Over on one of the nature photography forums today, someone posted a link to COPYSCAPE, a web site that will help you find plagiarized web content. In otherwords, it simply scans html pages for similar words. When I checked out my home page, a good number of web sites came up, which should have been expected since I use the little text blurb when listing my site in search engines or link pages.
Then I entered my copyright page, and what a surprise, several other photographers have included (read: Copied) my exact disclaimer, with only the name being changed. How do I know it’s mine. Simple, I wrote it. I have the drafts. It may “sound” like a lawyer wrote it, but that’s only because I once played one on stage.
Of course I’m a little stung that someone who is out to protect their own work has ripped off my text to explain how someone else will be busted if anyone else is caught doing what they themselves have done.
Well, at least their not ripping off my images. (Sheesh!)
I tried the same, and got about a dozen results. The funny thing is that my
copyright page is so long that some photographers missed changing “www.terragalleria.com” to their own domain.