Member-only story
What To Do When Your Medium Articles Are Stolen
(And why Medium can’t help much)
Four of my Medium articles have had over 6,000 views, but they haven’t earned me a dime. That’s despite me putting them behind Medium’s paywall.
Why not?
Because those views were from a website that had illegally lifted them from the Medium publication I’d submitted them to.
When I contacted the Medium publication’s owner to see if he knew anything about it, he thanked me for getting in touch and for bringing it to his attention. He knew nothing about it. After some further investigations, he advised me that:
”two pirate websites have copied every article …”
. . . that had been published in his Medium publication since the start of the year. He has since contacted every writer of the publication to let them know.
How did I find out?
It was only by chance that I discovered this. I have a Google Alert set up so that whenever my name appears on the Internet somewhere, Google alerts me. (I’m not that vain — honest! I set it up purely for this very reason!) But the alert also sent me the link to the website in question.
For more information about how to set up a Google Alert, click here.
