What to do when low-down dirty plagiarists steal your content
March 13, 2008 – 7:28 pmRemember a while back when I told you how some low-down dirty plagiarist was stealing my content?
And then I said I was going to write a big post about WHAT TO DO in that situation?
Only then I didn’t actually write the post (except the post about the gold tooth which, let’s be honest, wasn’t really all that enlightening)?
Remember that?
Riiiiiiight.
Well today I see that the nefarious content stealers are still at it and so I decided it was high time that I deliver on my promise. You know, for the sake of good triumphing over evil and all that.
But the thing is, in doing my due diligence I came across this article, What do you do when someone steals your content?, which so thoroughly covers the topic, that I didn’t see any reason to re-write it! Seriously, even if you’ve never found yourself in this situation, bookmark this article. It’s a great guide for what to do IF it ever happens.
So now I’m curious… show of hands, how many of you have had this happen to you? What did you do about it? And were you successful?
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Mother. Coffee drinker. Information seeker. Skeptic. Creative. Dreamer. Schemer. Absolutely Bananas.
By Redneck Mommy on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
I’ve had a few stealers too, but I’ve been unsuccessful in getting them to stop. I’ll take any help I can get.
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By McMama on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
Someone stole my content from my blog and a message board I post to. I contacted the owners of the sites where the info was posted (other message boards) and requested that it be removed. If they own their own site, I am not sure what can be done. :\
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By ::Jenn:: on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
hmmm that is weird…. maybe someone loves your writing that much that they have to steal your words right out of your head….. wow
perhaps you should comment the, and tell them the stole the words right out of your head… a bit subtle but oh well! lol
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By slackermommy on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
Thanks girl, for that awesome link!
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By Amy on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
How do you even find this out? Does a Technorati search show you your content is posting in mysterious places?
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By moosh in indy. on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
Not that I know of, but I have been a bit of a vigilante in my day with saving other unsuspecting hot bloggers in Seattle.
Just sayin’
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By We are THAT family on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
I haven’t had anything stolen. I think I would feel really violated. People need to come up with their own stories about baby poop. I’m going to bookmark the article though. Thanks.
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By Anonymous on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply
If the same visitor is stealing your content from the same IP address, you can simply block that IP or even better, re-direct them to a site about copyright information.
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By Kimberly on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
I would definately utilize an IP block if you can figure out their email address. I get my content scraped off my blog all the time. It’s pretty hard to stop. Good luck!
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By The Spunky Mommy on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
Oh, I’m such a babe in the woods. Never even thought about this happening. Now I have something else to worry about. Good luck everyone - and let me know if you see anyone steal my content please! :)
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By Mom of 5 on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
I just contacted the site, asked them to remove my stuff immediately. I also used keyword searches and contacted some of the other blog owners that were being ripped off. (They kept the original post titles, and with a google search, you can type the title and a few post keywords and get the blog it came from)
After a few days, my post did disappear. I didn’t go any farther than asking them to remove it.
The upside is that I’ve been in contact with one of the other bloggers that was ripped off, so I made a new bloggy friend.
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By Michele on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
The problem I have is this. Someone is scraping my own stuff, then putting it on their site as a partial: So and So wrote (so and so would NOT be me, by the way) and then an excerpt. They then link to my original post. I don’t know what to do since they link to me. But they’ve got the google ads up and making money off of it. I would have no problem if it was my excerpt and then them disagreeing with me, or something, but their just scraping and linking. But since they’re linking, do I even have a leg to stand on?
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By BritGal' Sarah on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the excellent link….not happened to me yet but not been blogging too long. So far I have just had others highlight and link to my writing, which is a compliment.
Nice blog
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By workout mommy on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
I had some thieves and I also contacted them directly and asked them to stop. I also added an RSS footer that basically says “if you are reading this somewhere other than my site, this is stolen content”, etc. So far, it has worked! I hope this helps!
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By carrie on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
I don’t check my sitemeter very often, maybe once a week I’ll glance at the funny google searches - but, today when I did, someone came from somewhere I didn’t recognize and I clicked it. It was a link to another blog where the person posted a post of mine. I have to say that she did provide the link, but she NEVER contacted me and got permission, which as far as I understood, was covered in that copyright thing I put on the bottom. All the copyright info I read said that what I put was sufficient and would protect my content.
Now, I was just telling my husband this, and wondering what to do, if anything. Do I comment and respectfully ask her to please contact me if she’d like to use my stuff? Do I ignore it? What? I dunno. That’s why I headed over here to get your email.
I’ll read the article you linked to, see you “linked” to it, you didn’t repost the entire article and then link to it, like she did. I think there’s a big difference.
Thanks Jenny! Sorry for the ramble.
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By crunchycarpets on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
most of the thieves have been the one’s that at least have a link to my stuff…so I haven’t been too pissed.
however, you can contact their hosts and tell them what is going on…they don’t like that stuff.
I stopped a couple of the porn spammers that were hassling me by doing that.
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By Chris on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply
This happened to me also…My content was stolen and was posted as a guest post on another blog. I contacted the blog owner and informed her that her guest post is a plagiarist and showed proof. The blog owner never contacted me back and never took post down. I was mad at first but i got over it.
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By Mama Drama Jenny, the Bloggess on Mar 15, 2008 | Reply
I’ve had people still my stuff but I’ve never been able to stop it.
PS. I think it would be hysterical if they stole this post.
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By The Mom of 'em on Mar 15, 2008 | Reply
I have had this happen too - except I sort of new who was doing it - in-person..which made it more awkward. I vented to a friend and then didn’t post for over a week….eventually it just stopped. so irritating!
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By BusyDad on Mar 16, 2008 | Reply
I pity the fool who steals my stuff, because they must reeallly be scraping the barrel at that point!
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By Jack's Mommy on Mar 21, 2008 | Reply
I’m a lone duck in these woods then - I actually don’t care! :) Having been on the internet for over 13 years (with 10 of those years spent building websites), I’ve come to learn that it’s a fight I simply can not win. I run a massive 6 year old collie site which I give permission for someone to copy as much as they want (online and offline) as long as there is a link to me, and all of my feeds have a copyright and “view original site” link at the bottom (if the whole post appears somewhere else). On my personal blog, based off of wordpress, I get notifications every week of one of my posts appearing on another blog. 99% of the time, this has been done with an RSS feed plugin and there is always a link back to my original post (and it’s almost always just a little excerpt). I could care less if the person has google ads up because frankly, sites like those are NOT sticky and have very little success. The owners of these sites don’t “care” about my writing…my posts just fit a particular subject their trying to target. These sites are just “automatic” with no maliciousness intended (i fully realize that people out there may have no clue that material from feeds shouldn’t be reposted). If some random person wants a buck or two a day off of google ads, so what. *shrug* They wont last long. And if I’ve helped them make a bit of money, so what too. I’m still making more with my “real” site than they are with their fly-by-night autogenerated one. I don’t even bother emailing them. It’s just too much work and too time consuming! I have even tested the effectiveness sites such as those by building my own using 5-6 feeds from my own personal sites and blogs - and I keep track of the site hits and google ad impressions from there. Let me just say that run-of-the-mill automated sites like that are NOT successful.
So anyway, that’s my experience! I think I may be the only person out there who truly could care less about it! lol :)
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