Article Pirates

how to stop people republishing articles without giving credit

[sundaridevi]

Article sites used to work great, but now it seems like everytime I write an article, for every one guy that republishes it and gives credit (includes links to my website, unaltered, without no following the links), there are 9 who publish just a few paragraphs, remove all links, or put rel=nofollow on the links.

I guess they do it because they can get away with it. But whenever I write an article, after about 3 months I put some snippets in google (part of the title, a sentence from the first or second paragraph) and look at what people are doing with it. I make a list and about once every three months I send out a bunch of cease & desist emails. If I've sent a hundred, only one didn't either fix the links or take the article off and he was in China, so maybe thought he was immune to American IP law. If it is a blog (75% are) then a lot of times if you copy the Cease and Desist to the host provider, they just delete the entire blog.

So I hope everybody will do this. If bloggers knew they were risking getting their blog deleted, they would stop pirating articles.

It's hard to see if a link has been rel=nofollow'd but Matt Cutts, Google evangelist provides an easy way if you use firefox

[mattcutts.com...]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I have an ongoing issue with docstoc who have published an article of mine, which was submitted to them by a third party as his own. The article footer still shows my copyright notice and business name.

I contacted Docstoc about this and they told me to follow their long winded copyright infringement process. I got back to them and told them that a blind man could see that they were infringing my copyright but they refused to do anything about it unless I followed their procedures.

This raises another issue with unethical businesses like Docstoc. Should we have to comply with THEIR procedures before they act upon on any copyrght infringement notification? I don't have the reources to take legal action against thme but if I had I would!

[sundaridevi]

I just took a quick look at docstoc. their terms of service (point 15) outlines the procedure, which is the exact same procedure in the DMCA link on the footer ( [docstoc.com...] ).

The dmca gives safe harbor to sites like Docstoc, meaning that it protects them from lawsuits based on copyright infringement acts beyond their control. So if you notify them the content is there, they must take it down or be liable. The fact that they include the DMCA link on the footer is compliant with the DMCA law so you must follow that procedure, which in my opinion is only asking for what a normal DMCA Cease & Desist should already contain.

If you send them all that info and they still ask for more, just send them a Cease & Desist letter, because at that point they will no longer be DMCA compliant. If you look at [chillingeffects.org...] you can get lots more info on this as well as read sample cease & desist letters. But please make them take it down. The only way to stop people is to confront them wherever you find them. Something like the record companies are doing with downloading I guess.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I appreciate that they have a process in place but docstoc profit from the ads they display alongside these documents. The people who upload the documents get a share of the ad revenue. The person who uploaded my document is in Egypt. I contacted him and asked him to remove it but he did not respond. He has over half a million documents in Docstoc and my guess is that he did not write any of them,

Docstoc can see perfectly well that my claim is true. My business name and copyright notice are still on the document and the guy who is doing this is clearly a crook but even in extreme situations like this they are happy to encourage him to profit from the theft of this material while insisting that I follow their procedures.

They are not interested in copyright law. They are only interested in circumventing it. What they are doing is totally unethical and it should not be allowed.

[tangor]

Do all that is low level correct (sounds like you've done that) then go nuke: hit the site's host with DMCA. Otherwise than that...

Most of these scrapers figure the creators will give up. Don't.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I think Docstoc are probably too big for me. I am a self employed person and like many others whose material they steal I don't have the resources to take them on.

I doubt that contacting their host would do any good. they will probably have that angle covered.

[sundaridevi]

I think Docstoc are probably too big for me. I am a self employed person and like many others whose material they steal I don't have the resources to take them on.

I doubt that contacting their host would do any good. they will probably have that angle covered.

The DMCA is made for people like you. You don't even need to prove the content is yours to get them deleted from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing and their host provider. You just follow the procedure on their websites. They can get the content reinstated if you haven't filed a lawsuit within a specific amount of time, but I seriously doubt anybody would request that if they have stolen content.

If Docstoc was too big to take on, they would have lawyers who would tell them to take a DMCA complaint very seriously. It seems that they don't.

Personally, if the violating site doesn't reply, I sent a 2nd dmca to them with a copy to the Host Provider. The host *must* respond or they will be liable. Copyright violation penalties are very heavy in the USA. Some of them will try to defend their client, but usually it doesn't matter, as soon as the violater sees [e-mail] on the cc: if they are sane they will delete the offending page.

Some people also recommend copying the domain registrar, but I only did that once and the domain registrar said they couldn't do anything. But docstoc doesn't know that and when faced with DOS or losing one article, they will choose to delete the article rather than fight.

Anyway, the reason I started this thread is to tell people that it's easy to stop these guys when you know the procedure.

[Lapizuli]

I've had articles removed from Docstoc by following their procedures. As I recall, the claim was as easy to do as any other DMCA filing online - they ask for the standard info. They were removed quickly.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I appreciate that they may take action on this single document if I follow their DMCA process. My problem is that they appear to be totally unconcerned about obvious breaches like this (e.g. my document still has my busness name on it) and are happy to persist in publishing infringed material.

They offer an API to "publishers". I understand that this facilitates bulk document uploads. The person who uploaded my document is credited with publishing over half a million documents. Considering that mine is such an obvious infringement and that the guy who published them is in Egypt it is extremely likely that most if not all of his other uploads are also infringing someones's copyright.

Docstoc know this but do nothing about it.