Data Aggregators Are Violating the Copyright of Thousands of Medium Writers (and Likely Medium Itself)
Note: Thank you to Gaby Rosales for bringing this issue to my attention!
Writers and bloggers frequently have to deal with copyright abuses by blogs, websites, and data aggregators, who “repost” the original writer’s content, attempting to pass it off as their own.
However, I have never seen a targeted attack like that that of ichi.pro, a website that seems to exclusively target Medium articles, and steal content from hundreds of publications. As if this wasn’t insidious enough, the only change the site appears to make to their stolen articles is the removal of the original author’s name.
I had observed this occurring with a few of my articles which had dropped in their search engine rankings, recently.
However, I thought it was just one or two of my instructional Medium articles being reposted. This happens frequently, but the (potential) theft is small enough that I usually do not waste my time pursuing these one-off websites with take-down notices.
If I did, I’d never have time to write!
However, I received an email from one of my most loyal readers, and all around awesome person, Gaby Rosales:
I had only found a couple of my articles on this site when analyzing Google search results.
I had never explored the website before because many of these websites are designed to look like they contain pirated copies of your content, with the express purpose of enraging a copyright holder, and ultimately getting them to click on a malicious links. That is also why I have not included any hyperlinks to the site as I cannot attest to its security.
Luckily I have an extra computer I use for open source investigations which I was willing to risk. I’ve included screenshots (1) for convenience (2) so that you don’t have to go to the website yourself (3) so that we don’t drive huge amounts of traffic to this site.
Gaby was definitely right to be concerned. Immediately, I see a list at the bottom of the page that consists entirely of Medium publications (my own included):
I have no idea who or what ICH.PRO is, but I can say with certainty that I never gave them permission to publish my content. I’m sure this is true of the dozens of other Medium publications included on this site.
The aggregation appears to have started a few months ago, and several dozen of my own articles can be found listed:
Worst of all (for me, at least), the site seems to have systematically scrubbed all author names from the articles. Even some of the hyperlinks embedded in articles (such as image captions/image sources) have been replaced with bogus urls redirecting back to the fake article page:
Unfortunately, since they have Namecheap’s domain privacy, it is hard to easily trace who owns the website:
I’ve contacted the Registrar Abuse Contact Email:
You can also contact the website host:
Medium’s Response:
As the copyright owner, you need to make a claim against them for copying your work. As there in no contact information on the site, you can do a Whois lookup to find any other information on the site:
You may need to start higher up the food chain, possibly by contacting their DNS registrar, as copyright violation should be against their terms.
The website is hosted by https://www.hivelocity.net/.
You can file a report at [email protected]. We did as well.
Again, we are working to identify and stop this behavior. However you, as the copyright owner, have much more power than us as an interested third-party, but non-copyright holder.
If you have any further questions let me know.
Thanks, User Happiness
If your work is being posted without your consent on this site, I’d encourage you to reach out as well.
This is blatant copyright infringement, and it appears to have affected dozens of publications and thousands of Medium stories.
I know that copyright issues can take a while to sort out. In the meantime, I wanted to alert Your Friends @ Medium, Medium Staff, Siobhan O’Connor, as this appears to be an attack on Medium’s content, site-wide.
For future reference, Medium also has a form to report plagiarism occurring on its site (the cases described above are on another site, and not in control of Medium, to be clear).
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Casey Botticello is a partner at Black Edge Consulting. Black Edge Consulting is a strategic communications firm, specializing in online reputation management, digital marketing, and crisis management. Prior to founding Black Edge Consulting, he worked for BGR Group, a bipartisan lobbying and strategic communications firm.
Casey is the founder of the Cryptocurrency Alliance, a Super PAC dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain advocacy. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or by following his Medium publication, Blogging Guide.