A Marriage Therapist's Blog

 

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Due a couple of recent cases, I figure it is time for another update of my chronicle of the various other websites that have copied material from this website.

As of February, 2011, material from this website has been plagiarized seven times. Each of the offenders was found by the the program “Copyscape,” which I highly recommend. Six of the seven offenders removed the copied material after I took action, and the seventh case is still in progress. Here’s a brief blow-by-blow:

• A marriage & family therapist (MFT) in San Francisco took large amounts of material from my home page and used it verbatim as the “couples therapy” page on his website. Copyscape detected this on December 2, 2007. I emailed the offender, who replied within a few hours and apologized. The plagiarized material was removed from his website as of December 8, 2007.
• A MFT couple with offices in Santa Rosa and Petaluma, California, took 174 words from my home page and wove it into the main page of their site. Copyscape detected this on December 7, 2007. I emailed the offenders, who did not reply to me. After waiting 48 hours, I contacted their web hosting company and asked that either the plagiarizers be required to remove the copied material from their website, or, failing that, that the hosting company remove the site from the Web. This is my right under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). I received a reply from the hosting company saying that would investigate. As of December 12, the copied material had been removed from the other site. Update: on December 17, I received an emailed apology from the offenders.
• On June 21, 2008, Copyscape reported that a blog called Family Marriage Counseling : 11 Stubborn Barriers had copied my post Has Your Marriage Therapist Even Been in Therapy? in its entirety. The blog owner’s email address was nowhere to be found on the blogsite, so I had no way to contact him/her. Therefore, I fired off a DMCA complaint by fax to Blogger, the blog hosting site (which is owned by Google). I heard from the Blogger legal department after a couple of days; they said they would look into it. As of June 25, 2008, my work has been removed from the other blog.
• On December 23, 2008, Copyscape reported that a blog called Ask the Marriage Counselor had copied two of my posts: Those Cheatin’ Hearts and Glass Half Empty? Relationship Trouble Ahead!. The posts were copied word-for-word and in their entirety. Again, I fired off a DMCA complaint by fax to Blogger, the blog hosting site. Once again, Blogger did their job, and as of January 6, 2009, my work has been removed from the other blog.
• On May 18, 2010, Copyscape reported that a press release had been issued which promoted a therapist in Orange County, California, and that the press release consisted entirely of my blog post Learning to Like Criticism.  The press release appeared on the website PRLog. The press release was copied word-for-word and in its entirety and was followed by a link to the therapist’s website.   As usual, I fired off a DMCA complaint to PRLog. Within a few hours, the press release was removed from the internet.
• On May 25, 2010, Copyscape let me know that the website the Leavitt Institute for Marriage and Family in Provo, Utah, had taken two of my blog posts in their entirety and put them on their own blog (and had put their own copyright on them!)  I emailed the “Institute” and told them I knew what they had done and asked them to call me.  After a few hours and no return phone call, I checked their website and found that they had removed my articles from their blog.
• On January 31, 2011, I was notified by Copyscape that a blog on the website “Coaching with Couples” which advertises a therapist named Dr. Christine Blake in Hermosa Beach, California, had copied my blog entry Imago Relationship Therapy III pretty much in full.  I emailed Dr. Blake immediately but received no response as of February 2, 2011.  I then initiated the process to ask her web host to remove the page from their server.  This took a lot longer than it usually does, but finally, as of February 14, the page has been removed from Dr. Blake’s website.

Tags: copyright, plagiarism

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 8:15 pm and is filed under About this Blog.

A Brief History of Plagiarism & Copyright Infrigement of this Website
©2007 - 2011 Jay Slupesky, M.A., MFT. All rights reserved.
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