Online content theft has become a prevalent problem with the rise of the Internet. Has online plagiarism happened to you?

Photo by amidanyorai

A couple of months ago, I came across a website that had stolen a paragraph of content from our website. The stolen paragraph was this:

“As the 2nd largest laser printer manufacturer, Samsung caters to personal and professional needs. Samsung printers are versatile and reliable, just like The Supplies Guys!! We’ve got Samsung laser printers, including Samsung color laser printers. And what would the printer be without the toner? We’ve got you covered for all of the Samsung toner cartridges you need.”

You can see that the paragraph isn’t anything to get upset over, but it’s still ours. And it says our company’s name used completely out of context. (www.best-color-printers.com/category/best-color-laser-printers/ ). It’s an unpleasant feeling when someone rips off content you took the time to create for a specific purpose.

Yesterday on Daily Writing Tips, they shared their current experience with content theft in which entire posts are being copied and reposted with no acknowledgment or attribution. (You can view the thieving website at http://www.leestringer.net/category/writing-tips/.) Initally, if you visited that site, you would have seen they even ripped off DWT’s post that is about them ripping off posts. However, as of writing, the leestringer.net had removed all plagiarized posts.

All it takes is a little CTRL + C, CTRL + V polished off with a “publish”.  So how do we handle this within our own blogs and websites?

In addition to including a copyright notice in each post, it is beneficial to license your work with a Creative Commons license. With Creative Commons, you choose which type of license you desire depending on how you decide others can use your content. View the different types of licenses here.

But what happens when someone flat out steals your content? I’d say there’s a big difference between stealing a tiny paragraph about Samsung and stealing entire posts on writing tips, as mentioned above. If you’re constantly monitoring your brand, you’ll notice quickly that someone has committed content theft against you.

When this happens, start by contacting the author of the blog/website. Chances are they’ll be a jerk, as they already have a notch on that board for stealing the content in the first place. In that case, try contacting the website’s hosting company and informing them of the situation. You can find all of this information at http://www.domaintools.com/.

If you still aren’t getting any response, submit a notice of copyright infringement as per the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to Google.  Most hosting companies allow the option to submit a DMCA notice of infringement through them as well.

Has your content been stolen? We’d love to hear your story and what steps of action you took towards combating online plagiarism.

Tags: blog, content theft, copyright infringement, Digital Millenium Copyright Act, online plagiarism

Categories: Technology