Copy-paste protection **NOTE: Copy-paste protection is no longer active as described** As with any project where you can make money for something, read.cash has attracted the crowd that wants easy money for no effort. One of the (bad) ways to do it is to take somebody's article (like, from CoinDesk, BBC or somebody's blog) and publish it on read.cash. **Most of the time it doesn't work, it gets you nothing in terms of tips.** When you copy an article from a high-profile publication, the language that is used is very different from the one that real authors on read.cash use, so people instinctively think that something is wrong. However, sometimes it gets an author a small random tip, so the author is now encouraged to start a copy-pasting business, copying articles from all over the place to read.cash. One of the problems with this is that this is illegal (and for a good reason). That means that we would have to remove the article anyway if the original author asks us to. But the bigger issue is that the original author took a lot of time to research the article, write it, edit it and publish it. The user that copied the article basically *stole* all that effort from the author. This is pretty bad. It's also pretty bad for the readers of read.cash, since now they have to wade through all of the hundreds of copy-pasted articles that they don't want to read. Today we're adding some basic copy-paste protection. If you try to publish an article that is copied from somewhere - that article won't get to the main page or even to the "new" section.
The mechanism is not perfect, so if you see something wrong with it - please let us know in the forums. Will I have problems if I copy from Word? **No.** We only look for sources of your article in the Internet. But, I have the rights to copy that article! Yes, sometimes you **are** the original author and you want to post your article on as many sites as possible to get the bigger exposure. However, this is a tricky situation for read.cash. First of all, how do we ensure that you **are** the author. I mean anyone can **claim** to be the original author. Anyone can even claim that the original author is **not** the author. How do we verify such claims? We're not a court to go into details of each case and declare somebody a valid copyright holder. Here's an example to demonstrate the problem:
How do **we** distinguish between a user that claims she is the same person as on the other page. If we take all these claims for granted - it's basically a free pass for everybody to claim to be a popular blogger and copying everything. So, we're taking an easy route for now - if an article is deemed to be a copy of another one already published on the Internet - we consider it to be a copy and process like all other copies. Simplest solution for publishing to multiple sites for now: publish on read.cash first. What happens to copy-pasted articles? They appear on your personal page, but they aren't included on the main page or any lists. So, they basically get dramatically less exposure, but are still available. Copy-paste detector avoidance Please note, there are many ways to *cheat* the detector and we don't have time now to fix them all, so **if you are caught cheating the copy-paste detector on purpose** (i.e. trying to publish a copied article as an original one, like changing letters to similar look1ng 1etters, adding typoss, saving and re-saving with completely different article, etc...) - that might lead to **a complete ban**. Here's an example:
59 comments
Whatever you can do to help you curate your frontpage and the lists is good, even though I disagree about "stealing someone's effort" when you copy an article. It's a really bad thing to do and currently illegal (though I disagree with the law). Anyhow! It's a good move! But what if we write the article on an external editor and then paste it? I had done this for one of my articles because I had an issue with your editbox scrolling to the place I am typing and hiding the previous lines which annoyed me. I think I had mentioned the issue to you back then. Should I avoid doing that for my next article?
No, we're looking for anything that's publicly available, not looking at the "paste" event. > I had done this for one of my articles because I had an issue with your editbox scrolling to the place I am typing and hiding the previous lines which annoyed me. Does it happen in the article editor or in the comments?
So every post unrelated to BCH turns out to be copy-pasted...
Partially that's our (as in community) fault too. Bitcoin Cash content gets all the attention anyway, because the readers of that content are the people who have Bitcoin Cash to tip in the first place. I think it'll take months and maybe years until there's enough Bitcoin Cash in the hands of other people to tip non-BC content. EDIT: Ok, I figured I haven't finished my thought :) So, naturally good authors stop publishing non-BC content and all that's left is poor and copy-pasted non-BC content. Hopefully that'll change with time.
I just got nabbed by this, but I write my posts in word documents first for proofreading and formatting purposes. Then I copy and paste them.
