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I wish there were some way to report this to Google, it would improve the user experience and save everybody a lot of work. Until then it's very tempting to join in on it.
Big Picture: You don't have a copyright claim. (I am basing this definitive verdict on your complete failure to supply us with any facts.) If this "issue" has taken more than 30 seconds of your time, I predict mediocrity or failure for your business. You can't afford to waste your time on it. Seriously.
All the people saying it is copyright violation are probably right. But, I don't think it's worth the effort and money (perhaps you will have to get a lawyer...). If at all, just contact the site where they posted it and report the copyright violation. Describe what you think what happened and wait what (and if) they answer. Most of the time, they won't bother and just remove the text. Much better use of your time is…
Copyright protects a specific expression of an idea or group of ideas. It does not address the use of a copyrighted work as a template for generating other copyrighted works that use alternate expressions.
If you create a copyrighted work that consists of the phrase "The rain in Spain falls mostly on the plain." and someone comes along and very carefully creates a work of parallel intent that includes the phrase "In Spain, precipitation occurs mostly on the lowland prairies."; they are NOT violating your copyright. What they are doing may be sleazy, dishonest and lazy, but it isn't legally actionable.
This is actually a fairly deep topic, our legal system is constrained to working with tangible expressions and cannot identify the similarity between two expressions of an idea that share the same semantic structure (meaning) and yet have completely different linguistic surface (text).
Now if you can show that their works were mechanically derived from yours, that may be a different kettle of fish.
A derived work is just as much protected by copyright as the original is. If you translate a book, you cannot distribute that translation without the original author's consent. So the circumstance that they didn't republish your article verbatim, but in a modified way, is of little relevance. So you can do the same things you would if it was a verbatim copy.
Perhaps, open up a channel of communication with the "legitimate businesses" that run the site instead of sending them a DMCA notice.
For more on spinning, I found this article helpful: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/06/16/spinning-spamming-...
By the way, you can also translate from english to another language and then back to english. Now just fix broken grammar and you might have what you called a spun article.
Without reading your article and the "spun" article it would be hard to tell whether or not your copyright has been infringed. Could you post the links? Perhaps, open up a channel of communication with the "legitimate businesses" that run the site instead of sending them a DMCA notice. For more on spinning, I found this article helpful: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/06/16/spinning-spamming-...
Thank you for that link, it's a great overview.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They have effectively created an entirely new document espousing all of the same ideas as yours, IMO, that describes the situation well > and on which you would not have any copyright claims. That is also my understanding, unless I could somehow prove that they violated my copyright in the construction of this work. For instance, if one could prove that my copyrighted content was fed into a spinning algorithm to ge…
First, you need to stop thinking in terms of 'algorithms' and 'spinning'. It's irrelevant and confuses the discussion. I understand how tempting it is to frame new concepts (law) in terms of things you understand (computers) but it's very dangerous territory. It's also (this is not to bash you personally, just a general remark) why 95% of legal chatter amongst technical people on the internet is meaningless to lawyer…
This is HN, not a court of law. It is entirely appropriate to use technical language here. I think if you understood what 'spinning' was you'd see that it was relevant to the legal situation even if these exact words may never be used in a legal action (although the very pre-existence of concrete spinning programs would actually be relevant as evidence that a deliberate process of copying had occurred).
> why 95% of legal chatter amongst technical people on the internet is meaningless to lawyers
I'd argue that a similar percentage of lawyers' technical discussions are meaningless to the reality of technology. As we move forward I'll wager that the lawyers will be the ones needing to do a greater percentage of the adjusting if they are to remain relevant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, you need to stop thinking in terms of 'algorithms' and 'spinning'. It's irrelevant and confuses the discussion. I understand how tempting it is to frame new concepts (law) in terms of things you understand (computers) but it's very dangerous territory. It's also (this is not to bash you personally, just a general remark) why 95% of legal chatter amongst technical people on the internet is meaningless to lawyer…
> First, you need to stop thinking in terms of 'algorithms' and 'spinning'. It's irrelevant and confuses the discussion. This is HN, not a court of law. It is entirely appropriate to use technical language here. I think if you understood what 'spinning' was you'd see that it was relevant to the legal situation even if these exact words may never be used in a legal action (although the very pre-existence of concrete s…
Of course. I'm not telling anyone what to do. What I meant was, that to understand the legal issues, the explanations in these terms are irrelevant and obfuscate the thought processes that lead to the legal understanding of the situation. I understand perfectly what spinning is. But 'algorithmic spinning' is irrelevant in this context. It's not about the level or nature of mechanical changes. One shouldn't think about legal issues in quantitative ways. It's orthogonal to the system.
> As we move forward I'll wager that the lawyers will be the ones needing to do a greater percentage of the adjusting if they are to remain relevant.
Thanks for making my point for me. It's this technocratically warped world view that lies at the basis of the bigger part of misunderstandings about the legal field and how it relates to technology. The technical details are seldom relevant in most technology legal issues. or at least in a very different way than technologically oriented people look at it.