Was doing some checks on my page ranking for one of my sites and found my text on 2 other sites - obviously ripped by one of these auto generator softwares like Traffic Equaliser (I think). They also had ripped various other pages from other sites. What are the implications for my site when someone does this? From reading on DP it appears the my site could be relegated if google finds the same text all over the place. However my domain name also appeared in the text (though not hyperlinked) so that may be of benefit?? Can anyone shed any light on this? Cheers.
If its a site that has copied your content you can try and contact their host, they will probably shut the account down.
Problem is that it's just a paragraph of text taken from the site not a whole page or pages so I doubt they'd do much.
It doesnt matter how much they have used as copyright is copyright and if you filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) they probably would act.
Also depends what country you are in, American laws only apply in America and so on... it's pretty hard to action made internationally unless the hosting company is involved big time.
Check the "Fair Use Policy" as it applies to copyright in your country. They may not be breaking any rules.
you could try a script like "bad behavior" which should block most of those automated scrapers and content-stealers.. blocks spam-bots & email harvesters too..