No, that can't be the reason. The only reason can be that your article or part of it is already published somewhere. Are you sure you haven't published it previously? EDIT: Ok, like I said the reason is that your content is already published - therefore it's a copy. - https://www.publish0x.com/crap-commentary-rhetoric-and-prose/the-love-of-conquest-xjgwln - vs - https://read.cash/@CotyReh/the-love-of-conquest-720eb35f
Ahh. I write it out and then copy it to 2 or 3 sites. Gotcha
One way to avoid it would be to publish to read.cash first. In that case we're 100% sure you're the original author.
Simple enough. Thanks for the heads up! :)
I removed the "Non-OC" mark from your article. We're still thinking about how to handle the situation with people who publish to multiple sites. One of the bigger issues is that we can't be sure that you're the same CotyReh as the one on publish0x.. (I mean what's stopping me as registering as CotyRehReal on read.cash and claiming that I'm the author :) ) And to do that at scale - i.e. with hundreds of users - we'd need some kind of internal investigation unit :)
I was hit by that before over a year ago on minds, so I'm sympathetic to the problem you have here. Someone was using slight variations in people's names and content as a phishing scam and was like pulling teeth to bring that to their attention.
Yep, we want to prevent that (cause, that really sucks) and at the same time it should be OK to publish on multiple sites (its your content anyway). We're thinking about it, but we don't see any immediate quick solution. But it definitely exists.
Posting first on read.cash could be a quick fix. Shadowbanning a read.cash post because **someone posted a copy later** on another platform would not make sense. If someone plagiarizes content published first in read.cash, the corrective measures are the other platform's problem. Note: I just realized that you had already considered
Yes, after you publish on read.cash - somebody could illegally copy it and that's why we don't double-check it later.
I have a doubt, I make always my content first in Word, because when it comes to creating in Read.cash my computer presents problems, will I have problems with this?
No. It's only about copy-paste from the Internet, not from any local program.
I am glad, You took this step It will be great to see original content now .
I wan trying to publishing it and It was an old post, Got the notification about it, I understand and deleted it, is there any way that we can appeal that ?
If you are experiencing problems with detection - i.e. it incorrectly detects that this is a copy of a content already available on the Internet - then let me know. If it correctly detect that this was already posted somewhere - there's nothing we can do for now - it's is a copy by definition. The only thing that we'll try to improve in the future - is the ability to verify that you are the same person that posted it originally.
When I write a cybersecurity blog, I syndicate it across many platforms. I use the same name, so it is obvious. Is there a way to get on a validated list, so we aren't flagged?
It may make sense to verify that a user owns other social network accounts. However, it can be complex to implement and may not be a priority.
Yes, exactly, it's pretty complex, when you consider all the details. You are totally right.
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote about - here's your claim "I use the same name", but how do we prove that this is you. What prevents me from registering "MRosenquistReal" and claim that I'm the real you and you're the impostor? :) That's the problem. Now, let's assume that you are not on platform1.com (fictional site). Let's say I register "M.Rosenquist" there first - am I now you? :) The problems of trust.
I think the validation can come in many forms. I can do a one-time validation by posting something on my other networks, or even BETTER, I could post something first on read.cash before I post it to my other social networks (I normally don't as they would then flag it) The point is, however I prove it, I should only have to do it once. That should earn me the trust (i.e. Validated list).
See here: https://read.cash/@Read.Cash/copy-paste-protection-c4bd5de3#comment-eb9eabf6 Basically, the problem right now is that it needs to be automated. We can't automatically trust everything a user does. If for example a malicious user proves that he can post to one-day old Reddit account - should we trust him if he copes from BBC? There are a lot of questions :)
I think this is a good move, and that people who publish to multiple locations should simply accept that read.cash value proposition is now partially a matter of original content. This will bring in more readers and likely more engagement. One is still free to publish to multiple locations, but shouldn't expect to get automatic exposure that way.
I think it's a real problem and it's a good first temporary measure. I hope that better and better solutions can be found. The fact that publishing first in read.cash is a solution is enough for now.
