If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I know it may not be obvious so you may not believe this, but I put a ton of work into writing the posts on this site. Imagine my surprise to find my article on "How to Customize Your WordPress Header." displayed prominently on a site registered to a Pakistan ISP.
This site basically copied the entire article including my images (which they didn't even rename) and removed anything that mentioned blogheaderguy.com or me and then posted it on their blog as their own content.
I had noticed someone accessing my images folder earlier in the week, which I shut down, but apprently this was the guy.
Needless to say, I could not believe my eyes and I literally went ballistic. Its not like I could go to Pakistan and pummel this guy. What was I going to do? I need to make a plan.
I have a copyright infringement letter from my signguy days that I modified to address the theft of my blog content and posted it in every comment box I could find on his blog.
Then, I sent an email to his contact address demanding immediate withdrawal of my copyrighted content, which was initially ignored.
What else could I do?
I found him on blogcatalog.com and posted my demand there in 300 words, no less. My original demand with proof was over 1500 words.
Since this person was profiting from my content, I decided to contact his advertisers. Most advertisers frown on splogs (spam blogs) and don't allow stolen content from its publishers. I sent them letters.
Their response was immediate and asked for exact addresses for proof, which I provided.
I found an awesome article on DevTopics.com entitled, Splogs: Spam Blogs and Stolen Content. You'll want to bookmark this article. Because if this should ever happen to you, it has very specific course of action to take.
I was working on filing my DMCA complaint, when I received an email from the content thief that simply read, "Ok, ok, ok."
My content was removed and all was right with the world. Well, the Blog Header Guy world anyway.
A friend asked me how I ever found out about this in the first place. can you believe they signed up for my free blog header drawing.
Just between you and me, there's not a chance in %$#@ that'll ever happen.
Roy
.jpg)
digital content theft is unfortunately fairly common, and there's a gray area over what constitutes actual infringement and what is considered commentary (just ask ashley morgan http://www.upstartblogger.com — i'm sure he could write you a novel!). typically the easiest way to address the issue is to send whoever is hosting the infringing content (in this case their web host) a DMCA complaint (which you can find templates of around the internet). worst case scenario if you can't find their webhost, you could do a WHOIS and at least pull up the domain registrar info, which may or may not lead you back to the isp. in a perfect world, you'd get straight through to their host and they'd pull down the site until the infringing content was removed, so it's just a matter of contacting their host.
that said, your method works even better, albeit a bit more time-consuming
chris´s last blog ..Free WordPress Plugin: Hello Ziggy
Hey Chris:
I appreciate the comment. I learned a big lesson and have started to researching ways to secure my stuff. Only the thing is, for every measure I take, there is a counter-measure. Apart from closing complete access to my blog, there will always be vulnerability issues.
Take care.
Roy
I had an entire article ripped off from my ezine, Getting It Write! I found out about it when I went to post the article on ezinearticles and they refused to accept it stating they found it already existed on another site! Luckily, like you I had proof of earlier publishing date and the site it was found on (an Indian writer had used it word for word, title included!) recanted and sent me an apology. And blocked the writer from writing/accessing their site. And then ezinearticles accepted it. But for a moment, I was horrified- especially when I received the 'sorry, but you have to publish original content and this article has appeared elsewhere' notice!!!
Usha