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When people steal your content....how do you handle it?

by midwestmedia
16 replies
Just wondering how those of you who find your content stolen and spun deal with the thief? I'm finding so much of my content stolen lately (guess it must have been pretty good! ha!) but it's spun into total and utter crap that I can't even believe that someone would use it and put their name on it.

Also sad to say it was a Warrior who did it this time. I know we can't deal with it here, but what off-WF methods do you use to deal with content theft? I'm not saying I'm out for blood on this one, because the guy is clearly a moron to do what he did to another Warrior, but I'd like to get a message across and hopefully scare some of these idiots straight.

Any ideas?
#article spinning #contenthow #handle #people #steal #stealing articles #stolen content #theft
  • Profile picture of the author Fun to Write
    If it's articles I've written, I don't do anything.

    However, when someone ripped off original copy on my review site and was getting ranked in the serps for it, I complained to the third party site the content was posted on, and they took it down. I also notified Clickbank, because the reviews were promoting products from there.

    I also tried contacting the perp, but got no response. Anyway, I think I was mostly successful. You could also find out who their host is and file a complaint.

    Be strong in your insistence that this is your original content and you don't like this person ripping you off.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wide
    I yell at my monitor like I normally do ... that's about it
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  • Profile picture of the author midwestmedia
    In this case, it's an article but it's one written to drive traffic toward my #1 affiliate program so as you can imagine, I'm a little ticked.

    What just gets me is this guy claims to be an expert on website security and SEO. =) Irony anyone?

    I guess I'm going to have to go over his head to his ISP. He has literally dozens of similarly spun and stolen articles so this shouldn't be too hard to take care of. I was just wondering if there are some more creative ways of dealing with this. I had to get a lawyer involved with a cease and desist once before (helps having an attorney in my inner circle!). Clearly these people need to learn the hard way, but hey....they also probably aren't geniuses in the first place if they can't string together their own coherent article. Who'd trust this guy with anything?
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  • Profile picture of the author CyberSorcerer
    This happens a lot and not much really you can do about it. Unless you want to get lawyer's involved, waste a lot of time, and normally for nothing because the people don't have any money anyway to pay restitution in the first place. All you end up getting in the long run is just a judgement against them.

    Take any paragraph on EZA and put it into Google and look at the SERPS. Take a look at how many times the article is used, outright, but the resource box is changed to someone elses affiliate links, home page, etc.

    That's why I tell my students to use EZA as part of your marketing plan and for backlink juice. Because chances are your resource box is going to be taken out and changed anyway so you can't count ALL the times your article will be copied in this way and reused as possible backlinks to Your site.
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  • Profile picture of the author TomVa
    That sucks, you should out them at least by name so we can watch out for them! OR pm me so I can watch out for them! Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author midwestmedia
      Originally Posted by TomVa View Post

      That sucks, you should out them at least by name so we can watch out for them! OR pm me so I can watch out for them! Thanks
      Sorry, no can do. Against the rules of the Warrior Forum to out someone. I'm more looking for strategies to knock one person out of the plagiarism game. I know I can't go after every single one, especially the anonymous ones but this is someone with a real name, real site etc....This person is apparently also advising others on SEO so my goal to stop this person is to hopefully stop the bad advice/services that go out there in our community and make trouble for we honest ones.


      Commented on the article telling him to remove it. Of course my comment is "in moderation". My attorney is ready and willing to contact his ISP and it won't cost me a minute of time or a dime (attorney is one of my very good friends). So I'm out for a little "education" for this guy but wondered if anyone did anything other than the legal route. This one seems to be ripe for the picking since he was dumb enough to put his name out there on everything he stole.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Powers
    In this case, I think the best way is to contact the owner of the website which have your article copied with no any permission form you. If he is a kind man, he will delete that article, but if he don't delete the article, I think you can deal with this issue by means of legal.
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  • Profile picture of the author midwestmedia
    He has an EzineArticles author account. Shocker.... Pretty sure that EZA isn't a fan of one author stealing from another especially when the stolen article came directly from them. If I was a betting woman I'd guess that every piece of content on that one site of his (haven't checked other sites) is stolen as well.

    A tweet to him and two article comments went ignored, so it looks like the ISP is going to be contacted after all.

    What makes this all so stupid is that writing articles may not be someone's favorite thing to do, but there's an ample supply of good writers right here on the Warrior Forum where he's a member that he could pay to write for him. Unless he's not as financially successful as he's trying to let on...I mean, $5 to $10 from a beginning writer would be ten times better than the article he spun my really good article into. It's complete crap. His name is all over the site and he's let that be the impression he leaves for visitors?

