Stealing Content

Very interesting! I would like to know if there are also any legal steps that could be taken. Especiaaly seeing that is seems to be impossible to contact the site owner.

What comes to mind is checking them up in the whois database and also taking their IP address and look it up in order to contact their host.

Remarques, from what I see it is a shared IP address from a German hosting company. Might like to use this:

ip-lookup (dot)net/

I agree with GiftSolution.

When information is your product, you need to be as proactive as you can. In some cases, that is not enough and therefore you need to be reactive.

Even though your articles are free, they are still your articles. As your content, you are using them to develop your brand. To have someone post it without giving credit clearly is not right. Yes, you have the right to be angry and to get that person to stop.

If you cannot find the hosting info on the site, goto www.whois.net/ to get his information. I would do this asap so it does not linger.

People need to be taught a lesson. You have attempted to contact the owner in good faith - time for him/her to be taught what the consequences are.

Paul.

Paul your comment is appreciated but unfortunately for me you fall into the usual camps I described in my earlier post. Why aren't people more upset about this? Just let them walk over you?? How about giving them a tax credit for their business while we are at it. The people that do it feel they are entitled to do it. That is no way to reward hard workers letting slugs work off their efforts. But yes I know it is an uphill fight that is readily accepted nowadays.

If the person is making money from Adsense, you could try contacting Google about this. Maybe they will ban that person from Adsense if you can prove the stealing.

I haven't done this myself, but I think I've heard about doing this in another forum.

Suzanne beat me to it! If you really want it to stop, this is your best option. Unfortunately, there are plenty of jerks out there who just going around stealing content.

thanks for the link. i am tired of morons, stealing my contend.
it's get even time!

There are five steps you can take... Often, you will never need to pass step two...

1. Contact the site owner, where the stolen content resides. Allow 7 days to resolve issue;

2. Use whois.domaintools.com/domain_name.com to fine the web host of the offender. Send the DMCA to the web hosting company. Web host will either take down offending content or suspend the account of the offender;

3. If web host does not respond, contact upline service provider;

4. File DMCA complaint with Google... You have to fax info to them, but they will remove offending site (ban) from their index; and

5. Contact an attorney and seek legal recourse.

In my case, Step 1 is 90% effective... Step 2 resolves all open and unresolved issues...

That's more or less that you can do to be honest ... Otherwise, your solutions is contact the webhost , himself -not sure if it's gonna get you anything to be honest-

Of course the lawyer would say that, he'll make a lot more money with the suit At least with online trademark, considering the costs incurred, etc., it is pretty foolish to take this tact, certainly.

Tom

As you become larger and more successful, you will have more content stolen. Sure, you can speak with lawyers, file DMCA notices, email hosts and monetization programs, etc. But in the end, what will you gain for your... 2? 6? 24? hours of trouble? How much is your time worth to you?

The amount of theft, dirty tricks, online and business attacks, etc. never ceases to amaze me. But what it really comes down to is this one issue: How is your time best spent? Building and growing your business, or chasing down an increasing number of thieves and scumbags who are out to screw you over? Trust me, as your business grows and expands, you will have more issues like this that occur every day. Imagine some day when you have literally thousands or even millions of pages of content under your control... will it be worth your time to chase down the 5,000 new stolen content items (or even whole websites) every single day?

It stinks, but part of the learning process in this business is learning how to pick your battles (time management). Sure, you can spend 4 hours worrying about and chasing down this one thief, but how much more money could you have made if you had spent that 4 hours building out content or link creation or contact building or ??

Oh, and it is NEVER EVER OK to take someone else's content and attribute it to them unless they explicitly state that this method of distribution is OK. That's like someone taking my lawn gnomes and leaving a note at their house thanking me for the use of my gnomes. Not cool. If people want their content to be copied, they will let you know on their site, and you and 5.000 other people will be using that same content.

Good luck, and remember, your time is valuable!

