What can I do about someone who stole an article from my website? I know I can email them and ask them to remove it. But if they refuse to remove it, what can I do? How can I prove that I wrote it and they stole it? Thanks
Well is your site on google? Is there site on google? if the answer is yes yes email google tell them and there site will be banned from google Hope this helped
Unless you got big bucks to spend on attorneys and law suits there is nothing much that can be done. May be google can help you, but how do you plan to prove you that he's copied you ? ~Gautam
If you contact him directly and tell him it is copywrited material and he must take it down, he probably will. He does not know whether you have an attorney or not.
Did you have any copyright information on the site where you initially posted/uploaded your work? If you did, don't get pulled back of the costs of lawsuits or the time taken to find your rights. Get a good lawyer and sue them if they refuse to remove your work from their websites. You and your lawyer will get refunded at the end.
Just have a lawyer send them a legal notice. Merely recieving a letter from a lawyer usually scares this sort of a person.
If it is copyrighted article and you are the only one have rights to published them, then you can sue the one who copied it...
Depending on what type of site it is you can prove yours came first. Let's say it's a blog. If it is it will show the time you posted yours and if theirs is it will show when they posted theirs.
But smithers, I thought we could alwys manipulate the time when it was published !.. At least thats what I thought... correct me if I'm wrong. ~G
I don't know if you can manipulate the time. Technically, you could edit the content from an older month and put it in, but the title would be slightly skewed, so...I am not really sure how that would work. Send him an e-mail and request that he remove it. That tends to work.
Take it easy, Fewski, things are not so bad! The date when the article is published has to be registered by some independent company - so it wouldn't be easy to manipulate. Then, you could visit the Whois.net, find the hosting company of the stealers and contact them! Another easy way to prove your case is by using site statistics (PageRank, backlinks, traffic, etc.)... Hope this info is of use!
get youself a official sounding domain like copywritersolicitorsofamerica.com or wealwayswinbecauseofourfinancialbacking.com and send them an email from and send them as official sounding an email as you can manage also its very important to include the middle initial in the email address i mean who would really believe in a lawyer without a middle initial
Email his host for copyright violation. They have to suspend his account if he won't comply. You need to be able to show that the info is yours (a date stamp from the google cache does help). If the host is in india/asia/eastern europe--you're outta luck. But Google or the affiliate network he's using to monetize the page will pay attention . Most times the person will comply as soon as you contact them (in my experience), 99% of the time they honestly don't realize it was wrong to do. This is going to happen more and more as it's becoming so easy for everyone to have their own web page (myspace, live space, stumble page, blogger). Grandma just didn't realize.
Get a free consultation with a lawyer to discuss how admissible your evidence is in court, if (s)he doesn't respond to a cease and desist letter. In future, print a copy of your articles, mail them to yourself certified, and then don't open them when they arrive.