I just came upon a rip off of an original article one of my partners wrote. Here you can see the original: http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/smallbusiness/wpn-2-20040130EcardsasaMarketingTool.html and this is the clone: http://www.macosx.com/articles/eCards-Are-Great-Marketing-Tool.html I am curious what can I do in this case? Do you guys have any experience in dealing with such problems?
Maybe contact the "offending" website owner / manager and advise that it appears as though copyrighted (stolen) content has been spotted on their site and... it should be removed immediately or... we will be forced to escalate the situation... blah, blah, blah... If necessary: contact their host/isp, even advise the BIG 3 search engines of your findings? Just suggestions.
The author of the article is the owner and the one who has to contact them and inform them of the copyright infringement. I would demand they immediately remove the article or you will proceed with legal action. You might also mention that copyright infringement can be a criminal offense and that you will be contacting google to have their site removed from their index for copyright infringement if the article is not taken down immediately. I would also demand a usage of fee of $xxx - not that they will pay it, but it they will be more likely to act quickly to remove the article. The author will need to write to google who will sent them instructions on how to proceed.
Thanks, guys! Good advice! But what can I do IF the article has been distibuted to numerous article web sites? I have not googled it yet, but I am afraid it may take more time and effort than I might have...
You are the original creator of the content - and assuming your site's been indexed, the SE will see that that article appeared on your site first and (I'd imagine) discredit the others as 'dup content' while still giving credit to yours? My 2 cents.
If you find it killing your time, forget about it and move on. If you are going to participate in content creation on the Internet, you need to learn when it is applicable to pursue the matter and when it's best to perform minimal or no action. One idea is to step back and breathe. Don't try to solve the crime overnight. Go little bits at a time and send out your form letters when applicable. If you have located one person responsible for the copies, take your time and let him or her hang themselves. I know how bad it hurts, but the worse thing you can do is let some other idiot kill your positive energy and efforts.
Usually a cournteous email has done the trick for me. I mean people are going to steal your articles on the internet, the question is just how much of a positive you can salvage - not whether you can stop it.