Thievery and Protecting Your Work
Deborah Ng had a disturbing experience – it seems her work appeared verbatim on not one, but a number of web sites. While one person gave her a nod, the others simply stole the work. Read her post on what to do if you’re ripped off.
How can you prevent this type of thievery? If you’re posting online, prevention may be next to impossible. However, it’s always a good idea to put a copyright notice on your posts and make ’em prominent. While it sucks that you have to resort to it, it’s better when you approach these dorks later and threaten them with copyright violation.
I agree that the Internet makes it nearly impossible to protect your work once it’s posted. And sadly, if someone wants your content, not even a copyright notice is going to stop them.
I guess the only thing to do is to be aggressive when you do find that you’ve been ripped off. Use legal action if you have to and hopefully word will get around that you’re not someone to mess with.