When your content gets stolen…
What does a blogger do when their content gets stolen?
Lorelle has a great post up outlining the steps one should take – and coming to realization that inevitably, if your content is any good, someone is going to steal it:
Having been the target of copyright thieves, and working with writers, authors, and photographers on copyright protection and laws for over 25 years, I thought I’€™d talk a little about what to do when someone steals your content.
First, you noticed that I didn’€™t say ‘€œif’€? someone steals your content. That was on purpose. With the glut of information on the Internet, it’€™s now a matter of ‘€œwhen’€? not ‘€œif’€?.
Since we acquired The Blog Herald in February, we’ve averaged 4-5 content theft / improper repurposing of content each month. In some cases, a simple email addressed to the domain holder solves the problem. In about 1/3rd of the cases, we are forced to followup with a DMCA Takedown Notice sent to their hosting provider or ISP. This gets quick results as long as the hosting company is based in the United States.
Not too long ago, Feedburner, our feed hosting provider, began providing reports of uncommon feed usages. This is helped tremendously in identifying and tracking down the scoundrels that repurpose our feeds.
Are you watching your feeds?
Thanks and excellent idea about the feeds. I’ll look into that more. Thanks!
No problem, I enjoyed your piece alot – hopefully the feedburner optionw ill give you some ideas
Matt
Though Lorelle’s piece on the issue is great and provides some of the best advice I’ve seen, it leaves out several key steps including sending DMCA notices to hosts and other entities such as datacenters. These methods resolve over 65% of my plagiarism cases.
I posted about it in the comments of her piece.
There are other guides including the one on my site and this one on Dan Richard’s site which offer information on those steps: http://www.danrichard.com/2006/03/21/dmca-action-a-general-guide-to-taking-action-against-site-rippers-using-dmca-law/
Personally, I’d read all of the guides I could, just to get the most complete picture possible.