Somebody ripped my Ezine article verbatim!

13 years ago

This happened to me as well. Contact them and ask them to remove the article from their site or to include the resource box if they want to continue using the article. Let them know that if they do not do one or the other within 72 hours (or whatever time frame you choose) that you will take further action. You should also contact EzineArticles.

Some people do it intentionally, some out of ignorance. Give them the benefit of the doubt to start, and inform them that if they continue doing this sort of thing, they could end up being sued for unlawful use of copyrighted material. (Btw, I am not a lawyer so please do not regard this as formal legal advice.). In my situation the person removed the article shortly after I contacted them.

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robbeh

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Roell

Someone ripped my recently published Ezine article and posted in on their site without including the resource box/sig or the article source.

What's the normal method of having them remove it? Should you threaten legal action immediately or first use the kind/gentle approach?

Is it a website or another article directory?

Contact the hosting company the site is hosted with and make and file a complaint. If that doesn't work you can try and threaten legal action on their site.

Finally, don't worry too much about these fly by nighters, they come and go and never succeed.

Robbeh

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Roell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by robbeh

Is it a website or another article directory?

Contact the hosting company the site is hosted with and make and file a complaint. If that doesn't work you can try and threaten legal action on their site.

Finally, don't worry too much about these fly by nighters, they come and go and never succeed.

Robbeh

It's a cheesy Wordpress blog. I'll try Cali16's approach and assume they don't know about Ezine's TOS.

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Mehak

13 years ago

it may just be someone new not realising they can't use someone else's work. I would email them asking them politely to remove the article or use the signature box. Ask them to do this asap. If they dismiss it then I'd contact ezine and take action.

All the best

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E. Brian Rose

13 years ago

Send them a DMCA Takedown notice. Also, send it to their hosting company. You can find out who their hosting company is by going to Discover Who Hosts Any Website | Who Is Hosting This

You can get a sample DMCA Takedown Notice here DMCA Take Down Notice Sample Example | Internet Marketing Strategies by E Brian Rose

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Cali16

13 years ago

Originally Posted by E. Brian Rose

Send them a DMCA Takedown notice. Also, send it to their hosting company. You can find out who their hosting company is by going to Discover Who Hosts Any Website | Who Is Hosting This

You can get a sample DMCA Takedown Notice here DMCA Take Down Notice Sample Example | Internet Marketing Strategies by E Brian Rose

Thank you for posting this, Brian. I wasn't aware of the DMCA Takedown notice. In my case, they posted my article on their Squidoo lens so I was able to contact the person via the lens and didn't need to check the whois info.

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jrichy88

13 years ago

This happened with a series of my Youtube videos. Somebody ripped them, and then uploaded them on their own accounts and are using their own url in the description. I guess it was stupid of me not to watermark the videos with a url but they are good videos and its really annoying that someone has just stolen them, is there anything I can do about that?

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Floyd Fisher

13 years ago

Originally Posted by jrichy88

This happened with a series of my Youtube videos. Somebody ripped them, and then uploaded them on their own accounts and are using their own url in the description. I guess it was stupid of me not to watermark the videos with a url but they are good videos and its really annoying that someone has just stolen them, is there anything I can do about that?

You can flag them for copyright violation right there on the page.

This lets youtube know your content was stolen.

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Andyhenry

13 years ago

Originally Posted by jrichy88

This happened with a series of my Youtube videos. Somebody ripped them, and then uploaded them on their own accounts and are using their own url in the description. I guess it was stupid of me not to watermark the videos with a url but they are good videos and its really annoying that someone has just stolen them, is there anything I can do about that?

Unfortunately there are even people that come here advocating doing this to videos.... At least you learned you need to watermark them from now one. You can get their Youtube account closed pretty easily though so make sure you report it.

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Scoop

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Unfortunately there are even people that come here advocating doing this to videos.... At least you learned you need to watermark them from now one. You can get their Youtube account closed pretty easily though so make sure you report it.

