If you believe your copyrights have been maliciously violated on the Internet, either by a plagiarist or with attributions, take a moment to survey the situation before you act. Is there any fact that you're missing? For example, people who keep on-line diaries will very often reproduce their favorite poems, stories, or song lyrics on their diaries. Although that could legally be considered "publication," it would once again be an insane way to deal with the 'Net. Is there any indication of the age of the site's manager? I highly disrecommend writing a scathing letter to a 10-year-old who has illegally reproduced your work. The need to be properly informed is another excellent reason for authors to publish at least a piece or two on the Internet. If you've read this far, it's probably because you don't know a hell of a lot about the Internet. There are very few people in the modern world who will not benefit from an Internet-savvy business contact, and a good relationship with a knowledgeable e-zine editor can be extremely useful in a situation like this.
If you determine that your rights have been violated by someone who is both damaging your reputation and acting unethically (as opposed to with nontraditional ethics), and you believe that it is worth pursuing (which I really wouldn't recommend unless you're actually being plagiarized, but OK), start in the way you should always register a complaint: with a firm, polite letter. In the case of copyright violation that does not involve plagiarism, I would not demand a specific course of action, but something more along the lines of "this bothers me. Please fix it." If you are displeased with the way they offer to fix it, you can tell them so (and it's a good indication that you've misjudged their level of malice). If you haven't misjudged their level of malice, they probably won't respond regardless.
If you feel that there can be no negotiating with the offender, you can go to their Internet Service Provider (or, sometimes, web host). In the case of smaller sites that do not own their own domain name (unlikelystories.org is a domain name, as is plagiarist.com), the Internet Service Provider can likely be determined from the web address. For example, if the offending web page is at http://members.aol.com/TomsPoetryShackofTheft, there's a real good chance that Tom gets his Internet service from AOL. Or, if the web page is at http://www.earthlink.net/~TomisaBadGuy, you can conclude that Tom's Internet service is provided from Earthlink.
Many web site owners who go to the trouble of buying their own domain name (http://www.tomspoetryshackoftheft.com, for example) will not buy e-mail addresses with that domain name attached. They may write to you from, or advertise their e-mail address as, something like tomisatheif@sbcglobal.net. In this example, we can see that Tom's provider is SBC Global.
If it's still not clear who the Internet Service Provider is, you can try going to http://www.internic.net/whois.html. InterNIC is the widely-accepted, semi-authorized company that governs domain registration. If you type a domain name into the little box on their "WhoIs" page, they'll tell you everything they know about the owner of that domain. For example, if you type in unlikelystories.org, you'll get:
Domain ID:D62613552-LROR
Domain Name:UNLIKELYSTORIES.ORG
Created On:18-Feb-2001 21:37:30 UTC
Last Updated On:03-Jun-2004 12:37:06 UTC
Expiration Date:18-Feb-2005 21:37:30 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R120-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:10687138178030
Registrant Name:Jonathan Penton
Registrant Street1:209 West Dixie Ave.
Registrant City:Marietta
Registrant State/Province:GA
Registrant Postal Code:30093
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Email:jonathanpenton@yahoo.com
Admin ID:10687138181600
Admin Name:Jonathan Penton
Admin Street1:209 West Dixie Ave.
Admin City:Marietta
Admin State/Province:GA
Admin Postal Code:30093
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.6786121853
Admin Email:jonathanpenton@yahoo.com
Tech ID:10687138188040
Tech Name:YahooDomains Techcontact
Tech Street1:701 First Ave
Tech City:Sunnyvale
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:94089
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.16198813096
Tech Email:domain.tech@yahoo-inc.com
Name Server:HOSTING10.POEHOSTING.COM
Name Server:HOSTING10A.POEHOSTING.COM
There's a great deal of information here, and a good bit of it is false. I did live at that address at one point; in 2001, when I registered the domain (I'm long gone). I have no idea what that phone number is; I assume I pulled it out of my ass at some point. My domain name is no longer registered through Yahoo at all; the record has not been updated for some reason. You can, in fact, reach me at jonathanpenton@yahoo.com, but there is no reason to believe that anyone else in the world has given an accurate e-mail address to InterNIC.
The really useful information here is in the last two lines: the name servers. poehosting.com is, in fact, my web provider, and if you want to make a complaint about me, poehosting.com is the place to do so.
Even that information is not always accurate, and can sometimes be suppressed. Furthermore, not everyone who uses the 'Net does so through a separate company. The exceptionally tech-savvy sometimes set up their own web server, and host their web pages on their own computers, which are always connected to the Internet and need no other company to function. Their only Internet Service Provider is the phone company, and rest assured that the phone company will not help you. They are still technically subject to the laws of their country, and if I hear that the FBI is taking out plagiarists, you'll read it here first.
