Don’t Steal My Content!

Tags: , , , , ,

Nobody likes it when they get their stuff stolen. No matter if it is personal goods or virtual goods, the end result is the same. You feel a little cheated. Well, this weekend I decided to fight back against some folks that were stealing content from one of my Web sites.

I ran across a Web site that was reposting content word for word from Firefox Facts.

Now I have seen maybe a post here or there taken from one of my blogs - that I can live with. Even if they are spam blogs - I can’t go around and fight every single one of them. This one though just made me mad. So what did I do?

Well first I contacted the Web site owner after doing a whois search on the domain name in question. That didn’t end up being too fruitful. After that I contacted his Web host and his Web host’s data center. Did that work? Yep.

As of right now the stolen content is off the Web and I feel good about getting these folks shut down. Now yes, they could go to another Web host and start all over again - that is the bad thing about these types of setups. I’ll be keeping an eye on them though. The lessoned to be learned here is do not steal my content! This guy picked the wrong geek to mess with.

If you want to read more about how you can protect your content, I would suggest checking this post out from Lorelle on Wordpress:

+ Applaud Those Who Warn You: Your Blog’s Content Is Being Stolen

Updated - Well it wasn’t The Planet that took them down. Apparently The Planet is happy to have them. Here is the response I got from their abuse team:

To Whom It May Concern:

Please note that below-referenced copyright infringement notice does not substantially comply with the required notification elements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (”DMCA”). Please note that we have not passed on the substantive merits of your claim.

So The Planet won’t take down a splogger or could it be since they were already taken down they can’t really do anything about it?

Related Posts

Bookmark and Share  

Filed Under: Hot Web Topics, Personal on January 29, 2007 at 8:00 am

Comments and Feedback

egon said on January 29, 2007 @ 9:30 am

I haven’t really had people blatantly steal my content, but I have had quite a bit of directly mirroring one of my articles in their frame. So it was my site, with a frame around it. I was upset at first, then a little confused, trying to decide if I should be upset. I mean, they were bringing me traffic and revenue, and it’s really not that different then coming to my site from an other link. They weren’t using my content as their own, because it was still my site. What would you do?

Mitch said on January 29, 2007 @ 10:29 am

Well in that case, it might be a little sticky. That might not be worth going after since it is still your Web site that people are seeing. I do believe though that there are (at least for WordPress) plugins that prevent your content from being loaded in an iframe.

clickfire said on January 29, 2007 @ 12:37 pm

Yeah, this has got to be one of the most annoying things, especially for a writer who tries to take some pride in his work. I am amazed at the people who think they are actually doing a good work by republishing an article without asking. Some people just don’t see intellectual property as property, it seems.

mEsoL said on January 29, 2007 @ 8:58 pm

Well Mitch, I already ask your permisssion if I can get your FirefoxFacts content to be translated to my own language before. I hope, I not the own that you point a finger at.

Vili Maunula said on January 31, 2007 @ 6:19 am

I’m painfully familiar with content theft. Even if you only maintain your websites as a recreational hobby, it hurts when someone just goes an copy-pastes an article or two. I have never really had much luck with contacting web hosts — they either ignore you or send a message back that they can’t really do much about it.

However, if the person stealing your content runs Adsense or other ads, one of the things that I have found to be the quickest way to deal with these things is to send a formal notice to the webmaster indicating that if the content is not immediately removed, you will submit a DMCA copyright notice to Google.

So far, all webmasters have rather removed the item than risked losing their Adsense subscription and possibly be removed from Google’s index. (Neither of these are really that probable, and going through the DMCA process is not exactly easy for an individual blogger, but it is usually enough to scare them.)

Vili Maunula said on January 31, 2007 @ 6:22 am

egon — Have you made sure that in addition to framing your website, they are not tinkering with your Adsense ads (if you run any)? I think that there are cases where they frame your site and change all the advertising point to their IDs, practically making money off your site.

I would also be a bit concerned about the possibility of the framed sites counting as double content for Google, and thus hurting your search engine rankings. But I don’t know how Google handles iFrames.

Dedicated Server Hosting provided by FastServers.Net
Mitch Keeler © 2008 - In Mitch We Trust!
Sitemap | RSS Feed | Privacy Policy | Go to Top