The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft

November 26, 2007 | By Jonathan Bailey | Filed Under Content Scraping, Features, Google, Legal, Splogs, copyright, plagiarism

With spammers and plagiarists becoming more prolific and more aggressive than ever, content theft is no longer a matter of “if”, but “when”.

Where once protecting content was the realm of lawyers and billion-dollar industries, it is now important for Webmasters, large and small, to be familiar with both the laws and the tools available for dealing with content theft.

Fortunately, the steps for fighting plagiarism are easy to follow and, for the most part, the tools are free and readily available.

If you take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the process and technology, you can become a champion plagiarism fighter in short order and get back to the business of running your site before you realize how effective you’ve become.

Step One: Detection

The Internet is vast and detecting content theft can feel like a needle in a haystack. Fortunately, we have tools that are designed to wade through the Web and find exactly what we’re looking for. Though some scrapers and plagiarists are kind enough to leave you trackbacks that lead you straight to their infringement, for those who aren’t that nice, the following tools can make life a lot easier.

Step Two: Preserving the Evidence

Once you’ve discovered the misuse of your content, you next need to preserve what you have found. Since the later steps usually result in the infringing site either being altered or taken down, having a personal copy of the site both for your records and to verify what was there previously can be very important in the event that a dispute arises later.

Fortunately, there are several great services to help preserve Web pages on the Web and offer some third-party non-repudiation of the results.

Step Three: Contact the Plagiarist (if Practical)

Once the plagiarism has been discovered and the evidence preserved, the next step is to try and resolve the situation. For some, this involves first contacting the plagiarist directly. Though not practical with most spammers and scrapers, it may be possible with human plagiarists and, while results may vary, generally leads to the most amicable solutions.

However, contacting a plagiarist isn’t always as simple as sending an email, sometimes getting in touch takes a little extra work.

Step Four: Contacting the Advertisers (optional)

Though many find it faster to just demand takedown of the work and be done with it, others want to strike at the heart of the plagiarist, their profit motive. Since one advertising account can serve hundreds, if not thousands, of spam sites,. targeting the advertisers is an obvious choice for dealing with spammers. Though not always a good solution or a practical one, it can be a powerful tool.

To aid with that, here are several resources to help make the process easier.

Step Five: Contacting the Host

Of all the methods of resolving plagiarism issues, contacting the host to get he offending site/page removed is almost always the fastest and most reliable. Laws, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF), require hosts to remove infringing materials once they have been properly notified.

For those interested only in a quick, clean resolution to the matter, this route is almost certainly the first, and final, cessation step.

Step Six: Contacting the Search Engines

The last step, if all else has failed, is generally to contact the search engines and get the offending content removed. Though it doesn’t actually remove the content from the Web, it prevents others from finding it, stops the plagiarist from gaining any benefit from it keeps and from the misuse from damaging your rankings for shared search terms.

Fortunately, the DMCA also requires search engines to remove infringing URLs once properly notified and, even if the other techniques fail, this one works very reliably.

Conclusions

Though plagiarism fighting has not traditionally been the realm of your everyday author or artist, the Internet has forever changed the game. Fortunately, the technology has risen to the challenge and empowered us to protect our content in ways that the bad guys never could have envisioned. Even better, it continues to rise even higher, promising us new tools in the coming months and years to even better protect our content.

In the meantime, it is important that we learn the laws, procedures and tools that are at our disposal and do the best with what we have. Though the approach may be somewhat hodgepodge, it is very effective and has worked for me in over 600 cases.

However, what is important about me is that there is nothing special about me in this matter. Six years ago I had no interest in copyright law. I learned the techniques the same way other Webmasters do today, by hitting the books and learning from others.

Though it sounds like a great deal of work, I can not think of anything else that has been so easy for me to learn or had so many wonderful people there to help me.

Considering how important this issue is and how little time and energy is truly required, there is no reason not to familiarize yourself with the procedure and make use of the resources available.


About the author: Jonathan Bailey writes at Plagiarism Today, a site about plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues on the Web. He started Plagiarism Today about in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. Since then, he has started offering consulting services to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies. Jonathan is not a lawyer and none of the information he provides should be taken as legal advice.



