Copyright Infringement - When Someone Steals
Content From Your Website
By Lisa Paredes
You're cruising the 'net checking out your rankings,
or seeing what your competition is putting up on their websites
when it happens. You notice something familiar on someone
else's web site. You look at it a bit more closely and lo
and behold -- someone has stolen your content and put it on
their web site. They have posted your exact content on their
web site without your permission, and what's worse, they may
be profiting from money that should be coming into your pocket.
Stolen content that's posted as duplicate content on someone
else's site can hurt you in a number of ways -- stealing web
site traffic, diverting sales -- even get your web site banned
from search engines for hosting duplicate content. How frustrating
would it be to have your web site penalized for hosting your
own content?
Stealing content from web sites, and sometimes entire web
sites, is more common than most people suspect. It's called
copyright infringement, and there are steps that you can take
to force the owner of the other web site to remove your content
from their site.
1. Find duplicated content from your site on other people's
web site.
* Copyscape allows you to enter your site URL and will return
other pages that contain content with significant matches
of words.
* Enter a few sentences from the beginning of your page
into a search engine in quotes. It will return your own pages,
and any other sites where those sentences are copied.
* Use Google image search to locate stolen photographs or
image files.
2. Determine who owns the website on which your content is
posted.
* Get contact information from the website where your duplicate
content is posted.
* Check the domain's "whois" entry for contact
information.
3. Contact the owner of the web site.
Your first contact with the owner of the web site that duplicates
your content should be a polite but firm email informing them
of the copyright infringement and requesting that they remove
the infringing material from their site.
* Be specific and be sure to detail the infringements.
* Explain what you want done about the situation.
* Detail what steps you will take if they do not comply
with your request.
* Be polite. Keep in mind that the owner of the web site
may not know that the material was stolen, or that they were
not aware they were doing anything wrong. Often, this letter
from you will be enough for them to immediately remove the
stolen content.
4. If the content is not removed, contact the web site's
hosting company.
* Hosting companies are aware that they may also be held
liable if one of their customers posts illegally obtained
content on their web sites, and will often be cooperative
in removing the offending content.
* Provide the same details to the hosting company that you
did to the web site owner and point to the violation in the
Terms of Service agreement. In many cases, the hosting company
will remove not only the offending content, but the entire
web site.
5. File a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) infringement
complaint with Google.
* Google penalizes copyright infringers by removing or blocking
access to the material on the offending site -- in other words,
removing them from their listings. They may also share your
complaint with a third party who posts about content thieves.
* You'll find full details on how to file a DMCA complaint
with Google on their DMCA page (http://www.google.com/dmca.html).
For more information on copyright infringement and related
topics visit
http://www.mommyempire.com/blog/
Mommy Empire is a
work at home resource site for women
entrepreneurs.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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