[INDOLOGY] Query about the misuse of CC-licensed articles

[Harry Spier]

Dominik asked in this context:

>
> Have you ever had one of your articles copied and hosted on a website you
> didn't like?  Was there anything you could do about it?
>
> This was a problem for the Muktabodha digital library in the past but
appears to be getting better.
In 2010 from my notes:
. A search on Google showed:
 7 muktabodha e-texts added to bogus digital libraries in the last week
alone,
46 copies total from 26 individual e-texts in the last month
178 copies total from 71 individual e-texts. in the last year,

I'm not sure if the Google result for all time is correct.  At one point it
was saying there are 8,900 muktabodha e-texts on the internet, but it also
gave me a result of 4,500 copies of 61 individual e-texts. (I'm not able to
explain these discrepencies of the number of individual e-texts other than
its an estimation.  In any case there are a lot of Muktabodha e-text copies
out there).

But the bottom line is that about 1/3 of our e-texts in multiple copies are
on many bogus digital library sites and the number is increasing by the
week.

By "bogus digital libaries" I mean sites created by automated webcrawlers
that collect pdf and .doc files and create collections as clickbaits.
WhenI tried to access many of these sites, I was blocked by my Malware
software because of trojans and malware on those sites.

Today it seems to be getting better.  I don't know if its getting better
because the Muktabodha digital library is now password protected or if
Google is taking these automated pdf collection sites down quicker. A quick
search showed only about 10 sites with Muktabodha etexts but my malware
software stopped me entering three of those sites because of what it called
"fraud". One of Muktabodha's etexts was added by someone into wikisource
but with the licence changed by them to Creative Commons.

If I remember correctly there is a mechanism to take down articles from
scribd.

Harry Spier
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