I went on a webinar where some guy had developed software to rip videos off YouTube, alter them slightly (like, take a second off the length) and resubmit them with his own links. It was ingenious in a strange kind of way but I don't think I would want to base my business on ripping off other people's content.

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SEOFocused

13 years ago

my content got stilen before. one site published one of my blogpost word for word and when i found out, all i did was sending the site owner an email thru the contact form. i gave the site owner 48 hours to remove my content or i would notify google of DMCA violation in which case google would ban the site for hosting stolen/copied content. my article was removed within less than a day

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Floyd Fisher

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Roell

Someone ripped my recently published Ezine article and posted in on their site without including the resource box/sig or the article source.

What's the normal method of having them remove it? Should you threaten legal action immediately or first use the kind/gentle approach?

Ask first...DMCA later.

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gvannorman

13 years ago

How can you tell if someone has stolen your content? I mean if you randomly came across one of your articles on someones site then you got lucky. Imagine how much of this that goes on without your knowledge. Is there a method to find copycats?

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Roell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by gvannorman

How can you tell if someone has stolen your content? I mean if you randomly came across one of your articles on someones site then you got lucky. Imagine how much of this that goes on without your knowledge. Is there a method to find copycats?

Copyscape Plagiarism Checker - Duplicate Content Detection Software

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jaegirl75

13 years ago

Hey Brian, I didn't know there was such a thing: the takedown notice. That's great to have on hand. thanks!

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Chris Worner

13 years ago

Do they have adsense on the website? Inform Google that the site owner is committing copyright theft and they will lose their account.

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Roell 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Chris Worner

Do they have adsense on the website? Inform Google that the site owner is committing copyright theft and they will lose their account.

No monetization as far as I can see...this clown's using the wordpress generic "starter" theme:rolleyes:
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Cali16

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Chris Worner

Do they have adsense on the website? Inform Google that the site owner is committing copyright theft and they will lose their account.

Thank you for that tip, Chris! The site that is illegally using my article (and those of several other people as well) does have adsense on it. If they don't remove my article promptly or give me credit as the author, I will definitely contact Google.

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M Thompson 13 years ago

First thing, Don't ever threaten legal action unless you are prepared to go through with it. You can get yourself in a whole heap of trouble.

I know of several people who immediately issue a counter claim if they get any legal notice or threat of one just to protect themselves.

This happens all the time you can spend hours and hours chasing down sites. Do you want to do that?

When i started out I used to spend a lot of time issuing takedown notices and writing to hosts in the end I decided that people who stole content couldn't be bothered promoting it so wouldn't prosper in the long run.

I just ignored them and let karma run it's course. I do however go after serial offenders. But to this day i have never seen a site that stole my content out rank me.

So rule #1 don't take it personally and spend you time on stuff that makes you money
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Chris Worner

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Cali16

Thank you for that tip, Chris! The site that is illegally using my article (and those of several other people as well) does have adsense on it. If they don't remove my article promptly or give me credit as the author, I will definitely contact Google.

I would report them immediately, not as an ultimatum.

Chris

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DanTheSeoGuy 13 years ago

You'll have this happening to you lots of time when you're in the business of posting unique articles to Ezine or to any other 2.0 property out there. Thompson is right, don't threaten someone just for the sake of it. You know it and he sure knows it also that no one will spend money to take legal action just for the sake of having an article removed. So your best bet is to be polite and ask the owner to remove YOUR content from their site.
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- Cali16 13 years ago
  
  Well, I checked again today just to see if anything had changed, and the website is gone completely. Entering the home page url or the url of my article takes me to a domain registration webpage.
  
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JoshuaZamora

13 years ago

Losers man!!! they should do it old school and cut off their hands to prevent them from ever stealing 8)

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Roell 13 years ago

Originally Posted by JoshuaZamora

Losers man!!! they should do it old school and cut off their hands to prevent them from ever stealing 8)

.....QFT.......
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Cali16

13 years ago

Well, this thread is quite timely. Out of curiousity today I checked on a couple of my articles and sure enough, found one of them posted on this site: lapsi dot org. They have several articles on their site taken from article directories - none of which give credit to the authors. This is really aggravating. As much as I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, it is a bit hard since they have done this with many articles, not just mine. I have contacted the site, now I will look into the DMCA for the hosting company.

