Are You Fed Up with People Using Your Personal Online Image?

The laws pertaining to copyright are there for a reason which is to protect work created by authors, musicians and the like. But what about images of a person posted on the web? All too often, I’ve come across an image of a well-known person which has been stolen and used by someone else to create their own profile on a website like Peopleperhour.

 

Not only is this deception but it could be viewed as fraud too. Sadly, the web has made information extremely accessible to some rather unscrupulous people who think nothing of stealing other people’s identities, and this includes their image which they then proceed to use as their own.

Does it really matter?

Yes, it most certainly does, because if a person is willing to pretend to be someone else, they are also more than likely willing to deceive unsuspecting clients in other ways too. This includes stealing someone else’s content and putting their name to it. Ultimately this can affect the real people these unscrupulous freelancers are pretending to be!

The problem is this type of theft is incredibly hard to police although a quick Google image search will soon let you know if an image of you is being used by someone else in their freelancing profile. Sadly, this is something that people usually only find out about if another person spots the image and then lets the real person know.

Using Someone Else’s Photo in a Profile is Wrong

Taking out legal action against another person who is masquerading as you on the internet can be time consuming and costly because finding out who they really are can be extremely difficult. The other thing you need to bear in mind, is copyright laws tend to vary in different countries.

If you find out or are told that someone is using an image of you in their profile, the first thing you can do is contact the site’s admin and tell them they have a member who is impersonating you. If the website fails to do anything about it, you need to read through the site’s terms and conditions of use and then take appropriate action.

A well run freelancing website would take the matter very seriously as do social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to name but three. If all fails, you should sign up to the website yourself and post your image in your profile. The person masquerading as you may just opt to choose an image of someone else, but at least they stop pretending to be you!

Lastly, you should write about your experiences at having others use your image in their profiles and do so in your own blog and then publicise your article through Twitter, Linkedin and any other social media platform you typically use. If you have a lot of followers, word would soon get around that somebody on the internet is impersonating you on a freelancer job website or other!

Author: Honey Wood

Are Employers too worried about Duplicate Content?

As writers we often get seriously criticised by employers for producing “duplicate content”, even when done by pure accident – great minds think alike and all that. However, are employers a little too wired about this often sore point?

We’re constantly being told by marketers that “all powerful” Google will penalise websites that contain duplicate copy and because we believe they know best, we do our level best to pump out original copy each and every day.

Will Duplicate Content Really Affect a Site’s Rankings?

Most people whether marketers, employers or copywriters have not bothered to actually read Google’s guidelines when it comes to duplicate content. The reason being over the years word of mouth has run riot and therefore rumours of penalties and the like must be true. But is it all just a lot of hooey?

Again, reading through Google’s guidelines, it seems that non-original content on a website will not seriously affect a site’s rankings. Unless, that is, there’s such an excessive amount of marketing in the form of press releases sent out across the web in a very short space of time.

This would have to involve masses of dupicate home page content being repeated hundreds of times over the course of just a few hours or so. The result? The Google Giant wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and imposes lots of displeasure on the domain concerned!

According to people who really are “in the know”, a mere 500 or 1000 words of duplicate content published on an established site is not going to get any red flags waving in Google’s virtual headquarters.

Reposting Articles is Okay

In fact, there’s been a trend over recent times where articles are reposted after they were first published on another website and although the strategy will not make the content rank in any way, it sure won’t negatively affect a domain’s ranking. Many of the most popular blogs on the net do just this and it never adversely affects their rankings which is proof enough.

Scrapers are a Nuisance or Are They?

Some of the more serious and popular blogs get scraped umpteen times a day, but the owners pay absolutely no attention to the fact this happens. The reason being they know that duplicate content is not something to be worried about.

The truth is that scrapers are not something that anyone really needs to be overly worried about. The question you need to ask yourself is whether a small unknown blog on the other side of the planet that boasts very few visitors is seriously going to get the Googlebots hot under the collar just because they scraped some content from another website? Of course not, after all there are bigger fish to fry out there in the virtual world!

The Positive of Having Copy Scraped

There is a positive to having content scraped especially if all the copy is taken and duplicated which includes any links etc. After all, scraped links may just get a few nice referrals! It’s always very interesting to keep an eye on internal links.

The only time it might become a worry is if a site with your scraped content starts to outrank your own website. Now that would be very annoying and it means that Google did get it wrong!

However, all is not lost because these instances, which are pretty rare, are the sort of thing that Google wants to know about. And the best way to let them know is to use their Scraper Report Tool.

One thing that many gurus advise is to digitally sign content with Google Authorship which makes life a lot easier when and if a dispute should arise. It does not matter how many times your content gets used across the net by scrapers because the copy will always only ever have one author – namely you!

Know the Difference between Scraped Content and Plagiarism

It’s also important to bear in mind there is a massive difference between copyright infringement and scraped content. If you find anyone claims the content as their own, this is pure plagiarism. This is when you need to take action against the person or persons responsible!

People who sign their name to your copy are doing so illegally which is why it’s so very important to place a copyright symbol in the footer or to register your content with a company like Sample Safe. When this sort of thing happens, it’s not Google you need to be worried about, but how much it’s going to cost you in legal fees to have things put right!

Conclusion

There’s a lot of hooha about duplicate content and if the truth be known the net is full of scraped copy. Googlebots pick up on this when they visit most websites out there which they do at some point every single day. Do they make a fuss and start penalising the domains? No, they move on to the next website. After all, the geniuses working for Google have been at it for a considerable amount of time and way before “duplicate content” became such a mythical issue!

Author: Honey Wood

Are You Infringing Any Copyrights?

Copyright laws are pretty complex and it takes an understanding of them to avoid inadvertently stepping on another writer’s toes landing yourself in hot water in the process. With this said, coming to grips with the basics might seem a bit involved, but well worth the effort.

By using another author’s quote in your copy, you are in effect infringing a copyright if you have not been permission to do so. Writers and authors have a habit of using quotes under the impression it’s allowed , but the reality is somewhat different.

Copyright on literary and other work stands for 70 years once the author has passed away – that is of course, unless the text has been deemed copyright-free. After this period of time, you can use quotes knowing you are not infringing any copyright laws.

There Are Ways around the Problem

There are a few ways around the issue of copyright which can save you a whole lot of hassle if you really need to use quotes in your work and these are as follows:

• First choice – only use copyright-free quotes in your text, or choose quotes from an author who has been dead for over 70 years
•  Second, contact the author and ask permission to use selected quotes from their work
• Lastly, you could opt to contact the “permissions department” of the book or other work you would like to quote from and request permission

The last option can take a bit of time because you may have to deal with a mainstream publisher and they are notoriously slow in responding to requests. However, if you’re dealing with a self-published author, it makes things a whole lot easier because they have total control of their work.

You May Have to Pay a Fee

Another thing to bear in mind, is you may be asked to pay a fee if you want to use any quotes from published work, especially if you’re dealing with a publishing house. The amount could be exorbitant, which brings up the question of how important is the quote to your copy?

An infringement is an Infringement, Even if it is by Mistake

Copyright is often infringed by pure accident although this is not always the case. The problem being that even it you do make a mistake and use another author’s text not realising you don’t have the right to do so, the penalty is the same as if you had used the quotes on purpose knowing you are infringing a copyright.

Final Tip

If you have to use quotes, make sure they are copyright-free or ones you’ve been given permission to use. Failing to do so, may well end up costing you a fortune!

 

Author: Honey Wood

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