Website Content Theft

I've had it happen to a few of my sites in the past. When people direct link images from my site I occasionally switch the image with pictures that say "I am a bandwidth theif".

Send a cease and desist letter and if you have to cc it to abuse at their hosting company if you know it.

Web content theft is rampant, because for most thieves, the consequences aren't too dire. They get discovered, you send a cease & desist letter, and they probably take down the stolen material. I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that it's hard to sue them and get monetary compensation because you have to prove they harmed you financially.

You might try surfing the boards at www.webmasterworld.com - this topic comes up regularly and people have good advice for how to handle it.

I bet over the next decade a lot of changes will be made in regards to site content and theft. If it was plagarism, it would be easy to prosecute and collect damages on. The laws need to be changed.

Actually, if you copyright it, it is covered.

But, are you going to sue someone?

Maybe it's best to just feel good that someone thought enough of your site to steal it. :rolleyes:

By virtue of you creating the site it's copyrighted, but not filed with teh Govt. So you do the poor mans proof which would be to save the site on a cd and mail it to yourself.

While I wish there was something to do about it I think Pete is right. One idea might be to put a link at the end of the content pages so if someone wants the article on their site they can request it.

Using content can be a good thing, too

My Small Business Trends site is a blog and I encourage people to use my content.

All I ask is that they give me credit for it and link to me. I issue RSS feeds to encourage such use -- right now over a dozen sites use my content and I am happy for it. See the Articles section of this site for an example: http://www.small-business-forum.com/articles/

I freely quote other sites, too, but always link to them and give them credit.

Almost always they are happy with the free PR and "Google juice" I give them. And under copyright law as I understand it (U.S., anyways) quoting a small portion and crediting the copyright owner is considered "fair use" and allowable.

Now if I were using their content without linking or crediting them, then I'm sure it would be a different story. Or if I used up their bandwith by direct linking their images -- well, that's simply dirty!

You might want to think about whether you can turn the content theft around to your advantage for free PR.

Good luck,
Anita

Re: Website Content Theft

Unfortunately we have had content lifted from out site as well if you havent used this tool you should it helps idendify sites that may have your content:

Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search - Web Site Content Copyright Protection

Re: Website Content Theft

Unfortunately we have experience theft of our content unfortunately it is hard to track that tool may help some thanks.

Re: Website Content Theft

tella;31812 wrote: Unfortunately we have experience theft of our content unfortunately it is hard to track that tool may help some thanks.

We have had the same problem - spammers and stealers you would think if they did something productive they may actually make money.

Re: Website Content Theft

Website content theft is an extremely common problem. Quality content can take a lot of time and effort (or money) to create – and it can be stolen in seconds by a child with a computer and a internet connection.

Legal proceedings are the ultimate weapon, the nuclear option, in your armoury against website content theft. But before issuing proceedings, you should consider in detail the other options open to you.