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Roell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Cali16

Well, this thread is quite timely. Out of curiousity today I checked on a couple of my articles and sure enough, found one of them posted on this site: Lapsi : Social Psychology. They have several articles on their site taken from article directories - none of which give credit to the authors. This is really aggravating. As much as I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, it is a bit hard since they have done this with many articles, not just mine. I have contacted the site, now I will look into the DMCA for the hosting company.

Me and Cali16...policing the interweb one site at a time

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Cali16 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Roell

Me and Cali16...policing the interweb one site at a time

LOL!

Seriously though, it is far too time consuming to do on a regular basis... I just checked tonight out of curiousity, hoping to not find anything. I don't have the time or energy to check all my articles. Sadly, this is why people get away with it so easily, because often, no one ever even knows it happened.
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rosetrees

13 years ago

@Calli & Roell - you might want to remove that link - no point in giving thieves a free backlink!

@gvannorman - if I'm curious I just copy a sentence and paste it into Google. I do that if I've forgotten to note which directories I've submitted to - and sometimes you find legitimate users of your articles and sometimes the not so legit.

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Jack Duncan

13 years ago

Believe it or not, I recently saw an IM'er advertising the largest private collection of PLR articles in existence...

He claimed to have something like 1.5 million PLR articles he was selling...

Upon digging further, it turned out that he simply scraped all the articles at EZA and zipped them and was selling them as PLR articles...

Shame.

Who knows how many people bought them and were too stupid to realize they had been taken.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Roell

Should you threaten legal action immediately or first use the kind/gentle approach?

I never threaten legal action.

I always use a kind/gentle approach first. (Sometimes it's a genuine outsourcee's mistake/carelessness and happily corrected: I've made friends this way and found future syndication sites for my work).

I have two standard, pre-written emails on file, and send the first one first. It politely draws to their attention that someone who works for them, presumably without their knowledge, appears to have taken and re-published unlawfully <whatever it was> without the resource-box from <wherever it was>, and here's a copy of the resource-box and I'd be grateful if they could please add it pronto to rectify the situation blah, blah blah" (I'm paraphrasing a little, you understand

).

The second one, which I send 7 days later with no reply/action or unsatisfactory reply/action, is a DMCA notice, which goes to them, their registrar, their hosting company, and Google.

And then I forget about it altogether and get back to earning a living.

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ejb2059

13 years ago

Well...they say that duplication is the best form of flattery eh? Of course you have to protect your intellectual property but on the positive side, you must have written a great article!

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DeWayne411

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Roell

Someone ripped my recently published Ezine article and posted in on their site without including the resource box/sig or the article source.

What's the normal method of having them remove it? Should you threaten legal action immediately or first use the kind/gentle approach?

I've had this happen to me as well. I first would see if there is a contact link on their site and then advise them to add the resource box/sig. What's interesting is when I have found certain sites like this with my articles lacking my resource info, there is usually no contact link, which is not a good sign. At that point I would contact their hosting company. Sometimes, it may just be better to move on and let it go.

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perfectlovehere

13 years ago

Wow that's rough. But yeah I agree definitely DMCA them later. At least contact them and let them know that's your article first. They were probably using SENUKE or something and stole it that way.

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Rich Blondi

13 years ago

absolutely, I would pay and involve lawyers, send notices, and generally get all worked up about one missing link on a "cheesy wordpress blog". I would for sure avoid getting over it and getting busy on more important things. I always say, "Sweat the Small Stuff", that seems to pay off well.

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M Thompson

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Rich Blondi

absolutely, I would pay and involve lawyers, send notices, and generally get all worked up about one missing link on a "cheesy wordpress blog". I would for sure avoid getting over it and getting busy on more important things. I always say, "Sweat the Small Stuff", that seems to pay off well.

