9 replies to this topic

[Mikl]

This is not directly related to SEO or marketing, but I'd appreciate some advice from you knowledgeable folk.

I am responsible for four websites, which between them have many thousands of pages of original material. I often coming across cases of blatant theft of this material: websites or bloggers who simply copy entire articles from my sites and publish them as their own, without permission and with no acknowledgement of any kind.

What's the best way of dealing with this?

I have tried writing friendly emails. I have tried threatening legal action. No luck.

I'd welcome your suggestions. (Or should I just learn to live with it?)

Mike

[Jill]

Please see last week's newsletter article on how to get copied content removed.

[Mikl]

Jill,

Many thanks. That looks very useful.

A follow-up question:

I followed the link you suggested re filing a DMCA complaint to have the content removed from Google. I understand now how to do that. But I'm confused about what that actually achieves.

Does "remove from Google" mean that the offending page won't show up in Google searches? Or is it only relevant to Google products like Blogger and Buzz? The reason I ask is that the article you referenced mentions specific Google products, but the general search engine isn't one of them.

Thanks again for your valuable help.

Mike

[Jill]

Yes, it removes it from Google searches. I think it instead shows a copy of the complaint.

[Mikl]

Thanks for the clarification, Jill. Removing the offending page from Google searches is a good start. I think I'll try a friendly approach to the perpetrator first, on the basis that it's better to get the page completely removed. If that doesn't work, I'll try the Google approach (and perhaps other search engines).

[copywriter]

To have the website's host take the page down completely, do this:


You can usually find it by pinging the domain. So in Windows you can do Start > Run > type in cmd and press Enter then type in "ping domainname.com" (no quotes) and it'll return the IP number tied to the site.

Then you can take that IP number and plug it into almost any Whois tool to find out who their hosting company is.

Look for an "abuse" email address for the hosting company and send your DMCA complaint to them. Tell them you've tried contacting the website several times with no success. Legally, I believe they have 48 hours to respond. If your info checks out, they will immediately delete the offending content from that website.

Done it several times. Works like charm.

[Mikl]

Excellent, Copywriter. Thanks very much. I'll follow your advice and report back on my success or otherwise.

[Mikl]

Success.

I followed Copywriter's good advice. I contacted the "abuse" person for each of the five sites that had ignored my earlier (friendly) emails. In three of the five cases, the offending pages were immediately removed.

Whether it's worth the effort is another matter, of course. On balance, it probably is. If a site publishes a word-for-word copy of one of my articles, the copy will compete with the original in search engine rankings.

It would be interesting to know what others think.

[Jill]

It really depends. You could spend hours every day keeping up on that sort of thing--time that could be better spent elsewhere. If the content is simply scraped on sites that aren't showing up before your original content anyway, then it's probably not worth the effort. But if the content is on a site that has a bit of authority and does show up in the search results, then that's another story.

[Mikl]

Yes, that sounds good sense, Jill. Thanks.