Copied but slightly changed content

dmca, copyright

[SirTox]

I recently discovered a website in Australia copying every tutorial article of mine for about a year now. Most of the titles on each post are exactly the same. The content was manually copied, then modified slightly, then pasted on this offending site.

Originally they had included images from my site on the pages, but after emailing the site owner, these have been removed. I sent another email asking that the content be removed also and it doesn't appear they will comply.

Does anybody know if a DMCA would apply to content that is slightly different in this case? The content is clearly lifted and the posts even appear in the same order in which I wrote them on my site.

Thanks!

-Tox

[Lapizuli]

I am not a lawyer, but...

Copyright violations are not limited to exact copies...courts tend to recognize substantial similarity.

[america.gov...]

In copyright law, "copying" denotes two separate but interrelated concepts. To constitute an infringement of copyright, a work must be a "copy" in the sense that it is substantially similar to a copyrighted work, it must have been "copied" from the copyrighted work as opposed to being the result of coincidental, independent production or from being taken from the same source as the copyrighted work.

[SirTox]

Thank you. That's pretty much what I figured since I've seen site owners take action against slightly copied items.

[Major_Payne]

Some relevant info:


Topic: Internet Copyright Violation [facebook.com]
Dealing with online copyright violations [news.deviantart.com]
How to Report Copyright Violations [ehow.com]
Copyright Infringement [copyright.gov]
10 Big Myths about copyright explained [templetons.com]
Digital Millennium Copyright Act [en.wikipedia.org]

[Lapizuli]

Major_Payne, I hadn't seen the myths one before...it's excellent, one every publisher should read.

[walrus]

That was a good read, thanks for posting it.

[explorador]

Originally they had included images from my site on the pages, but after emailing the site owner, these have been removed

That's why one can't afford being "nice" with that kind of people. A warning ends up "giving them time to fix things up". Some people are nice and you might end up being friends or some kind of alliance, but others just learn on how to get away with it.

[SirTox]

Well, lesson learned. The site was almost an exact mirror of mine even after the changes, and BlueHost removed the site until he removed everything. I researched and found a ton of other sites the guy owns and they are all duplicates of other sites. I've notified the other webmasters and hopefully this guy can be shut down for god. I declare nuclear war on this a-hole.

[londrum]

how did you get BlueHost to shut it off, just out of interest -- did you just send them an email, or do the whole DMCA thing?

[SirTox]

Did the DMCA. Did everything they have listed in their TOS and it was taken down within hours.