Gary thank you. Articlesbase is the site I used. The offender had his own blog/site.

Oh, I can certainly pay my lawyer $400 an hour to follow the standard escalation for every case of theft that I identify. But I'm sure that every single day there are at least 50 incidents of my content being stolen that I can follow through on. Certainly not worth the money (to me) when I look at the big picture of my business and the opportunity costs of my time and money.

I don't mean to say that I like "sucking it up" when yet another clown steals the fruits of my hard work; it really ticks me off every single time. But over the years (and after following through what must be over 200 different incidents of theft of my content in the last 9 years) I have learned that if I had spent all of that time and mental energy on further building out my business instead of chasing scumbags (which never ends up satisfying my angst), I could have made that much more money with that time spent.

So sure, there is plenty that you can do after the fact when your content is stolen. But after you've payed your lawyer to track down and take legal action against some random guy running a scraper in Lithuania, what are you left with? A $600 bill and 49 more thieves to chase after on any given day. I honestly can't afford to try to change the world. What I can afford to do is focus my time, energy, and financial resources on things that will end up helping my business become more successful.

Having said all of that, you are absolutely right; our lawyers are there to save us not only time, but help us sleep a little better at night knowing that we have someone on our side with bigger guns than we have.

I've noticed Google and most search engines and some social media/networking sites allow you to inform them of spam or duplicate content to have it removed.

Then I would approach the hosting provider of that domain, you can find that by typing the domain at cqcounter.com/whois

I would also include the word fraud, stolen,etc. when contacting the abuse@ hosting provider and support@,etc. They seem to respond to idea that someone on their networking is doing something illegal.

If you have a lawyer that draft you a simple one pager, you might get to your goal of removing the domain faster - if you have that fax and emailed to the host provider.

Hope that helps.

I feel like the response to this subject depends on where you are in your IM journey.

People who have a thousands of pages of content generally feel like building more content is a far more productive path than chasing a crook who'll just be replaced by another once he's shut down. While that is the smart call, if you're just getting started, it hurts on a territorial level when someone steals 4 of your 8 published articles.

For those having trouble with the concept, think of "serial refunders". Someone making several thousand dollars a month in commission just accepts that a certain percentage of people will request a refund for no good reason. When you're making $30 dollars a month, that's a much more difficult thing to calmly accept.

I think my personal opinion lies somewhere in the middle. If I happen to run across someone stealing my content during my normal research, I'll do the DCMA thing. I won't spend valuable time scouring the web looking for dupes of my content (even though I'm sure that it's out there).

That is a great idea! I haven't thought of that... but you're right... it may not stop all, but the ones who may not know any better, may make them think twice. Great info!

That just make it all the more pitiful to be stolen from. Trying to get a start and some jerk with a bigger business and a lack of kahunas uses you for a content warehouse. That's the kind of person that makes you feel that fun equals turning someone into bloody pulp.

You got it HeySal lol! I have over 40 articles ready for when I launch all with great keywords. I finished adding the copyright to the end of each as you mentioned, AWESOME, so we will see what the outcome is.

Raquel,
Its a sad world online and physical that people have no remorse for actions that hurt others, expecially with all the hard work we have put in and they get a free pass. Its good that you took action. At least you were able to get some of it taken care of. Sad thing is we can't win it all. UUGGHH!!

All we can do is continue to learn and fight for what is right and try to use tips and experiences that others share.

Just a followup. I was not able to contact the blog owner himself like earlier noted. But I did WhoIs and sent an email to his hosting Co with both links(my article and Blog owners). The hosting company contacted him and asked him to take down offending page which he did. The hosting Co said they do prefer people trying to contact owner before contacting them though. Thanks for all replies.

Writing awesome content, and then someone else simply copies it and, It may be annoying and frustrating, but in the long run your better of not wasting your time with them.

With the time your spending pursuing the webmasters, you could be writing more articles and further establishing your site. Time is money.

If you really want to have this problem taken care of then consider outsourcing.