stapel - 9:10 pm on Nov 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

FYI regarding sending a DMCA take-down notice to the offending site's host:

You can find the IP address of the plagiariser, and work backwards to find the hosting service. If within the USA, you should be able to locate a "Copyright Policy", "DMCA Notice", or similar page, or at least a contact page for the host.

I send something along the lines of the following to the host:

Dear [name of person or service], It has come to our attention that copyrighted content created by [name] for [domainname.com] has been posted to your servers. Therefore, you are being provided with the following information. ============================================== ============================================== 1) The following is an electronic copy of the signature of the [domainname] copyright owner: /[owner's name between the slashes]/ As the copyright owner, [owner] is authorized to speak on the behalf of the copyright owner. (Copyright Registration Numbers TX #-###-###, TX #-###-###, TX #-###-###, and TX #-###-###; statutory damages may apply) ( [link to site's usage terms, if any] ) ============================================== 2) The identity of the copyrighted materials infringed: [listing of URLs for original content] ============================================== 3) The identity of the material claimed to be an infringement: [listing of URLs of plagiarism] ============================================== 4) Information reasonably sufficient to allow the online service provider to contact the complaining party: [owner or site name] [street address] [city, state, zip] [other owner or site address, such as P.O. Box, if any] [owner phone number] [owner e-mail address] ============================================== 5) Statement that the complaining party has "a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law." "I, [owner], creator and owner of the lessons content and images on all the pages listed at: [[domainname.com]...] ...have never given permission to [plagiarising site, plagiarising site's owner, plagiarising site's apparent affiliates, other connections], [plagiariser's host], its vendors, or any other of its agents or affiliates to copy, mirror, download/upload, frame, hotlink, rework, or otherwise present my work, or derivatives thereof, as his/her/their own. "I,[owner], hereby reiterate my good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law." ============================================== 6) Statement that the information in the notice is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. "To the best of my knowledge, the information I, [owner], have hereby presented is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner." ============================================== ============================================== If you need the above to be directed to any additional addresses, or if you need any further documentation, or to have the above documentation reformatted, or in some other way refashioned, please provide specific advice. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Sincerely, [my name] [my site name]

You might want to give the above a whirl. (If you have not yet registered your copyright, then you'll of course need to omit that part.)

In my experience, plagiarisers know full well what they're doing, and have no respect for the people from whom they're scraping content. Asking the bad guy please to be nice is unlikely to succeed. But the above letter is usually fairly-quickly successful in getting pages, or even entire sites, taken down.

My best wishes to you and your wife.

Eliz.