12 years, 8 months ago-
Posts
-
-
Greetings! Thanks for having me in this group, I’m so glad you’re here because I could really use some insight about this situation: When you discover that someone has taken material from your blog and didn’t attribute you as a resource, what do you do?
Today I discovered that someone in our industry segment has taken our blog’s content and repurposed it on theirs. They pulled our photos and basically used our content but rearranged a few sentences to try to make it their work. They also included a ton of our videos, which is fine since we allow it in our YouTube settings, but again, there was no attribution anywhere.
I want to think this person is unaware that electronic media is copywrighted (it’s happened to us before and the person was totally clueless about stealing content on the web) so I sent her an email. What do think of this excerpt from request:
“You have a great website with tons of information! We are honored that you include so many of our photos, videos and blog posts. We work really hard on a volunteer basis to go onsite and find this material for our readers and the more who know about it the better.
However, we would greatly appreciate it if you would attribute us as a resource for this copyrighted material and would be even happier if you included us in your resources list. Since you’re an author, I’m sure you understand why we are making this request. In return we would be happy to include a link to your story on our site. Please let me know what you think and when you have done this.”
Was this too rough? Too wimpy? I’d love to hear your take. Thanks so much!
-
I think you’ve taken the right tact with this. The fact that you’re trying to give them the benefit of the doubt is a good thing. They might very well be ignorant on copyright issues. I think the bigger question is what to do next should this person not comply with your request? You could always pursue legal action, but that can get pricey. Or you can get creative.
The rescue group I’m involved with posts videos of our adoptable dogs on Youtube. Like you, we allow sharing. In the description of the video we mentioned that the dog is on a particular brand of flea/tick control. I ended up finding this video embeded on a website that was devoted to selling this product. It basically looked like we were endorsing their product. Shame on us for listing the name of the product in the description in the first place. Regardless, I used Youtube’s annotation feature to place a note on the video that stated if you found this video on a website selling product X, even though we use the product, we do not endorse it and recommend that you check with your vet before purchasing any products. I’m not sure if the author ever realized we did that, as it was like that for a couple of months. As of today though the url for that site is no longer active.
Is this person displaying your images directly from your hosting server, or did he/she download the files and is hosting them on their server? If he’s just linking to the files that are hosted on your site, you could always overwrite the images with a new image stating the author is violating copyright laws. If you’re using WordPress for your site, you might want to also search the plugins for “disable right click”. There are a ton of options that come up, and it will at least prevent someone from directly copying and pasting your article and images. It’s not fool proof, but at least you’re aren’t making it easy for them to copy it.
-
I think your email sounds good. Hopefully they are reasonable people and will cooperate.
I had someone scraping my content to put on their site. I wish I could find the one site that had a lot of info on I about dealing with content stealing, but this post on Problogger is good- http://bit.ly/q6X9iI . I emailed the site owner with no luck, then I tried to email the site host with no luck. I gave up. I added a copyright notice to my posts both near the post title and at the end of the post (which they would copy along with the post) and figured at least they wouldn’t be ranked high for their posts. I don’t have money to pay legal fees.
-
I love this community! Thank you, I knew there had to be some others who were experiencing this issue.
Thanks Stephanie, my Admin has added the right click blocking plug-in. Although it will be a pain for us (we frequently use our photos in other places) at least we know they’re protected.
As for the Problogger post, thank you! It leads to some very good tips and articles. Who knew there would be an entire blog dedicated to content theft? Sheesh.
I’ll let you know when the site owner contacts us about this. Thanks again!
-
We still haven’t heard from the content thief. My husband (Admin) says we should let it lie and see what happens. The thief isn’t actually selling anything on her website but it appears she may be getting set up for sales (it’s a new site). If/when she does start selling, if she’s using our content to push her items we’ll take action. I’m keeping an eye on the site.
Meanwhile, my Admin wrote this in our technical blog:
“No More Right-Clicking Tripawds Images”
Thanks again! I’ll keep you posted.
-
It sounds like the site could be a content farm rather than a legit site. If that’s the case, if the copied material is not substantially different from yours, there’s a risk that it could damage your SEO. Content farms are set up to make money purely on traffic thru ads. In many cases, the content is immaterial.
I would follow up with a cease-and-desist letter. You can get a template here: http://www.free-legal-document.com/copyright-cease-and-desist.html. If you want to take it further than that, I’d do a whois lookup and send an actual C&D letter to the registered owner of the domain.
And if they’re hotlinking to your images, I’d do what Stephanie recommends and switch out those images with ones that say “THIS IMAGE WAS STOLEN FROM DOMAINNAME.COM”.
-
Thanks for your ideas Karen, I appreciate your taking the time to write
I’m pretty sure the site isn’t not a content farm. So far the owner has ignored my email. Funny thing is the same person bought our ebook. I sent a letter to that address instead of going through the site but I’m thinking that wasn’t the right idea.I’m just not sure what this person is really up to, if anything.
