Battling Content Thieves

You might have read my first post about content thieves and what you can do to battle them. The first steps were relatively easy, but I have to admit feeling a bit stuck knowing exactly how to proceed after the first few steps. However, this dilemma was solved after attending WordCamp San Francisco and meeting the friendly Bryan Villarin (@Bryan on Twitter), who works at Automattic as a Happiness Engineer. Yes, that’s his real title.

So if you don’t have time to go and meet Bryan Villarin in person, here are some of the things he recommended.

Do a Google Search for a Unique String

So for example the Google search “Battling Content Thieves” brings up an article on Yahoo, which is the original, or Part 1 of the article you’re reading right now. Since I am syndicated on Business to Community, that article is legitimate. But if you find non-legitimate uses of your content while doing your search you may want to take some other steps.

Read Some Background Material

Battling Content Thieves

Bryan recommended a couple of useful articles. The first, Content Theft – What to Do outlines how to discover the host’s contact information and contact them if necessary. That and the following article, Prevent Copyright Theft, offer excellent and easily implemented things you can do to prevent theft.

Find the hosting site

At the bottom of godaddy.com’s site, under Resources, there’s a Whois search link. Type in the domain and then get the email address of the person or company who owns the site. If, after having sent the first email, you don’t hear back, you can send email to the domain provider. Within your email you should…

File a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Notice

After you’ve filed the paperwork, with all the required parts filled out, then the other party gets a few days to respond. If you’ve done your homework, and your content really was lifted, then usually the content is quickly removed, from what I’ve heard. Most hosting providers do not want to deal with stolen content.

Have You Ever Had Your Content Stolen?

What happened? Did you pursue any action? Hire a lawyer? Let me know in the comments! Thanks!