Stealing content for the sake of earning from Adsense

[elguapo]

Just discovered today that someone stole the homepage of our main website. Exact copy, with our web design, content, navigation structure, even the spiel we use to present our products and entice advertisers to buy ad space from us. The only difference is the Adsense publisher ID (and the color scheme - from blue to red).

Apparently, this Singaporean person really wanted a duplicate of our site. He sent us an email requesting permission to use all our articles, all 5,700+ of them to be put on his site! He has finished stealing our homepage plus a couple of our section main pages. An innocent and honest thief, if ever there is one. Funny thing is he forgot to change some references to our website - e.g. in the part where we say "Syndicate the following Content from mywebsite.com", he retained the name of our website; as well as in the section containing a list of our products.

It blows my mind to think that there are unimaginative people out there who wants to earn money the fast way by ripping other people off their handiworks. Stealing an article is one thing; but stealing an entire site is another. I guess in his mind he is already calculating how much he can earn from Adsense from a ready-made 5,700+ pages of content with not-too-shabby keywords.

Of course, we immediately filed a DCMA complaint to Google, his domain registrar, his web host (am I forgetting others?), and sent him a cease-and-desist letter. Also sent a report to Adsense, although I am wondering if he used the site to apply for Adsense because I searched around and couldn't find another site that belongs to him. I checked the publisher ID and it's not ours.

It must be frustrating to talentless individuals to think that others are making good money and they just don't know how :o(

[sirkei]

How did you find him in the first place?

Did he email you telling that i am going to use your contents with my own domain name?

If he did not email you, it will take you ages to find out that your content is being stolen, or maybe some hijack issues appear for your site.... or maybe google will drop your site...

If that is the case, this honest guy at least emails you first. So i guess you should just tell him to remove everything and do it the polite way. Filing a lawsuit is troublesome.

Just give him a "road".

[elguapo]

He first sent us an email requesting for permission to use all our articles - without his website address and using an MSN email, and his complete name. Then he sent an Add URL request using our website form - this time with a different email and only his first name. When we checked the URL of the site he wants to be linked, that's when we discovered the copyright infringement. We put two and two together using the first name and the IP address of where the emails came from.

do it the polite way

LOL - hey thief, can you please please stop stealing from me? LOL Why will I be polite? I will make sure -- short of a lawsuit -- that he knows that what he's doing is not right; and I will make sure that everyone who deals with him (his webhost, Adsense, Google, etc.) knows that he is a copyright infringer. This is not the time to be polite.

[ownerrim]

If google even bothered to have any standards about their publisher network, this stuff wouldn't be nearly so rampant. Don't be evil? What a joke.

[incrediBILL]

Welcome to the club as I have this sort of thing happen to me ALL the time!

The only thing I'm shocked about is all the scraper sites aren't showing up in the SERPs anymore when I look for them on Google and MSN, haven't checked Yahoo yet. They used to show up when I searched for certain chunks of my text and now NOTHING.

I wonder what's changed?

BTW, your DCMA complaint to AdSense will probably fall on deaf ears as they somehow seem to consider that a problem for the search dept.

[CodeJockey]

We started looking seriously at our transaction logs about two months ago, because we were noticing that a couple of sites and words that we keep an eye on were publishing pages that, although not exactly identical to ours, sort of surrounded content that strangely enough had the exact same typographical errors that were on two of our pages.

Watching the logs for a couple of days, we noticed a recurring burst of traffic to one of our sites at the same time in the wee hours of the morning, for exactly the same number of pages per day.

So, we sort of re-wrote our software to recognize that when it encountered this traffic burst, it was to switch certain words, numbers and sentances to others on a random pattern. It also inserted a statement in the content to the effect 'This content is scrambled and stolen from... '.

Within a couple of days, the scrambled content appeared on this person's site.

We've gotten a bit more creative in changing the content that this person is publishing, including all of the stop words that we can think of, and shifted the content to the extent that it really is total garbage. Yet the daily traffic requests continue. The It's Funny Factor hasn't worn off yet, but it's close.

While this individual isn't taking enough of our content on a daily basis to cause our software to flag up a problem, we still think it's a form of theft but nothing provable and nothing to go ape over, but over the course of a year, a substantial portion of our site would be copied.

All of the pages have AdSense on them (well the ones that don't have stop words) and our only conclusion is that this individual is building a set of sites strictly for the AdSense earnings, and is willing to do it slowly and steadily to avoid detection.

