How To Handle Content Stealers
July 8, 2009 by Admin
Filed under Exclusive Articles, Work At Home, e-Work At Home
Content stealing or plagiarizing is like a bad virus. It’s rampant and grows like cancer. It wrecks people’s lives giving the innocent added stress and the stealer’s a bad reputation.
No longer are content stealers stereotyped as unprofessional people, although in the true sense of the word that is what they are. Content stealers have no race and it’s not gender specific; there are no boundaries. I’m seeing more and more plagiarizers who are business professionals. They are your Virtual Assistants, web designers, known gurus in their niches and other people who have good online web presence.
There’s never a good enough reason anyone should resort to stealing content. There just isn’t.
You can say all your work is copyrighted, disable right click (which really doesn’t work) and put up the Copyscape banner, but that doesn’t deter someone to steal from you. If you find your work stolen you can do several things, but it doesn’t always guarantee a positive outcome.
1. Contact the content stealer – This doesn’t often work. Many will ignore your emails even with a cease and desist order. The truly unsuspecting will respond and remove your content especially if they paid someone to create their website. They may even apologize which has happened to me.
2. Contact their web hosting – You can find who their web hosting is either on the footer of their website or through WhoIs – http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
If they don’t use paid web hosting, contact the free web host.
3. Contact Google and other search engines. If they have paid advertisers on their site, you can contact them too to let them know.
4. Contact your attorney. It may be your last resort or first resort.
Be mindful of what you reprint online as well. Read the website’s terms of service or privacy policy. Don’t get yourself in a legal battle and always guard your reputation. You only have one and it’s a lot harder to dig yourself out with a fork.
Copyright © 2009 Sophia McIntyre, Work At Home Business Options
All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced or reprinted for publication.
First off, thank you very much for writing about this topic and bringing more attention to it. On that front, I wanted to add a few thoughts and suggestions.
First, rather than trying to find the host through a Whois tool, which really isn’t right for that purpose, I would like to recommend whoishostingthis.com, it’s a great site that takes nearly all of the work out of finding who the host is. Also, domaintools.com is a great alternative.
Second, when contacting the host or the search engines, it is important to file a DMCA-compliant notice to get them to take action. If needed, I have stock letters on my site you are free to use.
Finally, remember that you need to register your work with the Copyright Office before you can sue in the U.S. That is an important step and something to weigh before calling an attorney.
On that note, I hope that this helps and please let me know if there is anything that I can do to assist!
Jonathon,
Thank you for mentioning the extra links and added information. This certainly helps a lot. I hope others won’t find the need to use the stock letters, but if they find themselves in this unfortunate situation, I will let them know where they can find the letters if they need assistance.
Sophia