Copying is so prevalent online, I’m not surprised anymore when I see my work show up on another site. For me, it’s not a big deal, since most of my work is published under a Creative Commons license, but for many bloggers it’s a real issue. For full-time writers, copyright violations mean lost revenue. And while there are ways to try to find those violations, that’s time away from writing, which means even more lost revenue.
Content-tracking service Attributor has been working on this problem for a while, creating software that can find reuses of text, photos, and videos. Now, they’re working on a service specifically for bloggers. FairShare, currently in private beta, promises to find where and how your content is republished online. They promise an RSS feed that will tell you where your content was republished, whether the site has ads, and if they are honoring your Creative Commons license.
PlagiarismToday has a review of the service. It sounds like it could be useful for many bloggers. Have any of you tried it yet? What do you use to track your content? Let us know in the comments.
Thanks Billy – defintiely interested in feedback from you and your readers. We're rolling out releases every few weeks and relying on user input to drive where we take this.
btw, one point that everyone will hopefully appreciate: FairShare is free!
@Rich: Yeah, I should have mentioned it was free. Just got my beta invite, btw. Looking forward to trying it out.
Super – let me know if you run into any trouble. We're kicking around ways to make it a plug-in. Very interested in your thoughts.
Two questions…
1. How does this compare to services such as Copyscape?
2. How do we get a beta invite?
@Dennis: I haven't used Copyscape, so I couldn't say. As for the invite, I signed up on the FairShare site and had an invite a couple hours later. Don't know if that's common, but it's worth a try.
Thanks for sharing this. I've never heard of this software but I'm going to go check it out!
I just signed up, so we shall see.
Thanks for this. I'm very curious to see what it can do. Now if it has an option for multiple blogs – that would be great!
@dennis I sent you an invite. Please let me know if you didn't get it. We've benchmarked against CopyScape several times and performed very well; of course interested in your experience as this will be the true test.
@Danielle You can add up to 5 feeds right now. The main purpose of the limit is to curb abuse so this number may fluctuate or go away.
feel free to drop me a line directly at rich@fairshare.cc if you have questions
This is a double edged sword for me.
Since most of my posts are samplings from around the intranet I may get in trouble sooner!
Yikes
Like Stevie Nicks sings:
"I don't really want to Know"
ZuD
Rich – got it and set it up.
I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website over fairshare:
1. it's automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who's republished my articles on the web.
2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.
3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.
4. it's a free service and doesn't require registration.
@James,
I would be interested in any comparisons you've done between the two free services. Copygator looks like an interesting tool for monitoring future blog posts only – what FairShare offers is coverage across the entire Web (not just blogs), the ability to see each page that has been reused, quick highlighting of any pages that don't match your Creative Commons license and support of 10 different languages.
In our tests, FairShare has resulted in much better coverage, and I encourage anyone considering to test both services and see for themselves – they are both free!
Thanks for sharing this. I going to use! I think it will be useful.
Thanks! my site is always victimized by copy cats!