Hmmm not a particularly helpful post...

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Rich Blondi 13 years ago

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Hmmm not a particularly helpful post...

It's actually very helpful if heeded. Seems sorta silly and unproductive to spend time and energy worrying about ONE LINK when there's so much more valuable and profitable things to do. Of course this is a newbie mistake I made as well, but it's largely why I'd bet 98% of "Warriors" have never made a nickle online.

Anyway, I dropped a five dollar bill yesterday. How many VA's do you think I'll need to hire to do a three day grid search to find it? I won't be able to work or make money for those three days, and the cost to find it will far exceed five bucks but hey...it's the principle.
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Alexa Smith Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Rich Blondi

I would for sure avoid getting over it and getting busy on more important things. I always say, "Sweat the Small Stuff", that seems to pay off well.

Then you're missing an important point and an important opportunity here, RB.

I've made real money out of following these things up with one, simple, pre-written email.

For all your sarcasm, it does pay off well, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

When this happens, one thing you've identified, whether they've done it correctly or not, is someone who wants your work on their site. For an article marketer, that has great potential. That's what article directories are there for. It costs nothing to follow them up. Not only can you make a friend out of it, sometimes, but you've found a site (that may be a whole lot better than an article directory's non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlink) that may have some targeted traffic, whose owner might take future articles from you, too. Were you assuming that when that's happened, you're never going to get it corrected simply and quickly by the reinstatment of your resource-box and backlink? That's the optimal outcome, and it's an outcome that happens more often than you'd think - and it's the one you're missing out on.

My initial aim is not "to get my article removed": it's to get my backlink added.
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onlytim

13 years ago

I've had a few articles stolen. At first I fumed, then decided to just get over it. Maybe someday in my spare time I'll track them down, but really not worth the effort.

funny, I don't know which one I hate worse:
1. The article is stolen word for word
2. They use a (very poor) article spinner and turn it to crap. (enough of the original is left intact for me to know that it is my article)

It's a cold cruel world sometimes. Choose your battles.

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Roell

13 years ago

Originally Posted by ejb2059

Well...they say that duplication is the best form of flattery eh? Of course you have to protect your intellectual property but on the positive side, you must have written a great article!

Glass half full approach..I like it

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

I never threaten legal action.

I always use a kind/gentle approach first. (Sometimes it's a genuine outsourcee's mistake/carelessness and happily corrected: I've made friends this way and found future syndication sites for my work).

I have two standard, pre-written emails on file, and send the first one first. It politely draws to their attention that someone who works for them, presumably without their knowledge, appears to have taken and re-published unlawfully <whatever it was> without the resource-box from <wherever it was>, and here's a copy of the resource-box and I'd be grateful if they could please add it pronto to rectify the situation blah, blah blah" (I'm paraphrasing a little, you understand

).

The second one, which I send 7 days later with no reply/action or unsatisfactory reply/action, is a DMCA notice, which goes to them, their registrar, their hosting company, and Google.

And then I forget about it altogether and get back to earning a living.

Thanks, Alexa

Originally Posted by Rich Blondi

absolutely, I would pay and involve lawyers, send notices, and generally get all worked up about one missing link on a "cheesy wordpress blog". I would for sure avoid getting over it and getting busy on more important things. I always say, "Sweat the Small Stuff", that seems to pay off well.

Ha! Ha! you're a funny guy

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Lyanna

13 years ago

Well I am glad to hear they already took down the offending website.

Sadly, this type of copying happens all the time. I've had personal/hobby websites going since the 90s and there's always people copying stuff without permission.

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LauraJames

13 years ago

I too have dealt with this issue. Someone took an article I had written and posted it to their blog. The only difference was that they did not include the photograph that I had used when I originally wrote the article. I contacted the person who wrote the article and he removed it promptly. I remembered to use good manners and made sure my request was civil, but serious in tone. I hope it all works out well for you.

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Somebody ripped my Ezine article verbatim!

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