The article is not free because it has conditions.
Hi all,
well I think that statement in itself sums up the entire situation. The writer obviously had stated conditions for using the article; it seems fair to me that it still falls under the category of “free” by virtue of the fact that you aren’t paying anything for the use of the article but yes it does come with conditions.
if you look up freeware or for that matter anything free on the net it is more than likely the “hook” you’re gonna encounter for getting that something for free is going to be asking a lot more out of you than to include a link back to the writer’s site; wouldn’t you agree?
so perhaps in a perfect world it might come without any conditions but this is not: and I don’t think the writer was out of line to call it a “free” article while in fact it did come with a minor condition.
and bottom line is 2 wrongs never make a right; so even if the writer was wrong to portray the article as being “free”; I don’t beleive for a second the second party was in the right to not honor the writer’s condition because IMHO not honoring it is the same as plagerism which has been viewed very dimly throughout time for obvious reason.
And I think it is a grave mistake to ever loosen the guide lines that make up what is viewed as plagurism because speaking as someone who does what we do: I know I only stand to lose if that happens.
*please note the above is not to infer that Greek’s view towards plagurism is not one of a responsible view point; but rather I just saw a slippery slope and thought I should speak up.
edited to add:
in answer to your original question of what can you do? it seems to me that you are probably screwed if the article is ever actually read by the plagurist, but in the case of what I’d guess is likely 90% of the time; they are not reading the article they are just changing the links so if I were you I’d write my next articles to include the name of your website without the link in it; so that at least if the article is read by a real person; you are going to get across to them that the article came from your site.
that’s the best you can do IMHO. of course try contacting the hosts etc; but that ends in a “chase ’em as they come” scenario rather than a nice one time solution to prevent this sort of crime in the first place.