How do you find people copying your images or literary works?

[cicgirl]

Hi all,
I am pretty new to webmasterworld, but I have a question..
I notice that some of you have found that entire sites have copied your materials.
How do I go about finding who is hotlinking my images or taking copyrighted material?
Do you generally just do a search on google with a section of your articles or do a pic search?

Is there a good/best way to go about this?

[willybfriendly]

Hotlinking will show in your logs.

An occasional search for a unique phrase from your copy might surprise you some day. It is amazing how many theives are out there, and how many ways they can feign surprise. "Gee, I'll have to talk to our web designer about that..."

If you find copied material, act swiftly and harshly. It has happened to me twice. I gave 24 hours to get the offending material down. In both cases I contacted the host 24 hours later, with a copy to the site owner. Amazingly, it only took a matter of 3 or 4 hours after that action to see the material vanish.

WBF