Difference between revisions of "Learn/What-to-Do-If-Your-Content-is-Stolen"

Latest revision as of 22:08, 9 November 2013

By [[User:|]] on

Dealing With Content Thieves

You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and you're proud of it. One day you find that some thrown-together website has copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own work.

This is incredibly frustrating. Worse, this duplicate content forces search engines to decide which website is the original and should rank higher. It's possible that the copied content on the other website may show up above yours in search results.

Here at AboutUs.org, our content was recently lifted and republished on another website without any attribution. I want to share what we've learned, so you can deal with any site that steals your content.

...read more

Note: This article has been updated and moved to www.AboutUs.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-Thanks to a Google Alert, we noticed that an article that [[Christian Bullock]] wrote back on [date] for our [[Learn]] section on [[AboutUs.org]] was showing up word for word and image for image on a different website, with no attribution or link to us. Links in our original article were changed to point elsewhere and they used our images from our servers.
+{{ArticleTemplate2
+| Writer = KristinaWeis
+| Name = Kristina Weis
+| Header = What%20to%20Do%20If%20Your%20Content%20is%20Stolen
+| Subhead = Dealing With Content Thieves
+| Bitly = http://bit.ly/StolenContent
+| Date = November 11, 2010
+| AuthorWebsite = AboutUs.org
+}}
+==Dealing With Content Thieves==
+----
+You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and you're proud of it. One day you find that some thrown-together website has copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own work.
-Here is the article on AboutUs.org: http://bit.ly/KeywordWisdom
+This is incredibly frustrating. Worse, this duplicate content forces search engines to decide which website is the original and should rank higher. It's possible that the copied content on the other website may show up above yours in search results.
-[[Image:IspeyScreenshot.png|thumb|right]]
+Here at AboutUs.org, [http://blog.aboutus.org/2010/11/11/take-our-content-but-credit-us-for-it/ our content was recently lifted] and republished on another website without any attribution. I want to share what we've learned, so you can deal with any site that steals your content.
-And here is that same article on [[ispey.com]]: http://bit.ly/IspeyKeyword In case that URL gets taken down, see the image to the right.
-We recently wrote about the Cooks Source incident where the magazine edited and published an article they found on the internet. In that case they did give the author credit, but they did not ask her permission to re-publish or compensate her. For more, see the [blog post].
+<big>''[http://www.aboutus.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/ ...read more]''
-==So what can you do?==
+''Note: This article has been updated and moved to [http://www.aboutus.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/ www.AboutUs.com/what-to-do-before-after-your-blog-content-is-scraped-stolen-copied/].''
-* Contact the site and ask nicely
+{{LearnBottomBio
-: Try looking for contact information on the website itself. If that doesn't work, check the site's [[whois]] record on a site like {{LinkPair|DomainTools.com}}.
+| Writer        = KristinaWeis
-: If you can't get in touch with them, or if they don't respond appropriately, move on to plan B and go above their head.
+| Name          = Kristina Weis
+| Image         = Image:KristinaBluesFest.png
-* Talk to the people that control their website
+| AuthorWebsite = AboutUs.org
-: Contact their [[registrar]] or hosting company to let them know about the offending site.
+| ShortBio      = Kristina is a community manager for [[AboutUs.org]] who talks with a lot of website owners who are trying to promote their business online. <small>Have a question? [[Kristina Weis#Contact_Kristina|Contact me]].</small><br />{{Twitter|KristinaWeis}}
+}}
-* Report it to Google, etc.
-: [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=58 Reporting copyright infringement to Google] (make sure you're right, or you're responsible for attorney fees, etc.