Forum Moderators: not2easy
This post describes what you should do if you discover that your website’s content has been copied or reproduced without your permission. It describes actions you may take to protect your interests.
Note:All original material posted on the web is protected by copyright. If you take the additional step of registering that copyright [copyright.gov] you may be afforded additional awards if your copyright is infringed.
Once you have confirmed originality You will need to gather information, including:
1. Who the infringer is
2. Where the site is hosted
3. Exactly what infringements have occurred
Now you must decide whether you want to contact the infringer by email with a Cease & Desist, (C&D Sample Letter) [builder.com.com] or simply start with the DMCA Notice of Infringement. Note: A Notice Of Infringement to search engines will not force the infringer to remove the content from the site. The search engines will simply remove the site listing from the search engine results.
Note: If the infringment is innocent an email may be all that is needed.
Cease and Desist Letter Or Email
A Cease and Desist is an email (or letter) advising the recipient of;
1) your claim of ownership rights or copyright;
2) your claim of exclusive rights to publish and license use, which you allege have been violated;
3)your demand that the recipient immediately remove all known copies of your work and that the infringer report knowledge of further reproductions; and,
4)your demand that the infringer promise to never do the same again.
In many cases the matter will be resolved simply by a properly worded cease and desist email or letter. If the letter arrives on official letterhead all the better as it enforces the appearance that the source of the letter is serious about enforcing their rights. Keep the tone of the initial contact businesslike: Stick to the essential facts.
Familiarize yourself with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [copyright.gov] !PDF FILE
File a DMCA Notice Of Infringement with all the major search engines.
Follow the instructions provided by the search engines for filing DMCA infringement notices. Below you will find links to each search engine's DMCA page.
Google's DMCA Page [google.com]
Yahoo's DMCA Page [docs.yahoo.com]
MSN Search DMCA Page [microsoft.com]
Ask's DMCA Page [sp.ask.com]
AOL's DMCA Page [site.aol.com]
After you've filed DMCA Notices of Infringement, you may want to file a notice with the host of the infringer's website (recommended). Look for the webhost's Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Often you will find instructions for filing DMCA Notices as well as contact email and instructions for filing. Note infringements by URL. It is often helpful to use Internet Archive [archive.org] to provide comparison dates.
You may be contacted by the search engines and the webhost and asked to provide more information. Reply to those requests promptly.
But How Do I Know If My Content Has Been Taken?
The simplest method to protect your web copy is by copying portions of your text and pasting that portion of text (in quotes) into your favorite search engine. If your text has been copied by others, the search engine results will highlight that text in their SERPS and/or provide links to pages using that text.
If you suspect plagiarism there are commercial software solutions available that aid in detection. Software can be helpful if you suspect large portions of your web copy to be particularly prone to infringement.
What About Damages and Legal Recourse?
If you seek monetary damages consult with an attorney that specializes in copyright law. Keep in mind that there are benefits to formally filing for copyright protection, including the right to claim “statutory damages” – which means that you will not be required to prove actual monetary loss, which can be quite difficult. You may also be entitled to an award of counsel fees for each violation that is enforced. Therefore, formally filing for copyright protection may also make it easier to secure the assistance of an attorney.
With special thanks to Webwork, jdMorgan and rogerd for additional insight, editing and revisions.
what about search engines? aren't they copying your content and re-publishing it for profit? they crawl your site, grab titles, descritions, keywords, entire chunks of text, and index it in their systems, then sell advertising and PPC placements to people for profit. all on the backs of your content..
Is this not a violation of the DMCA? I know I Know who would want their info removed from the search engines, but what about all of the smaller vertical search engines? the links indexes, what about small sites that crawl the web and end up indexing that content and re-publishing it in their own vertical search engines?
Do google and other engines penalize those sites by dumping them from the index? I recently had one of our index sites go from 20k entries in google, to 500. the thing is, our indexed items were entered by the owners of the information. and were problably the exact descriptions used on numerous other search engines, as entered by their respective owners. is it right for google to just dump our items because the same text was somewhere else on the internet?
Could another site with the same listing information as ours, entered by the same person, claim that our site was in violation of the DMCA, file a complaint, and get us purged from search engines?
This seems like dangerous ground.
