avatarSusie Kearley

Summary

Susie Kearley discusses the plagiarism of her articles on Medium and suggests measures to prevent such theft.

Abstract

Susie Kearley, a writer on Medium, has had two of her stories plagiarized by websites in Nigeria, which are profiting from her work through advertising. She has contacted the sites to demand the removal of her content and is working with the publication owner to take down the pirate site. Kearley proposes that Medium should implement a feature that prevents text from being copied, similar to text in a jpeg, to deter plagiarism. Although this could affect the highlighting feature on Medium, she believes it would significantly reduce content theft. She has also removed some of her other stories from Medium to protect her copyright and to avoid hindering their placement in paying markets. Kearley awaits Medium's response to her suggestion and invites feedback from other writers on the issue.

Opinions

  • Kearley believes Medium should take proactive steps to protect writers' content from being plagiarized.
  • She suggests that disabling text copying could be an effective solution, despite potential drawbacks like affecting text highlighting.
  • Kearley expresses frustration with the ease of plagiarism and its impact on writers' ability to monetize their work.
  • She has taken personal action by removing her stories from Medium to prevent further theft and to maintain the value of her work in other markets.
  • Kearley is critical of compulsive highlighting on Medium, suggesting that comments could be a better alternative for reader engagement.
  • She acknowledges the potential for stolen content to resurface on other illegal sites, indicating a broader issue with content protection online.
  • Kearley values the input of the Medium community and is eager to hear their thoughts on her proposal to combat plagiarism.

My Work’s Been Plagiarised! Two Stories Stolen…

Here’s what I think Medium should do about it

© Susie Kearley

Two of my stories have been stolen and published on sites in Nigeria, where the owners are clearly making money from extensive advertising on the pages where my stories are displayed.

This is part of a bigger problem — a huge number of stories from a history publication have been copied and pasted onto these websites, often with the writers’ own photographs!

The owner of the publication is working to have the pirate site taken down. And I’ve written to the sites individually telling them to remove my content and expressing my annoyance.

Remarkably, while I didn’t expect them to comply, one has removed my stories, but the stories they plagiarised from other people remain. Even if the sites are taken down by the host, I expect some stories will crop up on another illegal site later.

What can be done to stop this?

I’ve written to Medium with a suggestion. Why not take measures to protect writers and make Medium a website that cannot be copied?

Some websites, when you try to copy text, you can’t. It’s like trying to copy text from a jpeg. It doesn’t work. Medium could do that. I suspect that would eliminate 99.9% of the problem.

This would muck up the highlighting, but what the hell, too much highlighting makes text harder to read anyway. And some people complain about it. So compulsive highlighters would have to leave comments instead, which would suit me just fine! 🤣

I wait to hear what Medium staff think of my suggestion. They probably hate it.

What do you think? Isn’t it time we made life more difficult for people to plagiarise our stories?

I’ve taken precautions

I’ve since removed some other stories from Medium because I may want to use them elsewhere. Once someone has stolen your work, it’s harder to place your work in a paying market and to prove that you own the copyright.

The stories I removed had died a death on Medium anyway, so I felt it was better to cut and run before they were plagiarised too!

How do you feel about all this?

© Susie Kearley

Here’s Simon Whaley’s story about the problem. He was the one who alerted me to it.

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Plagiarism
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