I am completely indignant, my reddit profile is in my read.cash profile, I publish part of a reddit post and it takes me as what is a copy of the Internet? I am copying part of an article of my property, written by me but published in another community. "Copying from other sources" is my personal reddit page https://www.reddit.com/user/Mariamread https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/fg620u/the_adoption_of_bitcoin_cash_with_bitcoinbileto/ https://read.cash/@Mariam/the-adoption-of-bitcoincash-with-the-support-of-at-bitcoinbileto-is-ready-f9b7f5db It is a good idea what is being implemented but one should seek to develop something better. I think the most viable solution is to delete my article and create a new one so that nothing written in my reddit post is mentioned :(
I was by your side, bayonet in hand until this: > Simplest solution for publishing to multiple sites for now: publish on read.cash first. This is self-serving, since Google will select your site as the authoritative source for the article as opposed to my own. Not happy. My content is mine, not yours. This new policy is conducive to creating yet another walled garden (YAWG).
Maybe another way to handle would be not to punish with SEO but turn off tips for non-OC content?
You would see the best content leave.
You're looking at a wrong problem. It's not to make read.cash authoritative, it's to stop the flood of spam. It's the **only** way for now without resorting to manual verification of all sources, which is [impossible for now](https://read.cash/@Read.Cash/copy-paste-protection-c4bd5de3#comment-eb9eabf6). This was getting out of hand, we had to deal with dozens of articles every day that needed manual research - is it copied? Is it the original author? read.cash was getting pretty boring, since it was becoming a cesspool of articles copied from BBC, Bitcoinist, CNN, Bitcoin.com, etc... all in the name of getting a few cents. If you are worried about "authoritative" sources (we aren't) then it's easy to solve - we can add an editable "rel canonical" link, which you could set to any authoritative source you want. Though that won't affect how we detect original content. (We don't have any other way as you can see from the article - as soon as the article is on the Internet - we can't be sure who the real author is) Would rel canonical help your? Frankly, we don't care about our SEO at all. Like, zero interest. The only reason we add noindex, nofollow is to stop spammers, because it's much less interesting to spam if you don't get any SEO benefit.
I understand you have difficult trade-offs and respect that. Regarding rel canonical, interesting idea! I would have to do some research. Thanks.
i need to complaint about my latest article, it's 100% original, i spent 15 mins to write it, only the cover page image is download on internet otherwise all the words and pictures are belonged to myself.
Yep, that's a bug, fixed. Sorry for that!
no worry, as long as my article is listed on the page.
Hi, my Article is qualified by NON-OC ! it's my own content, i post on few sites and blog, same article ...
https://read.cash/@Read.Cash/copy-paste-protection-c4bd5de3#but-i-have-the-rights-to-copy-that-article
So the answer, is, to post 1st on Read.Cash and after on other website ?
For now, yes. Until we create some better way to prove legal syndication (posting to multiple sites)
Ok thanks, i will do that for next post
Also note, that there are no penalties for publishing on read.cash and getting "Probably Non-OC" mark, except that the article doesn't show up on the main page. It still shows up on your own personal page on read.cash and to subscribers.
Just One last question, if i post same Article in French, but only on Read.Cash (because only your website allow post onn foreign community) it's considered like 'OC Content' ?
Yes, basically we check if the same text already exists on the Internet. As you haven't published it anywhere else - it's automatically OC.
Also, note, we're marking it not as "plagiarism", which would be incorrect, but as "Non-Original Content", which is correct, since the original content is somewhere else and this is a copy (even if a legal one).
This is great. Too bad those people found there way here to begin with. My promise to read cash is, I will only EVER write genuine articles from my head. Such a great site. Thank
Awesome! :)
I think it's great. You have a good platfrom to fight against writers who copy content from other websites. From my experience, it can really destroy a website like this if everyone plagiarise content around the web.
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See https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/fji6n7/why_is_readcash_shooting_themselves_in_the_foot/fkna48r/ ("second issue") for why it's practically impossible.
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