Adventures in Lifestyle Design from a Path Less Traveled
How to Destroy An Article Theif
In February, I was working on a relationship advice website. Not all of my pages on my website were indexed yet, and just for fun, I decided to check my site against Copyscape.
Of course I got some random dude on elance trying to pass my writing off as his own “fluent English” and win a job, but there was one other instance where a trashy celebrity blogger decided to do a cutsey Valentine’s Day post by stealing one of my articles. This really pissed me off for some reason.
I read a bit of the subject and most people said that this stuff happens all the time and that it’s a waste of time to fight it. I’m vengeful and spiteful though (some of my more charming qualities), so this wasn’t a good enough answer.
I developed two plans to deal with Mr. Michael Wheeler… er, I mean the unnamed trashy celebrity blogger.
Plan A:
Ask him to remove the article since it is in violation of my copyright.
Fortunately this worked. He took the article down. But what if the webmaster doesn’t do this? How can you kick someone in the balls over the internet?
Plan B:
1. Contact the offender’s hosting company and tell them that they are hosting a website that is in violation of your copyright.
2. Contact the offender’s hosting company’s bandwidth provider and tell them that they are providing bandwidth to a hosting company that is hosting a website that is in violation of your copyright.
3. Contact Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. and inform them that the offender’s website is contains stolen content that you produced. This will get the offender banned from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
4. Contact Google AdSense, Clickbank, other affiliate merchants, etc. that the offender is using to monetize the website and inform them that the offender has violated your copyright in an effort to promote their product or service. Suggest that they terminate their relationship with the offender in order to maintain the quality of their brand.
5. Contact any “friends,” partner blogs, or clients that the offender may list on his website and inform them that their buddy has some serious issues with copyright laws. Advise them to end any relationship with the offender in order to keep themselves from looking bad and stop the offender’s toxic reputation from spilling over onto them.
If you particularly petty and vindictive (like me) and enjoy watching someone self-destruct like a dying star collapsing on itself, feel free to cc the offender on all e-mails you send out. There is nothing quite as rewarding as making sure your enemy watches as you systematically destroy them.
Whether you choose Plan A or Plan B, the stolen content will be removed one way or the other. Congratulations! I hope you didn’t have too much fun.
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I’ve had this happen to me too many times to count, and although I used to get really riled up about it, write emails to the providers, and even went so far as to make a Google DMCA complaint in some cases, right now I usually feel I just don’t have the time to deal with most of them (even though I know I probably really should). Still, it’s good to see your actions are working. I really like the tip about cc’ing them when you make the complaints (wish I had thought of it earlier myself!). Good job – and keep at ‘em.
@Michelle, I only really care about this when I’m adding new content to my site and it hasn’t been indexed yet. As long as my pages are indexed, it doesn’t really matter to me if someone rips off an article since mine still counts as the original :)
You clearly outlined what it takes to bring these issues to bear. It isn’t petty and it isn’t vindictive to protect what is yours. Especially if a professional (who knows better) is stealing your stuff and not giving you credit, indexing or not.
@Joseph, Yeah, copyright laws are still very real. Unfortunately, there is a mentality that the internet is the new “wild west” where laws don’t apply and everything should be free. There are too many thieves out there to hunt them all down.
Oh man, remind me never to piss you off!
Seriously though. Good work, nice to have the options laid out clearly like that!
People can be really brainless – One guy I ‘told off’ for scraping one of my articles was shocked that the reason I was mad was because he had changed my links – Doh!
Keep up the good work :o)
@Rach, I saw a post on the Warrior Forum a week or so ago about how a thief stole some guy’s articles. Then the thief e-mailed the guy and accused him of stealing HIS articles. LOL! I guess he never heard of a time-stamp!
@Clayton Your concerns and reactions are being played out on a grand scale:
The Copy write coalition has some good info:
http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/category/resources/copyright/
The extreme of copy write protection is Righthaven which just sues people over copy write and doesn’t offer an option to remove the offending material. You at least offer a chance for people to make it right whether they are ignorant, or just thieves.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/stop-the-LVRJRIGHTHAVEN-witch-hunt/131089883577553
Here is an example of big corporate mentality of rich media tycoons who equate copy write infringement to stealing his red corvette. Never mind how his paper and papers like his have shafted small business owners like myself on ever increasing ad costs to advertise in such an outdated and archaic medium.
http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm/Copyright_theft_Were_not_taking_it_anymore.html?ref=164
Only a rich media mogul would come up with such a lame analogy. But hey, new media news reported by real people is eating the lunch of old school and out of touch rich media magnates like this.
Oooooh! I like this! Well done!
@Michelle thanks much. Don’t misunderstand. I don’t hate media tycoons, just douche-bag media tycoons. : ))
hi,
I have read a nice report on this
You may be interested to tell your reader about what we can do legally.
bye
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-avoid-duplicate-content-with-free-online-duplicate-content-checker-and-avoid-plagiarism-penalty