Sneaky Content Thief

Blumoon:

This is a very tough question. There is very little doubt of the ethics involved here, you wrote the article and the fact you were paid for it does not mean they have the ethical right to strip attribution. I doubt any writer, paid or unpaid, would appreciate what they or doing or call it "right". Part of writing is the byline and the importance of that never goes away, even if you write for the New York Times.

However, I get the sense you are asking more about your legal rights in this case and that is much more convoluted.

The biggest problem is that I don't have your contact to look at. I have no idea what rights you signed over, what the exact terms of the agreement were or what recourse it provides you. Without that, everything is purely guesswork and theoretical and those types of discussions are largely fruitless and potentially dangerous.

Please bear that in mind.

However, there are several things to consider.

First, I see that you are based in Canada. That is actually good news as Canada offers protection for moral rights. Moral rights are the rights of the copyright holder, among other things, to be identified as the creator of the work (moral rights actually include a lot more but that goes beyond this discussion).

Unfortunately, the United States does not respect these rights, save in some cases with visual works, and if the editor in question is based in the U.S., that is a recourse you would not have.

You could, however, argue that their lack of attribution is tantamount to defamation. Since it causes people to think less of you as a writer, you can say that the plagiarism is a form of libel. It is an inelegant solution to say the least, but it is, supposedly, the reason that moral rights are not enforced in the U.S.

There could also be a work for hire issue involved. Without knowing the nationality of the person involved and the nature of the contract, it is impossible to say. But I've seen cases where a person has paid a writer for work but never actually purchased any copyright interest in the work or even a license to use it.

Once again though, I hesitate to even guess in this area due the lack of information. However, if the person is within the United States and you never signed a contract, there is a very good chance of a an issue in this area.

What I've noticed lately on the Web is that blogs and sites are hiring writers, usually at cheap rates, not hammering out contracts or agreements and watching as things turn sour.

This is problem and can easily be avoided. Unfortunately, I'm not perfect at demanding a contract either. But that is a separate issue.

The problem is that, without a contract, a lot of it becomes a matter of their word versus yours and what rights were implied. This can be a huge mess and usually has to be sorted out by a court.

Fortunately, I think that all of this can be avoided in your case. Looking at what you said, I think that the lack of attribution might have been an honest error. It seems likely that, after you left, they deleted your username, probably to prevent you from accessing the site, and the blog reverted all of your posts to admin by default. It doesn't seem overtly malicious.

What they should have done is kept your account but reduced your permission to nil just so that your name remains active. It would have avoided all of this. Since the default account on most blogging platforms is the "admin" one, it seems like that was a decision by the program, not the user.

My honest advice, write them a polite letter asking that attribution be added back. I wouldn't get rough or mention any legalities, just politely ask that it be restored either by opening your account or a tagline at the end of the post.

Most likely, they'll agree to that. From the sound of things, especially considering that they invited you back, it doesn't seem as if they would approach this with bad faith and try to screw you out of attribution.

Give them a chance to correct the mistake and keep things friendly, if that fails, then we start considering other alternatives.

How does that sound?

Hope that this helps!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Thank you Jonathan, for your detailed response. This certainly makes things much more clear for me. The ethics and lack of integrity involved did concern me most. I just really wondered if I had a leg to stand on in asking for my credits to be reinstated, as I am sure my fellow writer would also appreciate.

The site administrator is in Canada also. It is reassuring to know about the moral rights protection in Canada. Had a look at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website, where it has detailed information about copywrite protection and moral rights, for the benefit of other Canadians who may be reading this thread.

I have just revisited the site in question, and see that the admin's avatar has been removed as well as the articles being attributed to 'admin' are now listed as 'News'. And at the bottom of the site the copywrite is attributed to the website itself.

I shall send a polite email as you suggested, and will report back. BTW, I have visited your blog on occasion, and found it has some useful information. I like your new test layout. :) Thanks again for taking the time to respond. Cheers.

You're making me rather jealous right now. Knowing that both you and he are Canadian actually helps a great deal. It would appear to me that the moral rights issue is enough here to move forward if attribution is all you seek.

Still, since you have, in the past, had a good working relationship with the guy it makes sense to try and be nice before taking any further action.

Even with the changes it could be an issue with the platform the site is built on. I know well how strange they can be when you start deleting users and none of the changes really seem like he's trying to outright deny credit. After all, a copyright statement to the site itself is fairly standard and "News" tends to be one of the default categories.

I still say give it a shot, if it doesn't work, post here again and we'll see about getting more tough...

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

... Actually, it's more likely that Wordpress function just by default moved everything to the default "admin" user. If you delete categories, the category defaults to "uncategorized". You can import tags (Bunny, UTW) and it can get associated with admin posts by default or saved with original users.

Probably, what happened is that the user was either downgraded in permissions and possibly deleted - and all its posts defaulted to the "admin" user by default. I guess, the other site should probably have not deleted your username - but, it's their site I guess they can do what they want, right? And, I'm guessing that their decision is what caused this to happen in a blink of an eye, rather than deliberately erasing your posts from history. (being right or wrong)

Hart: That is what I've been trying, and failing, to say. It seems like they deleted things after she left and it all reverted back to the default.

I'm just unsure if the site in question uses WordPress, though the odds do look good...

Thank you for that comment! Much obliged!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

I did send an email, and got a prompt response. Apparently the site is under a revamp, and the administrator intends to reinstate the writer credits within the next couple of weeks. So it never hurts to ask.
I have two blogs on Wordpress, and I can understand how the technical issues could affect something like this. Excellent point.
This is a good topic that others can possibly learn from. Perhaps a good topic for your blog, Jonathan. In the future, I will require a contract for any further writing I do, an easily learned lesson. Thank you all for your generous advice. It is much appreciated.

Glad that everything has been sorted out and you are very welcome for the advice. However, fair warning, if ever I get sick of U.S. copyright law you might have to put me up for a few months while I work on my Canadian citizenship (and accent).

I'll start learning the national anthem tomorrow just in case...

Glad it worked out and please let me know if there is more that I can do to help!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com