Conquering copyright infringements

Copyright infringements can be a pain to deal with. With the Internet wide open people are stealing content from other people's sites and acting like it is their own. And the last thing you want is your content on 100 other sites because it can potentially hurt your search engine rankings. So how can you deal with copyright problems like this?

If you can get their contact information from their website or domain registrar, I usually send them an email that goes something like this...

Hi,

My name is Neil Patel and I am the owner of Pronet Advertising (http://www.pronetadvertising.com). I see that you have stolen content from my website and used it on your site. Please remove the content from your website within 72 hours or else I will have to pursue legal actions. You have until 6:43 PM on August 26.

Thanks
Neil Patel

When I send these emails they usually work, but copyright infringement does not happen to me frequently. Paul Stamatiou (a college student) seems to have this happen to him a lot more frequently, so he gets a little creative. If that site uses AdSense he contacts Google and notifies them about it because it goes against their terms of service and he also contacts the domain registrar. If nothing happens he then takes matters into his own hands by sending an email similar to this one...

Please remove all references, republication and aggregation sources and content of PaulStamatiou.com from DOMAIN.com and all of its subdomains. My content is held under a strict copyright which you are not abiding by when you republish it, in part or in whole, without my consent. You are behind the Domains By Proxy service for your domain name registration, however they do not protect users under violation of copyrights. I have already contacted them and am ready to file a subpoena. Hopefully we can solve this peacefully. If you have any questions, please email me as soon as possible.

Thank you for cooperating,
Stamatiou & Linden Attorney at Law

If someone is stealing your content, take action by either emailing them or by filing a DMCA notice with their host, either way they will remove your content or their host will take down the website. If you don't take action it could potentially devalue your content and hinder you search engine visibility so keep on trying until they remove your content.

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Elliot Swan, August 24, 2006

Content scrapers seem to be becoming more and more common, almost as common (if not more so) as design rippers--and each are just as much of a theft as the other.

Jonathan Bailey, August 24, 2006

I've found that most of my cases of copyright infringement these days are resolved through DMCA notices. To use one, you have to first locate the host, which is trivial if the person is using a free host, and then send a properly-formatted notice to their DMCA agent. It's more complicated than a cease and desist letter, but the host is legally required to remove the work, so long as they are in the U.S. or the EU and it can be streamlined by keeping a stock DMCA notice handy.

Still, I do prefer to use Cease and Desist letters when possible, but I'm finding that, increasingly, plagiarists are keeping their contact information hidden.

If you want information on DMCA notices, just look at the "contacting the host" section on my site. It has links to a few stock notices and information on how to locate the contact information for the host.

Hope that helps!

Neil Patel, August 24, 2006