How to Protect Your Website’s Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content

How to Protect Your Website’s Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content​

It is always good to see other sites sharing our content in part or in whole on their sites, as long as there is attribution to you as the original author and a link is pointing to your site. This is the way content is supposed to be shared. Unfortunately, there are many people that will just copy your content and place it on their sites and present it as their own. That is theft. That is plagiarism. Although you may not find every instance of your content being stolen, there are some things you can do to protect your content or at the very least deter some content theft.

How to Find Sites That Are Stealing Your Content​

Copyscape is an online plagiarism detection service that checks whether similar text content appears elsewhere on the web.Copyscape is used by content owners to detect cases of "content theft", in which content is copied without permission from one site to another. It is also used by content publishers to detect cases of content fraud, in which old content is repackaged and sold as new original content.

Design and Independent Evaluation​

Copyscape uses the Google Web API to power its searches. Copyscape uses a set of algorithms to identify copied content that has been modified from its original form.Independent plagiarism software tests conducted by Professor Debora Weber-Wulff of the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin found Copyscape Premium to be the best performing service.

What to Do When You Discover Someone Has Violated Your Copyright and Stolen Your Website’s Content​

Step 1: Find the Owner, Host, and Registrar of the Offending Website

you want to find out who runs the site that is stealing your content. Start by doing a WHOIS search of that site. I use whois.sc, but sometimes the site will not give you all the details you need.

here are a few key pieces of information you want to look for, that will help you deal with the situation:

1. Registrant – This is typically the owner of the site. You will need this information.
2. Registrar – This is the company that the site is registered with. You will also need this information.
3. Domain Servers – This information will give you an idea of who is the host of the site
although you have this information, you are still not finished doing your research. If there is not a lot of information about the Registrant, you may need to check another WHOIS site. I will look at the Registrar and then use their WHOIS tool (just do a search for “registrar name whois”).
You will need to do another whois search for the information listed as “Domain Servers”. If the servers end up being a webhost, you will need to keep their information.

Step 2: Visit The Offending Site’s Host’s TOS or Legal Page

If you’ve found that this site has a host (and is not hosting their own site), you need to visit that host’s Legal Page or Terms of Service (TOS) page. Here, you will find what their requirements are for dealing with copyright violations. Keep this page handy and write down any email address for the legal department for the host.

Step 3: Visit The Offending Site’s Registrar’s TOS or Legal Page

Most registrars like Network Solutions or GoDaddy wil also have requirements for dealing with copyright infringement. You want to keep their page handy and write down any email for their legal departments.

Step 4: Find a Contact Email for the Offending Website

Using either the Registrant info from WHOIS, you want to keep the email address of the site’s owner handy. You can also look around their site for their information.

Step 5: Take Screenshot’s of All Material That Has Been Stolen

Now you want to keep all proof that they actually violated your copyright. Use your computer’s screenshot capabilities to take images of their site with your material. I will also take shots of my site, including the places where this material was taken from. Keep this information in a folder on your computer and name the files so you know what is what. This info may come in handy down the line if there is any question.
Now that you’ve done your research, it is time to put together an email.

Step 6: Email The Copyright Violator, Their Host, Their Registrar, and/or The Search Engines

The next thing I recommend doing is contacting via email the owner of the site (if you can find their info), their host (if they aren’t hosting their own site), and their registrar. I also email my lawyer (and recommend you do the same) to be sure they are in the loop and that they have all evidence.

 

Wow. Thanks for the super detailed overview.

 

thank for the useful info, hate it when people steal your content!

 

Kind of ironic when the original poster has just stolen this article:-

source of rosesmark stolen article

 

Lock Lizard has some pretty good [but a bit expensive] software to protect web content

 

OK that was amusing .

Anyway there are only a few ways that I know of the protects your from copy/paste plagiarism and they are so complicated that they do more harm then good . The human plagiarism is impossible to stop if it's done by a person wielding a brain .

 

Lol roses,kind of ironic your topic lol.

And Wat happen if the site copies the content and link to its source ?
Will that cause problem?

Also, I would add, why would you cause all these problems to a person who copies your content?
Why not just use the "contact us" on their site and tell them. There are REALLY webmasters who don't know about the problem of copying contents can lead to DMCA ...Personally, if someone copied my content, I would personally check his whois and try to contact him via mail if his infos are not protected. However, in the contrary, I would go to the site and contact him (99% if not 100% of sites got The Contact Option).
I think dealing with this in this way for a start is good. However, if the guy persists, then I would take your steps, but that also, without causing much problems to the guy and myself lol. Why would I waste lots of money because of a content? Don't you think it would be a whole drama over a content? Anyways, I would have my ways of dealing with the guy, that's it

 

not complete stole...I give some guide on that..

 

Thanks Man.
Good to get such a nice detailed overview form you.
Its good thing one should know and one who owns his website.



David

 

so you only stole it 'a bit'? That makes it alright, does it?

If you broke into a bank and only stole 'a bit' of money, would that be 'alright'?

 

That process is so long and tedious that sometimes you realize it is not worth it. Especially if it is only one or two pages.

 

"It is always good to see other sites sharing our content in part or in whole on their sites, as long as there is attribution to you as the original author and a link is pointing to your site. This is the way content is supposed to be shared."

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Permission is required to use something from another website. The exception being a fully attributed excerpt and even then it's a good practice to let the copyright holder know you have referenced their work. A link to the original source does not substitute for permission to use the work.

There is a process to DMCA. You are supposed to contact the offender first and give them the chance to take the appropriate action before you contact their webhost.


There is just so much wrong with this entire post - you stole content about how to protect content from being stolen, either you or the original includes incorrect information and you post this nonsense in the COPYWRITING forum instead of the LEGAL forum. Oh, and you justify this by saying you stole only a bit of content. This thread is a perfect example of how not to article spam a forum.