    I think someone needs to spend some more time on the WF and actually LEARN a thing or two.
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  • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
    I release the feelings immediately. I let the person go.

    What you fight against persists. What you release on goes away, almost like magic.

    I couldn't possibly control all the usage of my thousands of articles and blog posts. In the beginning I tried to. Eventually I stopped fighting and looked at it as a compliment.

    We live in a universe of abundance. When you lose the idea of scarcity nobody could ever take a thing from you, because when you release anything with ease something so much better shows up.

    It's a challenge to adopt this mindset up front but the mental effort is well worth it.

    All the best

    RB
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    • Profile picture of the author midwestmedia
      Originally Posted by ryanbiddulph View Post

      I release the feelings immediately. I let the person go.

      What you fight against persists. What you release on goes away, almost like magic.

      I couldn't possibly control all the usage of my thousands of articles and blog posts. In the beginning I tried to. Eventually I stopped fighting and looked at it as a compliment.

      We live in a universe of abundance. When you lose the idea of scarcity nobody could ever take a thing from you, because when you release anything with ease something so much better shows up.

      It's a challenge to adopt this mindset up front but the mental effort is well worth it.

      All the best

      RB
      That's great advice and usually my philosophy about a lot of things. But this one...this one gets me because it's someone who is a member of a circle (or two) that I also belong to. I've had content stolen for years. I ignore about 99% of it and brush it off. But every once in awhile, the need for karma causes me to want to spend an hour or two "teaching". =)

      I just think there needs to be a time when people who follow the rules and are in a position to "teach" hold people accountable so that the equilibrium between ethical and non-ethical stays a bit more in balance. Of course when you cut the head off one threat, another springs up in its place. But when a person has put themselves (this guy) in a position of supposed "authority" about traffic generation and SEO, it's almost incumbent upon someone to if not stop the person, at least throw up a roadblock and keep that one threat from creating more via his "expertise".

      Believe me, once the ISP is contacted I'll let the ISP do what they need to do. My efforts to communicate with this person have fallen on deaf ears. He's been given a chance to just delete the article. This isn't a stupid person who can claim ignorance. But if everyone is given a pass 100% of the time I don't see how newbies will ever learn from these mistakes. Sometimes that 1% of the time needs to be taken to the next step, at least in my opinion.

      But you're right about abundance. But...I also have a strong sense of justice about things like blatant stealing. Feels like it deserves a few minutes of time.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnyeo90
    Maybe get some legal advice and sue the website owner..
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author midwestmedia
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Did you know some types of content theft can actually help you?

      http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...-can-help.html
      All links were stripped. No indication that it ever belonged to anyone else. No images either. Believe me, if there were images involved, I would have changed all the hotlinked images. I've done that before and it was very, um...cathartic.
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  • Profile picture of the author rockfuse
    who cares , you will rank higher always anyways. I get my stuff stolen all the time and it never has affected my serps or my sales. I just do it better dont forget it matters on how well you rank at the end on serps
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    • Profile picture of the author patey88
      Originally Posted by rockfuse View Post

      who cares , you will rank higher always anyways.
      This wasn't true for me. One of my most productive articles, sitting on page one of google, was stolen by a very large site. It quickly took my page one spot, and the copy on my site moved down to page 10.

      I spent weeks being angry about it, but then I realized that I knew that an article on my site, with that title, optimized for that keyword phrase, could rank on page one as long as it was unique. So I had it rewritten. (I tried rewriting it myself, but I was still too angry to think straight so I asked someone else to do it.)

      The rewrite worked, and I was back on page one, above my stolen original article. So from now on, that's what I'll be doing when content I care about gets stolen. -- Patey
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  • Profile picture of the author darkmaster
    Gather proof that the content is actually yours. A registered document with the US Copyright office is best but if you don't have it registered then you need to use proof from a third party online, i.e., an electronic copy (save a browser copy) of Google's cache of your page or website with a date. Hopefully you have already done this previous to the date the content was stolen. Alternatively, if you allowed anyone else to post the data on their site, with your permission, possibly in a newsletter with a date on it PREVIOUS to the copyright infringement, then include that URL in your letter. If your website with the stolen content has been online more than 1 year you can provide a link to the Way Back Machine which keeps copies of websites and will provide 3rd party proof who had the content online first. This does not prove ownership but does prove when it was first published.

    If i were you then i would do above.

    --
    Thanks
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