DMCA (any other options?)

[BaseballGuy]

Hello,

I'm going to refrain from listing exactly how I found out, but another major website has stolen at least one of the articles that I wrote. They copied it word for word and gave absolutely no credit back to me.

When performing a keyword search in Google, I rank #1, they rank #2. This keyword is not very important, but it still drives 2-3 visitors per day, and for a small site like mine, every single visitor counts.

This is the first time I have had to deal with plagiarism and was reading up on the DMCA procedure in Google. Apparently I have to write a letter then send it snail mail, and my information will be posted on another site.

The offending site appears to be somewhat big.

What is the best way to resolve this (without any repercussions)? What has/hasn't worked for you in the past? There are 4 attorneys in my family and they are ready to go to bat for me at the drop of a hat. I would rather not go this way because I do not have the time to deal with courts and paperwork/etc. I also don't want to cause more trouble than this is worth and certain family members have somewhat of a bad reputation for ruining lives and reputations of people they "deal with" when it comes time to file suit.

I have half a mind to send the owner an email listing the offending content, but....I have found other articles on their website that I reasonably suspect to be stolen from other websites.

Should I release the hounds (so to speak) on this website?
Will a DMCA provide quasi-immediate results?

At a loss as to the best course to chart.

thanks

[BaseballGuy]

I just had an idea...

Is there anyway to contact someone at Google (via email) to let them know of the offending site and let Google deal with it?

If I could get a live human being at Google to investigate (of which wouldn't take more than 1 minute for them to realize this site is stealing content), that is all it would take. All they would have to do is look at their history and they will see that my article was posted before this persons article.

Then Google could investigate further and realize this site is stealing everyone elses content as well.

I then wash my hands of it?

[martinibuster]

I discussed options in a three part discussion posted in the Supporters Section:

Dealing With Content Plagiarism Part 1 of 3
Discussion of Sites That May Enable Plagiarism
[webmasterworld.com...]

Dealing With Content Plagiarism Part 2 of 3
Confronting Publishers of Your Copyrighted Content
[webmasterworld.com...]

Dealing With Content Plagiarism Part 3 of 3
The Power of a Pre-DMCA Notice
[webmasterworld.com...]

There is a difference of opinion in the discussions over how to approach the matter of plagiarism, which indicates there may not be a clear path to resolution, it all depends on your judgement of what feels best for your situation. Part three includes an example of an email asking a publisher to take down the plagiarized content.

[HRoth]

Send the site webmaster an email saying "I noticed you're using my copyrighted material without my permission." Give the url it's on and where it was taken from. Ask them to remove it immediately. I usually close with "Thanks for your immediate attention to this matter" and "Sincerely." This works for me about 85% of the time.

If they don't respond either by taking it down or whatnot, contact the webhost, explaining you have contacted the webmaster with no result. This works the remaining 15% of the time, because IME, webhosts just don't want to deal with this kind of stuff. People tend to listen when their webhost tells them to take something down.

One single time in nine years, no evil eye, I went as far as doing a DMCA to Google. For me, this is the hydrogen bomb of plagiarism. It was a AdSense-based forum where a poster had set up a "school" that used various of my pages as lessons. For two weeks, it was like pulling teeth to get responses from the individual in charge of the school, who berated me and took down only part of it. The webmaster of the forum just didn't respond to my emails--until I told them I would send a DMCA to AdSense, which I did. I got like five emails that day from the offending site's "legal" department saying they had taken it down.

Who cares what excuses a webmaster gives about why your stuff is there? I don't. Nor do I want to "punish" people or "teach them a lesson." These people are too stupid to learn and I don't have the time. I just want my stuff down. This approach has worked for me.

[old_expat]

I recently discovered that one of those automaton types sites with lots of feeds and very little content copied most of my home page verbatim to use on a subtopic landing page. I tried doing a whois lookup and emailed every email address available. All were fakes.

So I figured that if they were ripping me off, they were probably doing so to others. So I spent a morning searching for snippets of content. Lo and behold, I located a fistful of other apparent violations.

Being the diligent neighborhood watch guy that I am:

I emailed each of the apparent real owners of those articles and asked if this copy on such-and-such URL belonged to them.

It actually stirred up quite a hornets' nest. Several emailed asking about filing a DMCA notice and I happily gave them links and suggestions. ;)

[vincevincevince]

When you do the whois lookup and find the emails non-responsive, find out the IP of the site (nslookup) and then do a whois lookup on the IP. That will usually take you to the ISP, who is usually a lot more responsive. As noted above - get the ISP to ask the owner and the owner is likely to listen as the ISP is likely to take down the whole site rather than go through the fuss of fighting or negotiating.