How to stop my content from being stolen?

Jonathan · #1 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 03:31 PM

********.com is copying my content onto his site. He's someone from Indonesia, according to the WHOIS information.

Any advice for how to find his ISP and contact them? I'm already sending him an email telling him to take my stuff down.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 03:46 PM

Have you tried contacting the web host? You should be able to tell where the site is hosted by the WHOIS info. I haven't had much luck with that because the hosting companies really want to keep them as a customer because it's money for them. But I know those who have had luck with this method.

Jonathan · #3 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 03:52 PM

I'm trying to find out who their host is.

His name was registered through GoDaddy. I'm about to call them and ask for assistance.

Jonathan · #4 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 04:36 PM

On the phone with GoDaddy, his domain owner.

I found out his web host. This site is useful: http://whois.domaintools.com/

Update
I called GoDaddy. At first the guy said, "I don't see where your work is copyrighted." I almost jumped through the phone at him! I told him to scroll down to the bottom and see my copyright symbol and notice and all that. He did and he recommended I email copyrightclaims@godaddy.com, so I just did that and we'll see what happens.

I also emailed him and his web host.

It's not too big of a deal, but I'm interested to see how this is handled. Heck, he even links back to my site because my own posts link to myself.

I'd imagine you have had to deal with this issue a lot, eh Lisa? Fortunately for us, these cheaters rarely succeed, if ever.

Ileane · #5 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 06:11 PM

Jonathan,
Thanks for the link to domain tools. I am going to stay posted to find out the outcome of this. Copyright can be very tricky, and I am hoping that GoDaddy responds in a timely fashion.
Ileane

sgtmac66 · #6 (**permalink**) 10-05-2009, 07:42 PM

This is very interesting, and I also would like to see how this turns out. I ran across this sort of thing, back in 2004 or so. Had a friend with a very large military site. Was a guy in California who went around stealing content, from every military site on the web. He was able to do this by having many emails...(I think he had over a thousand) and a ton of fake names.

The only way back then was my friend posted his website and a warning in big orange letters on the bottom of every page. All of us who had links also advertised the warning. As far as I know this fellow is still online. I'm unaware if anything was ever done to this fella, but word sure got around.

He did a lot of sneaky stuff, befriend us then stole our stuff.

Like Lisa suggested, I think the only way these days is to submit a request to the IP of the offending person and have them deal with it. It's a sad fact, that a lot of people on the net can't come up with their own content or at least have the decency to ask to use it.

As a side note, I use a lot of mixed content, both mine and others. I keep good files, am always polite and always ask for permission. You would be surprised how many sites actually give me permission, then thank me for asking permission first. It always surprises me, that someone figures it's easier to steal from someone, then send a quick one or two sentence email, asking or permission.

Keep us posted.

TechieGuy · #7 (**permalink**) 10-06-2009, 06:32 AM

I used to have someone that stole my content, and I got no reply from him. The next step I did was to contact AdSense, since he used it on his blog. A little while later, I noticed the blog wasn't even functional anymore.

One thing I do like to do is use Google's Alerts to find links to my blog. Much like you, I create links that point back to my blog, so any new links detected by Google will be sent to me.

Jonathan · #8 (**permalink**) 10-06-2009, 08:41 AM

I was hoping GoDaddy would freeze his domain, but instead they say:

Quote:

We are not hosting this site. We are the domain name registrar only. We have no access to, nor jurisdiction over the content on this site.

So now it's up to the webmaster or his host to do the right thing. I'm not particularly optimistic that they will, but we'll see. In the end, it doesn't matter much. Like Ken Evoy pointed out in an article about copyrights, people who steal content are rarely successful anyway, and the best thing to do is just continue to focus on writing good content.

Apparently the webmaster is a young guy in Indonesia. I saw some pictures of him. Just a kid trying to grab some of those U.S. dollars. Around 49% of the population there lives on less than $2 a day, so even making $5 a day from Adsense would do you pretty good.

* UPDATE *
I just checked his web site and it appears he has taken my content down. That's a pleasant surprise! I'm going to check on his site occasionally in the future but it looks like things are good.

This was a good learning experience. At the very least, now I know that GoDaddy won't help in cases like this.

meanne2007 · #9 (**permalink**) 10-13-2009, 08:29 PM

Try to find the contact and send letter to them, if they not respond..report it to google or other search engine.

hcrespo · #10 (**permalink**) 01-26-2010, 02:54 PM

Can you tell me where I can get my material copywrite.
Thanks
Arlene

Kevtheman · #11 (**permalink**) 01-26-2010, 06:32 PM

The minute you create mateial it is copyrighted to you. The copyright symbol is just and added emphasis. You can take the symbol from almost any sites footer and put it on your own.

Barupa · #12 (**permalink**) 01-27-2010, 04:20 PM

You can use something called Copyscape and it will find copied stuff from the internet. Just search for that name and look to see what they offer.

here2read · #13 (**permalink**) 01-28-2010, 12:05 AM

Ya I agree with Barupa, copyscape is good , I have seen many sites using it as an anti theft tool.

Christine · #14 (**permalink**) 02-05-2010, 07:20 AM

I believe there's an option available in google webmasters tools whereby you can submit a complaint to google about the duplicate content issue. This was related to me once by a close friend who said that after the complaint submission, the offending site was eventually removed from google index. This means they can still copy every single word but that won't make any difference at all. How about DMCA approach?

zizee · #15 (**permalink**) 02-17-2010, 05:53 AM

As much as I hate the DMCA legislation I agree with Christine that it might be worth a shot. Mind you, if the site is really being hosted outside the US it probably won't work.

I think you should definitely contact google. Not just to prevent your material being used unfairly by others, but also to ensure google doesn't penalise you for having "duplicate" material. (although I'm sure that google knows who had the material first).

I'll be really interested to hear how this works out for you, so let us know the result.

Good luck!

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