Comments

47 Responses to “The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft”

  1. PlagiarismToday » Copyright 2.0 Show - Episode 34 - Internation Incidents on November 26th, 2007 1:30 pm

    […] to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting!It is Monday again and that means, in addition to my usual post at the Blog Herald, it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 […]

  2. TechDune on November 26th, 2007 8:31 pm

    Thanks a million Jonathan,
    I have been going through some serious problems.Many
    Bloggers started copying articles from my blog and posted in their blogs and some even got stumbled..
    I have made some arrangements already.
    That was a healthy list.

  3. syaifudin zuhri on November 26th, 2007 8:54 pm

    Fantastic, I need this

  4. lady on November 26th, 2007 9:44 pm

    thanks for this significant information..

    Make Money Online

  5. Tony Hung on November 26th, 2007 10:40 pm

    Wow … what a fantastic post. Thanks for breaking it down, Jonathan! :)

  6. Linker Barn: Tuesday, November 27 on November 27th, 2007 12:31 am

    […] The six steps to stop content theft. […]

  7. Vienna on November 27th, 2007 1:22 am

    An excellent and timely post because indeed, this internet plagiarism is a growing problem for many bloggers.

    It’s really astounding how fast the internet is growing and how easy for plagiarists to copy one’s work so thanks for the advice on how to handle plagiarism. I hope that the tools we use and laws that are implemented now are continously developed to keep up with the growing needs of internet writers, bloggers, etc to be protected from plagiarism.

  8. erisian on November 27th, 2007 11:20 am

    phenomenal job ! Thanks to both you and Lorell for the great content.

    you have an error in your “about” section..
    Check the word “ago”

    Jonathan Bailey writes at Plagiarism Today, a site about plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues on the Web. He started Plagiarism Today about in 2005 [ago] as a way

  9. Jonathan Bailey on November 27th, 2007 11:58 am

    TechDune: I’m glad that the article was helpful but I am sorry to hear about your troubles. If I can help in any way, please let me know! You can also post to the Performancing Legal Issues Forum if needed.

    Syaifudin: Very welcome!

    Tony: My pleasure, it is still frustrating that I had to pass over some great tools. Another post though.

    Vienna: I hope so too. However, it appears that the laws are starting to lag behind the needs on the Web, especially when you look at it from an international stance. It may be time for another broad international treaty, just to keep pace.

    Erisian: Thanks for the correction, I’m fixing it now. That’s what I get for hammering that out in about five minutes the day before my first post…

  10. Jonathan Dingman on November 27th, 2007 2:45 pm

    Wow guys, awesome write up! This is an article I’ve been looking for, for a while now.

    *scratches head and wonders how else he can socialize this article…*

  11. Stopping Content Theft at Burst Blog on November 27th, 2007 4:37 pm

    […] I’d write a post about how to stop content theft, but The Blog Herald already did a bang-up job of it yesterday. Check out The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft. […]

  12. Dean Rieck on November 27th, 2007 11:27 pm

    I’ve found a number of my articles reprinted without my permission. But interestingly, many provide a link or at least a Web address leading people to my site.

    One reason could be that I encourage people to repost my content and all I ask for is a byline and a link to my site. I provide a “reprint policy” link with every article that launches a popup which asks people to not be a jerk and please just ask me before they use my content. This is on my main site and not on my blog, since my blog posts are not as thorough as the articles.

    The real thieves online are print publishers who think they own all the content they publish. Virtually all of my articles have been abducted by print publishers who actually sell my articles online with no compensation for me. I don’t make a fuss, though, since it’s free promotion.

  13. Jonathan Bailey on November 28th, 2007 1:08 am

    Dean: Like you, I am fine with a lot of reuse of my content. I have a Creative Commons License and encourage others to take advantage of it. The problem is that too many people are now violating the simple “don’t be a jerk” premise.

    A lot of them are spammers and scrapers that do it automatically, others are just idiots that don’t want to give a link back.

    I am a bit confused when you talk about the print publishers. Are you saying that you’ve had work you’ve put on the Web taken by print publishers and sold or is there something else going on? If that is the case, you might want to reconsider making a fuss, it would be very easy to do, if you can prove it, and depending on the situation, there could be a decent amount of money involved.

    That would be something for you discuss with your attorney. However, I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting what you are owed.

  14. links for 2007-11-28 at Jacob Christensen on November 28th, 2007 7:24 am

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald (tags: blogging copyright wordpress theft Plagiarism) […]

  15. Guardian Angel on November 28th, 2007 7:47 am

    Hi! It has been quite a while since I have been looking for a post about his on-line theft prevention, and I am glad to see your site through google alerts. Now I can safely say that somehow I am protecting my self. Another thing, though I have only less than a thousand visitors per day, I think I should have this copyscape widget, it makes sense. Being new here, I really want to thank you for such great tips!

