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

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Thanks, Harry, this is very interesting.

Yes, Scribd has a takedown procedure.  It's a bit laborious, but it does
work well.  Once you've filled in the form, they take down the stuff
quickly and without cavil.   Some of it pops up again after a year or two.

Best,
Dominik

On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 at 16:16, Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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