It is very effective.

Probably effective... but at those prices...! wow... if you have so much copy that it needs protection like our site our monthly bill could be over $10,000 ... At that rate it would be 5 times cheaper to develop a bespoke solution... if the site is small ...well its not like it would be a prime target for scrapers!

Catch 22 there!

Mick

What a bummer. I just checked the pricing and it's too expensive for my non-profit site.
I guess I'll just have to copy and paste my URL in the free search everyday.

You don't need to search every day - once a week, even once a month might be good enough. I have found two infringers via that service, called and/or sent emails, and the offending material was removed.

Copyscape does not help you establish proof of copyright as far as I know - it is for finding those who have scraped your content. It can be a deterrent, although much plagiarism is automated/software driven these days, and the intelligence of most IP thieves is pretty low.

Copyscape won't do either of those things you asked about. All they do is find potentially infringing copy. You still have to do what it takes to deter potential infringers yourself, and there is nothing that they do that would prove that you own the original copyright.

PowerUp said: ...is copyscape effective in combating online plagiarism?

Yes and no. It's a great service for finding the plagiarism, assuming said infringement is publically viewable and has been indexed by Google. But Copyscape doesn't take any action of its own.

PowerUp said: it'll deter thieves from copying my website.

One hopes. From experience, I can say that incidents of scraping have dropped dramatically since having posted the "Copyscape" logo on my site. But most of my scrapers were educators who wanted to sell my lessons as their own. As they say, "your mileage may vary".

PowerUp said: it can provide some proof to help me in the event I want to proof I hold the copyright.

Copyscape can do absolutely nothing in this regard. The service only simplifies (greatly) the process of scanning your pages and comparing them to the content in Google's index. But there is no way for this word-for-word comparison to "determine", somehow, who the original author might have been, nor who the current copyright-holder might be.

To obtain proof of copyright, you would need to register your copyright. (This is, to my knowledge, the only "proof" currently accepted, at least without great argument, by US courts.) Copyscape then helps you find infringers. And the DMCA helps you get infringements removed.

But each of these -- the Copyright Office, the Copyscape service, and the DMCA -- is a different entity serving a different purpose.

The above is, of course, based only on my experience and understanding. I'm not a lawyer, and I could be wrong....

Eliz.

What about a site stealing content from other large scale sites, then put Copyscape on their illegal copy of the content?

What happens then ?

card_demon asked: What about a site stealing content...then put[ting] Copyscape on their illegal copy...? What happens then?

I'm not sure what you mean when you ask "what happens then"...?

Copyscape, as explained earlier, does not "do" anything other than provide a service which can help rights-holders to locate potential copyright infringement. How the copyright holder might then deal with that infringement is entirely up to him.

Copyscape can not prevent a scraper from snagging one of its images and posting it next to his plagiarised content. The presence of this image does not create any liability on the part of the Copyscape service.

Eliz.

PowerUp said: ...is copyscape effective in combating online plagiarism?

stapel said: Yes and no. It's a great service for finding the plagiarism, assuming said infringement is publically viewable and has been indexed by Google. But Copyscape doesn't take any action of its own.

So if a site is stealing content and it is either password protected or not indexed in google there would be no way for copyscape to recognize it in their queries?

And if this is true, are there any other content checking services out there that go beyond google?

I guess I'll just have to copy and paste my URL in the free search everyday.

Find a few unique text strings from your site. Put quotation marks before and after the text and set each string up as a Google Alert. Google will automatically email you whenever that text string is found online.

FarmBoy

there is just so much to learn! don't know if I can keep up with all this

ChoiceStalker asked: So if a site is stealing content and it is either password protected or not indexed in google there would be no way for copyscape to recognize it in their queries?

If the content is not web-viewable (such as being behind passwords and log-ins, or having no in-links), then no, the search engines won't be able to view it. Of course, neither will anybody else, other than perhaps those with the exact URL and a password.

I'm not aware of any (legal) way to "find" stuff which is securely hidden.

Eliz.