  16. Kelly Jad'on on November 28th, 2007 8:27 am

    Great article! I myself have been a victim of splogging. Here is another article on the subject: http://desicritics.org/2007/09/04/062516.php

    Kelly Jad’on
    http://www.BasilAndSpice.com

  17. Jonathan Bailey on November 28th, 2007 10:53 am

    Kelly: Thanks for the compliments and for the link. Great article!

  18. How to stop content theft–Blog Magazine on November 28th, 2007 12:00 pm

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft is a simple, specific, step-by-step guide to stopping sploggers and content thieves. […]

  19. Paul Egges on November 28th, 2007 9:35 pm

    What about images? I’ve found were images from one company was used by another.

  20. Jonathan Bailey on November 29th, 2007 2:00 am

    Paul: Detecting images is tricky, but the rest of the steps pretty much remain the same. I’m working on a new method to detect image plagiarism and I should have something about that on this site and mine soon.

    However, since you already found the plagiarism, steps 2-6 still apply pretty much the same as if it were text. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!

  21. ThemePassion - Best stuff about design! » The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft on November 29th, 2007 4:49 am

    […] kellyohair wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptWith spammers and plagiarists becoming more prolific and more aggressive than ever, content theft is no longer a matter of “if”, but “when”. Where once protecting content was the realm of lawyers and billion-dollar industries, … […]

  22. Cristina will help you. » Before you copy and paste… on November 30th, 2007 7:20 pm

    […] read The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft […]

  23. BlogBuzz December 1, 2007 » Webmaster-Source on December 1st, 2007 5:15 am

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft […]

  24. Jonathan Dingman on December 1st, 2007 9:46 pm

    I actually fly on the other side of the spectrum.

    I do not like anyone re-printing — scrapping it — because it doesn’t actually add any value to the web.

    If someone wants to take an excerpt from my article, great! I would happily allow that.

    But do not, by any means, just copy text from my article or re-print it with some random name as the link back — or not even linking back at all.

    I simply do not like sploggers. It’s just cluttering up the Internet more and more everyday with more worthless crap.

  25. Jonathan Bailey on December 1st, 2007 10:14 pm

    Jonathan: Though I agree that I don’t like any and all spam bloggers, I have also grown to realize that limited reuse can have a purpose, especially if it is targeted at different audiences.

    However, I have to say that the amount of reuse I consider to be acceptable has gone down in recent years, mainly due to spam blogging. Sure, some people use my content in ways that I would gladly permit under my CC licenses, but it seems the bulk of reuse I’m seeing comes from spammers and junk purveyors.

    I guess you hit at a good point, we should stop and ask not so much if this is good for us, but good for the Web. No easy answers there that I see.

    Thank you for your input.

  26. This Week’s Bookmarks at Not So Relevant on December 2nd, 2007 3:04 am

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald […]

  27. Jonathan Dingman on December 3rd, 2007 12:29 am

    Jonathan,

    I agree with you to a certain degree about re-producing content, but from a search engine’s point of view, it’s just a bunch of crap.

    That’s why I take such a firm stance on copying any of my content. I don’t show full feeds RSS anymore, only partial, because so many people were stealing my content.

    My subscriber rate went up and so did my traffic, so the switch was good for me.

    But aside from that, I always want to keep the web’s best interest at heart. The web only exists because people like us exist. If webmasters didn’t care, Google would just have a search engine full of pay per click ads and make money on every single click — and they wouldn’t even need organic search (and they wouldn’t care whether someone re-produced your content or not).

    Just another note from my side of things.

    Thanks for the great article again, it’s a good write-up.

