Copyright infringement?

[Champak]

I came across a site that had news content from other websites---competing websites so I doubt there was permission. At the bottom of the articles, the website sited the source(website without the link) and the author of the article. Is this site getting away with this because the original site does not know about this---which I doubt? Or, by siting the original site and author they are allowed to do this?

Note: they are taking the entire article word for word.

Thanks

[mack]

Unless they have premission from the origonal author they are breaking the law. This is probably why they use an un-linked referance for the article. If there was a link the origional author might check up on refering links through his/her stats.

If they don't have permission, then it's only a matter of time.

Mack.

[willjan]

Crediting the source and running an article does in no way get you out of trouble. In fact, the author can argue "willful" infringment, since it was obvious that the web site knew the copyright holder and ignored proper procedure.

Willjan

[larryhatch]

Champak: I hope you advised the victimized sites.
Its quite possible they didn't notice this yet.
Its up to them whether to pursue the matter or not. -Larry

[Lorel]

I found a site claiming to review my client's site which had copied most of their home page on
**13** of their pages and no referral link there either. It caused the PR of the clien'ts site to drop to 0 and the site to disappear from Google's index and keyword rank to drop out of sight along with traffic.

We reported this to the Host and when they insisted on a DMCA report we sent that as well. The site disappeard within a week of their receiving the DMCA. We also sent a DMCA to Google explaining what happened as well as a Google spam report and requested reinclusion at which time they told us the site had not been banned by Google.

The PR is back to normal and the site command/index is back to normal also. Now we just have to wait for keyword rank to return.

This whole incident disproves what Google says about a competitor not being able to do anything to hurt your rank.