As one TOC commenter (thanks, Brad) kindly pointed out, Moo-Vees.co.uk has reprinted TOC’s review of The Devil Inside in its entirety word-for-word (they even stole our formatting!), without our permission, without a by-line (in fact they’ve titled it “The Devil Inside Moo-Vees Review” as if it were theirs), and with the only nod to TOC being a hyperlink hidden in the body of the review within the movie title, and citation of TOC at the end of the review as a “reference”.
If you feel the need, you can see the plagiarised review here (however, try not to visit the site, they don’t deserve more hits and money for their poor behaviour). I assume burying a hyperlink to our site where it will never be found and listing us as a “reference” was an attempt to sidestep precisely this sort of attention.
Upon visiting that site, it’s evident that this is pretty much the sole extent of what they do – plagiarise reviews from other sources and post them on their own site, presumably to attract traffic (which they get plenty of if the hundreds of spam comments on each review are any measure) to justify their advertising – someone at that site is making money from other people’s reviews, in other words. Their site has no means to contact those responsible for posting, which is understandable – it’d get quite tiring constantly being held to account for having stolen the work of others, I suppose.
Ain’t nothin’ safe on teh interwebs, and there’s not much we can do about this, but the least we can do is simply point out what’s happened. Reviewers, beware: Moo-Vees.co.uk may be profiting from your work, too.
Suckage, suckage, suckage. Have you tried issuing a take-down notice? Is the big thing to do nowadays. Google DMCA and you should find the appropriate wording to use. May not work, but still might also scare them that people are noticing…
Probably won’t do much good though; the entire site is just a scraper of other people’s reviews and I’m sure they’ve been asked to remove stuff many times. Unfortunately, they probably won’t and there are no contact details on the website. I suppose we could try the mailing address from the site’s public ownership data, but would it be worth the hassle?
Possibly not – except maybe to feel that you guys have done everything in your power to stop them.
Since they’re based in England, why not find their address and get Alan to add it as a stop on his trip. Bet they won’t say no to him…
Not that I advocate violence or anything
LOL! Yep, I like that idea. We do have the site’s public whois data, which includes an address. We’ll have a chat amongst ourselves and decide what to do about a take-down notice.
Best of luck. And look at it this way – you must have done a good job for them to WANT to plagiarise you
I’d be happy to drop around, but I bet it’s a fake address.
Write a review of your own for crying out loud – not you guys of course, them. This stuff is just so unnecessary, if you want to write reviews do it, if you don’t, don’t. Can it be any simpler?
Plagiarising, editors who think ‘editing’ gives you the right to do major rewrites without the authors knowledge or permission – we are in such a lovely little industry, aren’t we.
Precisely, Mark.
There’s lots of good people too, Ross! All is not lost! (I hope…)