  28. links for 2007-12-07 « AB’s reflections on December 7th, 2007 3:27 pm

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald (tags: copyright plagiarism theft howto) […]

  29. Sunday Links 1 | Earn Blogger on December 9th, 2007 1:04 am

    […] you a victim of content theft? Read “The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft” to stop it […]

  30. Blog Plagiarism @ Jupiter Media? | Scott Clark - Finding the Sweet Spot on December 9th, 2007 9:16 am

    […] this is happening to you, there are some great resources on the issue you should check out.  But most importantly, keep your cool and enjoy […]

  31. Improve Your Blog: Usability : The Blog Herald on December 12th, 2007 1:08 am

    […] legal policies pages are called “Policies” or specifically labeled as Copyright and Comment Policies, along with access, accessibility, and other legal policies your blog may […]

  32. bonq.net/flipp » Blog Archive » daily del.icio.us on December 13th, 2007 9:59 am

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald (tags: wordpress theft article content blogging Plagiarism copyright) […]

  33. Protecting your work from content theft online « Brainripples on December 18th, 2007 10:47 am

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft […]

  34. What Do You Want Gone From the Web in 2008? : The Blog Herald on December 20th, 2007 10:47 am

    […] one of the biggest industries on the web, making money off your content. I predict that unless content theft is stopped, unless life for scrapers are made really miserable, the plagiarism business will grow to compete […]

  35. Senuf on December 30th, 2007 8:34 pm

    Hello. Your article is NECESSARY stuff, indeed. I bookmarked it, and I’ll add a link to it from my blog, if you don’t mind (anyway, nobody reads my blog, heheh –and don’t even try, Jonathan, it’s in spanish).

  36. I Need to Comment More. Don’t You? : The Blog Herald on January 10th, 2008 6:20 am

    […] be dismayed to find out that this also uncovers splogs, scrapers, and copyright violators. You can deal with them, too, but let’s focus on blogs with something of value said about […]

  37. links for 2008-01-12 » eWhisper.net on January 11th, 2008 7:37 pm

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft : The Blog Herald Nice article on stopping content theft. In conjunction with my post on getting traffic from scrapers, these seem to work well together. http://www.ewhisper.net/blog/scraper-sites-steal-your-content-use-them-to-build-your-traffic/ (tags: copyright) Powered by Gregarious (42) Share This Possibly Related Posts: links for 2008-01-11links for 2008-01-05links for 2008-01-04How Bloggers Make MoneyJim on “Link Pages” […]

  38. (EMP) E-Marketing Performance » : » Team Reading List 1.14.08 on January 14th, 2008 3:27 pm

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  39. Seo Design Solutions on January 17th, 2008 12:44 am

    Great information:

    As your writing skills increase, you are more open to these types of flattery/attack. Sometimes you just want to shake them down so you can confront them with a “Dude, write your own”! Warning, but oftentimes, the webmasters just use harvesting tools and fake aliases for the domain info. Great tips, thanks.

  40. Bud on January 18th, 2008 5:13 pm

    Great article, I have been having some issues with my blog getting scraped by a few sites. I will try some of these things and hopefully I can get it resolved. I really hate how you work on writing something and people steal it to try and benefit themselves.

    Bud
    http://www.budcalabrese.com

  41. The LC on the DL » Blog Archive » links for 2008-02-07 on February 6th, 2008 8:25 pm

    […] Post describing how to stop theft of your posts as well as links and tools to help you. Steps necessary to stop sites from stealing your work. Includes links to DMCA contacts, advertisers, form letters, and more. (tags: Blogging Legal Reference plagiarism copyright) Posted by linuxchic Filed in Links for the Day Leave a Reply […]

  42. Protect Your Most Valuable Blog Resource, Stop Content Scraping and Plagiarism | WordPress Philippines on February 27th, 2008 7:02 am

    […] 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft. These are six long and tough steps, but if you value your work, you will be thankful when it gets […]

  43. Breaking Trust: How Not To Link to a Plagiarist : The Blog Herald on March 4th, 2008 1:06 pm

    […] a comment. This warns the plagiarist and future visitors that this is not original content. And take action to stop them from plagiarizing you and […]

  44. Blogs Are Public Documents - Bloggers and Commenters Beware : The Blog Herald on March 17th, 2008 7:48 pm

    […] Expect spam and splogs. […]

  45. Blogging is About Writing - and Not : The Blog Herald on March 25th, 2008 11:27 am

    […] and Jonathan Bailey’s fantastic articles, 5 Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False and The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft for the basics of copyright as it applies to blogging, and follow their links and resources for […]

  46. Cleaning Blogspot Spam: Is Google Responding to Public Pressure? : The Blog Herald on April 1st, 2008 8:30 am

    […] to my search question. I plowed through page after page of spam blogs and splogs, much containing copyright violating content and spinning spammers, although most of it was totally unintelligible collections of […]

  47. Ways to prevent content theft | Make Money Market Porn on April 30th, 2008 10:53 pm

    […] The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft Blog Herald November 26, 2007 By Jonathan Bailey […]

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