Handling Online Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement

[Michelle]

Since starting my blog just over 3 months ago, my content has already been scraped and stolen no less than 5 times. This makes me feel frustrated, somehow powerless and angry. It also makes part of me want to stop posting good stuff, even though I am gaining an honest readership and having fun blogging.

Have any of you experienced this? What do you do in these situations? Are there strategies, tips, advice you can give this newbie bloggirl?

[Jill]

I gave up trying, because it's a fulltime job to find it all and email the offenders. Most of the time they're in different countries and there's not much you can do.

It totally sucks, but just not worth the time and effort involved to fight it. Ideally, I'd get an attorney or something to send cease and desist orders out on a weekly basis, but there's no way that's going to be very cost effective.

I wouldn't suggest you give up writing though. Just think of it as part of the cost of doing business. e-mails to the worst offenders do sometimes help, so if there's not a ton out there yet, you might still be able to keep it under control.

[MartialDev]

See
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content « Lorelle on WordPress

[Dani]

Feel proud that your content is good enough that people want to steal it!

Do you know how many people wish they could write well enough that others want to steal it?

Also you then need to ask yourself, are you writing to share a message, or are you writing expressly to gain some sort of popularity, or reward?

If you are writing to share a message, then as above, be proud that your message is getting out.

[Jill]

If you are writing to share a message, then as above, be proud that your message is getting out.

Problem with that is that sometimes it gets out under someone else's byline.

[SeriousKidding.com]

I've had these same concerns. But, really, what can you actually do about it? I just keep writing and move on. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do all you can do to protect your work, it's just that it takes valuable time and money. But, it is one of the more frustrating things on the Web, without a doubt.

[Dani]

Originally Posted by Jill

Problem with that is that sometimes it gets out under someone else's byline.

People can rarely get, and maintain being, famous/popular/rich by constantly stealing from others. Because they can't sustain the ideas that they stole consistently. They will get caught out eventually. If someone was constantly stealing from me, that might be an issue, but once or twice here and there I wouldn't sweat over it.

It seriously is not worth the stress. You waste valuable time and energy worrying, getting angry writing furious emails etc. That you could have spent writing more posts and improving your energy, and getting your life on purpose.

If your work is that good that it's being stolen, people will eventually track you down and find the truth of it, if it stands out that much.

[Scorpio]

Besides from going after infringers, if you have any content you think is particularily valuable, try to get it out all over the place under your own name. Submit it to article directories, send it to carnivals, post it in forums. That way it will always be clear who the real author is.

[Steve Pavlina]

I usually deal with 5-10 cases of copyright infringement per week. Most of these are posted on free sites like MySpace. At that rate it's important to be fast. Just send a DMCA notice to the host, and let them handle it. This will normally get the content taken down within a few days, and it won't waste your time.

To find a site's host, you can use:
Complete Whois

Some links to report abuse for common domains:
Blogger-Blogspot Report Abuse
Microsoft & Live Spaces Report Abuse
Myspace Report Abuse

If you need a DMCA template, you can find one via Google very easily:
dmca template - Google Search

With practice you can complete and fire off a DMCA notice within about a minute.

If you see the site has Adsense ads on it, you can report the ToS violation to Google here and get their account shut down:
https://www.google.com/adsense/suppo...y?answer=18386