The Internet is an incredibly useful tool for getting your articles out into the public. One bad part about this, however, is the large amount of copyright infringement that occurs. One prime example of a good article gone bad is my rather simple post, 25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips.
When I wrote that article I noticed people seemed to like it, so I decided to modify it a little bit and send it to two article sites, Article City and GoArticles. It was a good decision. About a month and a half after I posted the article, I noticed many bloggers were using it and linking to it, which was pretty nice. The majority of these bloggers put the source of the article, but some happened to “leave that part out”.
In total I caught around 10 or so blogs illegally using the article, so I contacted them one at a time. Most of them have complied with my request (to add a simple paragraph at the end: “By: Jeremy Steele”). So far I have contacted 7 sites, they were more than willing to give credit, but when I contacted some others they were a little more hostile.
After contacting them they accused me of copying their work, even though my post was written an entire month before they copied it. I was lucky, their blog was on Blogger, so I sent them a nice notice saying this blog was copying other people’s work. It wasn’t a formal DMCA complaint, just a simple e-mail. Well, about two days later the entire blog was taken down, coincidentally another person complained to Blogger about their article being stolen as well.
There isn’t any real point to this post other than, make sure you keep track of your more popular articles. Always have some sort of “use of articles” policy on your blog. I just recently added one, in case you want a simple guideline. Also, know the copyright laws!
My policy is simple, don’t copy my content unless I give approval or if there is a note at the end of the article allowing this. If you don’t follow it then I will 1) contact you and request changes, 2) Contact your ISP, and 3) Send a DMCA notice.
When you write a good post that get attention, wait a month or so and do a quick Google search to make sure no one is stealing it. Now you might think, isn’t that a bit ridiculous? What is ridiculous is the number of bloggers who steal content and claim it as their own, either directly or indirectly.
Sadly copyright infringement happens to everyone, from the Pro Bloggers of the world to the smaller bloggers (like me). There are four simple actions that will work almost every time someone copies your content illegally.
Contact them
Just send the blogger a nice e-mail with your request. More likely than not, they will gladly comply with your request.
Contact their host
Run a quick whois search on their site and find out who their host is. This is much easier if they have a blog with a free service, like Blogger or WordPress. Contact their host an inform them that one of their users are copying your content, the host will most likely take action after that. If this doesn’t work, file a DMCA complaint (most hosts have procedures for this posted on their sites).
Expose them
Make sure that the infringement is actually going on before you do this step. If the blogger refuses to do anything, and the host refuses to do anything, e-mail them and give them one last chance to comply, and that you will go public if they refuse. If they ignore you, then go public.
Expose them for being what they are, content thieves. This will put a lot of pressure on the other party to change or remove the offending content.
Legal action
This should always be the last step, and should only occur if the infringement is really severe. If they profit from the infringement, then you will have a very good civil case against them. For example, if they sell your content or toss it on Google Adsense pages, they are profiting from your article. Just remember that copyright infringement is serious and can be a criminal offense (if it is really serious). If you catch someone stealing your content illegally, report them right away.
Remember, you can only recover monitory damages if you have registered your work. You can, however, file DMCA complaints even if your work isn’t registered.
As of this writing I am still trying to get content removed from one site, and I am hoping to get another blog taken down (it steals a lot of content).
More information
U.S. Copyright Office
Copyrights Explained
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March 12th, 2007 at 9:57 am
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