There are websites that provide excellent platforms for authors to publish articles to express their views on diverse topics. They offer support and encouragement to help produce high quality work that attracts many readers. Not only are authors assisted in building a reputation, but links to the author's own website are provided to allow interested readers to learn more or gain access to quality products and services. Articles can also be copied and reproduced on other websites under guidelines known as the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). All is well as long as the policy is followed, but unfortunately there are many instances where it is not, and pirated copies are used to promote other authors, or other websites, or to boost the sales of rival products.
The present author recently produced a series of articles on silk dresses and plus-size issues to help a friend who is selling Vietnamese silk dresses in Europe. These articles were well received and attracted clicks through to the appropriate website. However, the articles were quickly copied onto other websites offering plus-size silk dresses, some with the correct attribution and some without. One was found that provided a link back to the original article but two others reproduced the article with a new author's name. While this might bear testimony to an article's quality, it is certainly not acceptable use.
Perhaps the most annoying misuse of an author's work is when one finds one's article reproduced in some corrupted language, maybe in an attempt to make it understood by people with only basic English or a local dialect. The present author has found one African and two Asian websites which have mutilated articles in this way. In such cases one certainly does not want to retain the attribution, but the practice needs to be controlled.
The present author has experience of publishing over two hundred articles and finding them copied over three hundred times, an average of one and a half times for each article! Even if not all were transfers to other websites, one must suspect that a considerable haemorrhage is occurring. This would reflect well on both the author and the publishing website if it were done according to the AUP, but in many cases it is not. Individual cases of abuse can be chased through the system by authors but this is time-consuming and piecemeal. Even finding the offending websites is difficult. As the number of instances ranges into the hundreds, there are inevitably many that go unnoticed or unresolved. Something needs to be done to provide more effective control.
Third parties appear to be able to take articles and adapt them to their own purposes, changing attribution and even mutilating the text. This could be prevented, for example, if the articles could be copied only in some form of 'read only' format, including the attribution. Until something like this is possible, authors will continue to suffer at the hands of those unscrupulous website owners who are prepared to ignore the Acceptable Use Policy.
Readers of John Powell's two novels: The Colonial Gentleman's Son and Return to the Garden City, and even his non-fiction account of his work in Ghana: The Survival of the Fitter, have remarked on his 'dry sense of humour.' Now that sense of humour has been given free rein in his Children's book: Saint George: Rusty Knight and Monster Tamer. All John Powell's books of fiction are available from Book Guild Ltd., Amazon and high street bookstores. http://www.bookguild.co.uk/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Return-Garden-City-John-Powell/dp/184624949X
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