Assuming the offender has an ISP, and you can locate that ISP, you can request that the ISP terminate the offender's Internet account (or demand that they remove your work, to avoid termination). Almost all ISPs keep an e-mail address at "abuse," such as "abuse@earthlink.net," to field such requests. These e-mail addresses are manned largely by overeducated, underpaid Gen-Xers who take more shit than a McDonald's employee and get paid almost as little. Furthermore, they're usually dealing with death threats and kiddie porn, and plagiarism is likely to rank low on their list of priorities. I can't emphasize enough the importance of politeness and civility when dealing with these people. It is not their fault, nor the fault of anyone at their company, that you have been ripped off. Be polite, be patient, and be sure to give them all the information they need (those web pages which violate your rights, not your sleuthing as to their customer's identity, which they'll know better than you).
Eventually, most ISPs will delete the site of the copyright violator, at which point the copyright violator will very likely open up the site with another ISP, probably within 24 hours. You could do this for a very long time.
Social law will be much more effective, if the denizens of the Internet literary community can be convinced to ostracize the offender. Almost all Internet writers and publishers will blackball a plagiarist. While most of us are accustomed to dealing with people with nontraditional ethics, and unlikely to trouble such a person, copyright violators who show themselves to be malicious or spiteful will quickly lose all publishing opportunities. (Remember too that most print magazines and publishing houses are now connected to the Internet, and although they are a separate world, the worlds will come together to blackball plagiarists.) The plagiarist can and will self-published on the Internet after their career is destroyed, but people who browse personal poetry sites usually browse online poetry magazines as well. If every poetry editor on the 'Net knows that so-and-so is a plagiarist, they will find few readers for their personal poetry page.
If someone has plagiarized you, and submitted your work to a legitimate e-zine, destroying their career should be as simply as contacting that e-zine and proving your case. It is an editor's responsibility, should they discover they have published plagiarized material, to correct the situation. Any real editor, on discovering they have published a plagiarist, will make it their top priority to destroy all publishing opportunities for the plagiarist, and have their work removed from the 'Net.
If someone is plagiarizing you from their own web page, you are still better off soliciting those who know the 'Net well. If you don't have a friend in the Internet literary world, I recommend USENET.
If you've never heard of USENET, it's a method of using the Internet that pre-dates the World Wide Web. When modems were so slow that they couldn't really effectively transfer anything but text, the Internet was primarily used for e-mail and message boards (USENET). People would hold public conversations on USENET, about any conceivable topic. USENET boards (called newsgroups) were structured and named so that people could easily find newsgroups on computers, politics, car repairs, or the art and business of writing. USENET users would simply frequent the newsgroups that interest them.
Today, most USENET users are far more computer-savvy than the average web user, or even web page designer. If you convince the regulars of a literary USENET group that you have been plagiarized, they can spread all relevant information in the space of an afternoon. (We are agreed that you need to be civilized when asking strangers for help, right?)
As I say, USENET is not part of the World Wide Web, and your Internet browser might not be set up to view it. There are, however, web pages that re-package USENET, so that you can easily view it through an Internet browser. It is important to remember that these web pages are only showing you USENET, and do not run USENET, and cannot control it. If you encounter plagiarism on USENET, there is no authority (other than social law) to which you can effectively turn.
You can view USENET through the web at http://groups.google.com. You'll need to type in the name of a newsgroup. Literary newsgroup names include rec.arts.poems, alt.arts.poetry.comments, alt.writing, and misc.writing (the group that authored the nonsensical statement about workshops earlier in this article). If you type, for example, rec.arts.poems into the box, you'll get a list of comments recently posted to rec.arts.poems. In the upper-right hand corner of the screen, you'll see a link pointing you to "Post a new message to rec.arts.poems." You'll have to go through a free registration process, after which you'll be able to publicly make your grievance.
Although I hope you find the techniques in this article useful, and will elucidate as necessary (ask me on the message board), they are relatively useless compared to an understanding of how the Internet is changing the world. The advent of the Internet already effects the world of literature more than the advent of the printing press did, and as it grows more flexible, the literary world will change further. Learning how the Internet works is probably the single biggest way to improve one's quality of life, at this point in history. Instantaneous access to every sort of information is something that should be understood, not passively received. It is changing every aspect of our lives, and whether you adapt to these changes because you like them or because you have no choice, it's gotta be done.
Jonathan Penton is the Editor-in-chief of Unlikely 2.0. Check out his bio page.