Copyscape is an
online plagiarism detection service that checks whether similar text
content appears elsewhere on the
web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
. It was launched in 2004 by Indigo Stream Technologies, Ltd.
Copyscape is used by content owners to detect cases of "content theft", in which content is copied without permission from one site to another. It is also used by content publishers to detect cases of
content fraud, in which old content is repackaged and sold as new original content.
History
Copyscape was launched in 2004 by Indigo Stream Technologies, Ltd., co-founded in 2003 by Gideon Greenspan. According to an interview with Greenspan, the company originally developed an alerting service called Google Alert, out of which the Copyscape service grew as an expansion.
Functionality
Given the
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
or text of the original content, Copyscape returns a list of web pages that contain similar text to all or parts of this content. It also shows the matching text highlighted on the found web page. Copyscape banners can be placed on a web page to warn potential plagiarists not to steal content. Copysentry monitors the web and sends
notifications
Notification may refer to:
* Notification (Holy See), an announcement by a department of the Roman Curia
*Casualty notification, the process of notifying relatives of people who have been killed or seriously injured
* Death notification, the proc ...
by email when new copies are found, and Copyscape Premium verifies the
originality of content purchased by online content publishers.
Copyscape uses the
Google Web API to power its searches. Copyscape uses a set of
algorithms to identify copied content that has been modified from its original form.
Reported use in plagiarism cases
Copyscape's use has been reported in cases involving online plagiarism:
* On March 18, 2005, Copyscape was reported as the means used to search the Internet for unauthorized use of materials in the case of Brayton Purcell LLP vs. Recordon & Recordon, filed in the
(361 F.Supp.2d 1135). According to Brayton Purcell, Copyscape was used to search the Internet for unauthorized use of materials on October 7, 2004. On August 6, 2009, Copyscape was cited as the means used to detect plagiarism before the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
* On April 6, 2005, Arve Bersvendsen, a Norwegian Web developer, used Copyscape to find a copy of a
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
tutorial he wrote posted on a site owned by
Apple Inc. Bersvendsen claimed that Apple had
infringed his copyright, and the content in question was immediately removed.
* On October 17, 2005, Paul Litterick of the
New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists used Copyscape to analyze
Bruce Logan's published newspaper work, setting off a
plagiarism scandal. Litterick found that some of Logan's work was taken (in most cases with permission) from Anglo-American sources, including
The Heritage Foundation, the
Conservative Christian Fellowship, the
Institute for American Values,
Digby Anderson
Digby C. Anderson (born 25 May 1944) is the founder and former director (until 2004) of the Social Affairs Unit, a public policy organisation/economic think-tank created in 1980. In addition to this role, Anderson served as a long-time contributor ...
of the
Social Affairs Unit and writers
Maggie Gallagher and
Melanie Phillips. Litterick published the results in the ''Fundy Post'' (Issues 18 and 19). Logan retired from the
Maxim Institute
The Maxim Institute is a research and public policy think tank based in Auckland, New Zealand. The Institute's work is oriented toward a conservative perspective on its issues of primary concern, which are now education policy, tax and welfare poli ...
one month later.
* On December 9, 2005, Richard Stiennon, a writer at
ZDNet, used Copyscape to find six Web sites that had stolen and re-published an
ISP business plan he had written.
References
External links
* {{Official website, http://www.copyscape.com/.
Copyscape forums For discussion about:
** Copyright law in general.
** Dealing with plagiarism.
** Copyscape.
Plagiarism detectors
Copyright enforcement companies
Internet properties established in 2004