-
-
Great info here! I have had this problem too, and was unaware of a WordPress plug in that disables any right clicking of content. Thanks! The idea that Karen Nichols expressed might also be a good one…leave shaming comments, although these places can moderate or just delete negative comments.
Ignoring your email tells all…it is my feeling that people like that do not deserve anonymity. To be certain, I would send a registered return receipt to the owner and if you still get no satisfaction, I would tweet the fact that you will out her if she does not cease and desist as requested. Then do it – on FB and Twitter. But that’s just me:)
Integrity is everything – if you get ideas from someone else’s post and then write your own, I think you should always attribute. Some people think they need to steal ideas to make themselves look good, or smart, or something…nothing could be further from the truth. It also pays off in Google to mention other bloggers, and cite them. Whatever this person is doing she will keep doing it and to others. No point, IMO, in letting her continue to steal. Turning a blind eye is never a good thing.
There is something called Copyscape, that I just saw on Carol Bryant’s work – don’t know if any of you have experience with using that, but I’m going to look into it. Feedback would be appreciated!
-
Glad I bought it up!
I just saw the Copyscape thing too, I’m feeling like I need to use it.
We’ve been using the “no-right click” plug-in and I have to admit, it’s a bit of a pain for us if we want to use one of own images in another one of our blogs (we have 6). Now, instead of right-clicking, we have to go into the back-end to get the URL. It requires a change of habit, but in the long run I know that this little inconvenience will protect us.
Yes, the blogger has ignored my email and she is still blogging. I have my eye on her and am watching her RSS closely. This week she revealed that her dog died of cancer (the subject that my blog post addressed) just 2.5 months ago. The website she set up was created after her dog died. I’m inclined to think that she set up the site as a way to cope with her dog’s death, and is completely ignorant about Internet copyright law. But then again, maybe I’m kidding myself, because she is an “author” who sells books on Amazon (who knows if those are plagiarized or not?).
Because she isn’t selling anything yet, my husband and I both think that we will let this sleeping dog lie until she shows us that she’s making money from our content. Her site is relatively ad-free for now, and although I can easily see how she would add revenue generators on the site, for now, she hasn’t. Until then, we’ve just decided that we need to pick our battles and she’s not worth our effort until she starts stealing real $$ from us.
Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about it, but we are so swamped, it’s all we can do for now.
-
FWIW, about 10 years ago I (and a number of other photographers) had a bunch of photographs poached and offered for sale on a Hong Kong-based website. Yes, the website was entirely in Chinese, so it took me days of viewing source code to find out who to notify with a cease and desist notice (I notified both the thief and the owner of the website.) As expected, I got no response.
I also notified some of the other photographers (I was familiar with their work and knew a few of them). As luck would have it, one of the photographers was a feisty Australian woman who worked for the largest IP law firm in Australia, and they had offices in Hong Kong. It didn’t take her long to have a legal C&D letter from the firm messengered to the website owner. The photos were removed immediately.
I got lucky that time. I’m currently trying to get Amazon to remove a merchant who is selling crap embellished with photos of mine. I doubt I’ll get anywhere without legal assistance, and cannot currently afford it. Neither Amazon nor the merchant has responded.
AFAIK, whenever I’ve found stuff that I’ve written online, it has been properly attributed.
Used to be, I’d see red when my work was pilfered (I’d be so upset I couldn’t sleep), but now, I feel it’s just the cost of putting yourself out there online. I will take steps to notify the offender, but beyond that, it’s just not worth the trouble. I let it go. Hate to do it, and it’s not easy, but until someone rips off an entire book or screenplay from me I’ll let it slide to save my sanity.
Bottom line: if this were 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But 50 years ago, I wouldn’t have had thousands of people a day reading what I wrote. (Of course, I would only have been a toddler, but still.) The tradeoff to having an amazingly huge audience for your work is that if it’s good, someone will try to steal it. I think it’s worth the risk.
And I do hope karma’s a b**ch.
-
Karen Nichols said:
Bottom line: if this were 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But 50 years ago, I wouldn’t have had thousands of people a day reading what I wrote. (Of course, I would only have been a toddler, but still.) The tradeoff to having an amazingly huge audience for your work is that if it’s good, someone will try to steal it. I think it’s worth the risk.And I do hope karma’s a b**ch.
Oh I’m with ya on that one! What goes around . . .
Thanks for the reassurance on how we’re handling this.
-
By phrasing it the way you did, you are letting them know it is your work they are sharing and you know about it. You gave them the right to keep the content on their website as long as they gave credit where credit is due. You also generously stated you would link their story on your site.
“Please let me know what you think and when you have done this” makes very clear you expect your request to be complied with. You didn’t threaten and didn’t come across as mean.
I think it was just right.
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.