the way.]

Much better, I think, is it’s Copysentry service, which automatically monitors the Web for any copied content from your whole site. But it will cost you about $5 a month.

What may give you the most cost:benefit value, however, is the simple use of a free Copyscape banner on your site, like this 88×31 one, for example:

Copyscape provides a nice selection of them, in various colors and sizes, each when displayed prominently on your site, serves as a deterrent. Forget the fact that I call them I’m paranoid, fool… make my day banners. As the old saying goes, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.”

Go to Copyscape »

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