My content on another site!

I want more than an apology !

[Roomy]

I have just found a verbatim copy of one of my articles on another site. I wrote and demanded payment for it. They replied saying it was an oversight and have removed it.

I wrote again demanding payment and have recieved no reply. The offending site is hosted in the US with a .co.uk domain and I am in the UK, could anyone advise on the best way of taking this further legally?

[rogerd]

Roomy, is the company a well-established, "deep pockets" concern, i.e., one that might pay a few dollars to make you go away vs. risking bad publicity?

The financial award you are likely to recover (if you are lucky enough to recover anything at all) for a single article which was promptly removed probably won't justify hiring an attorney, and won't be likely to attract a lawyer based on a contigency fee. It never hurts to try, of course.

For something like this, often the most you can accomplish is to create grief for the offender by complaining to his web host, search engines, domain registrar, business partners, etc., with full documentation. Check out the rest of his site - has he ripped off other sites, do you think? If so, you might drop a note to the content owners; this will keep him busy, and if you are lucky one of the content owners will have in-house counsel (or a good lawyer buddy) who will file suit without warning.

[walkman]

legally? Is it worth suing over an article? Unless you published the secret KFC recipes that is...

[BigDave]

To start with, read Title 17 of the US code.

You might find that you have not done everything just right to get much "more than an apology".

Just as a guess, I would say that you are only likely to get actual damages, and the attorney's fees will come out our your award AND your own pocket.

Sometimes it is better to lick your wounds and get on with life.

[Roomy]

Hi Guys

I guess I have to just be content with the removal and apology. Now having had a chance to think rationally about it the cross border jurisdiction thing would probably cost me more than the article.

Thanks anyway

[Teshka]

At least they removed it... I usually just get ignored by sites I confront about stealing my stuff. It's not really worth it to me to pursue the matter, though. Which is I guess what they count on.

[chrisnrae]

If it is removed, your time is probably more beneficially spent working on other things. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence (in my experience and in hearing the experiences of friends) and it will likely not be the last time it happens.

[ronin]

I like the ones who steal both my content and design and are dumb enough to hotlink my images so that I can swap the image on my server with a different image that says: "This page is an illegal copy - for the original (and more updated version) please visit mysite.com". Amazingly there's one (neglected) page on the web which has been hosting this kind of free advertising for about nine months now.

I notice though that since I switched from tables to CSS-P for layout, people don't seem to be copying my pages wholesale anymore. Probably because when they copy the code and look at it, it looks nothing like what they saw on my server.

[jmbishop]

Maybe you could offer to license your articles for a fee and a link back to your own site.

I often find content on the web that I know is syndicated and think that it would make a great addition to one of my sites but there is no way of finding out who the syndicating company is... So I move on.