I wouldn't label them 'talentless' individuals. 'Scruple-less' individuals, certainly. :)

[incrediBILL]

OK, here's an idea you might think about...

Instead of returning phrases about the pages being stolen, if you could identify the scumbag and target his IP specifically you could return cloaked pages of material that violates the AdSense TOS and get him booted from the program.

As a matter of fact, when you see those pages appear, turn him in :)

[CodeJockey]

We didn't want to target the entire IP number because we get useful traffic from it... just this particular traffic burst. It was such a long shot stumbling across it in the first place.

Once we started using stop words, we also started using certain 'combinations' of words that would be of some interest to certain uniformed (and non-uniformed) public organizations. We're sitting in the bleachers waiting for these pages to appear in the SEs and then we'll cut everything off.

The real problem is that this individual isn't the only one running some sort of low-key automated crawl against our sites; there are a couple of others that we've identified but can't trace backwards. The site copiers that hammer down the site with thousands of requests in seconds/minutes are real easy to spot and cure.

Fortunately the low-key thieves think that between 0100 hrs and 0400 hrs is a great time to do their dirty work when all of our traffic is basically zero... it's like sticking a "kick me" sign on their IP.

[tallguy]

I often check my stats and detect website copiers.

Checking sentences from my site on google search or copyscape helps identify sites which are stealing my content.

The WAYBACK MACHINE is good way to prove your stuff is original. Also I have got my content copyright registered & hired an attorney.

It's my hard work & hurts when it is reproduced without permission.

I make a list of sites which are stealing my content & regularly send this to adsense with DMCA.
Yes, adsense is taking action on such sites :-)

This post by jenstar on AdSense & copyright infringement is worth reading :

[webmasterworld.com...]

So, don't steal! Why risk your account by being greedy?

[iProgram]

elguapo you are lucky enough because this is a newbie thief and lives in a country which respects copyright law. In other case the thief won't contact you at all and won't let you know his detail info at all (no whois, no real name, etc) and when you found him (most likely in SERP directly), the thief's website has already affected you, for example "duplicated content" filter. When you filed DCMA complaints, the thief has already released another clone of your site :(

Btw, maybe you will need to send a DCMA doc to AdSense team separately.

[sailorjwd]

It is funny who I find copying my content...

Last week I found a Catholic school in England that copied several whole pages graphics and all.

I also found several universities here in the US that have done the same.

All of them have removed the content and some of them now have links to my site which of course they should have done in the first place!

[sailorjwd]

Question:

Does anyone know if the wayback machine is good enough to support a DMCA request or support a lawsuit?

[elguapo]

Not sure sailor. But in my case, the wayback machine showed that this person's website is one of these affiliate Plugin Profit. Apparently, the profit ran out so he decided to switch to advertising. Except he lacks creativity to create a website so he decided to simply copy ours. And yes, I am lucky that the thief is a newbie.

[lammert]

Does anyone know if the wayback machine is good enough to support a DMCA request or support a lawsuit?

In all my DMCA complaints the wayback machine info was accepted as evidence and the hosting company removed the offending pages / accounts. I have no experience with DMCA lawsuits.

[Sobriquet]

Check this ongoing Discussion

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Mauricio]

I find out one of these thives and he copied the whole site.

a) I've received two messages from MY contact form in HIS site
b) a lot of links "aren't retrieved by Teleport because they are in an external location".

[roadhazard]

My site is not professional looking, looks home made and IS. I am not saying I am proud of this, but at least I am in less danger of having site stolen. Don't know if it helps, but I have NO RIGHT CLICK and frame buster codes in place on main pages. Frankly, not much of my stuff would be worth stealing. Can't afford professional designer. Probably this fact also holds down my Adsense income, but when possible I will improve the look of the site. Only have had Adsense for 2 months. Started at zero commissiona; now up to almost $3 a day. Working on it all the time. I have all the Adsense in the heat spot and blended and one Adsense search box on each page at bottom to try to catch any before they leave the page. Just out of sandbox so not much G. traffic yet, but maybe this year.

[rubenski]

I bumped into a site that copied posts from this forum to make Adsense money. I reported it and I am sure it has been taken care of. It is such a lame way of making money. I really can't stand it.

[ownerrim]

"I reported it and I am sure it has been taken care of."

Don't be so sure. Have you checked back to see if he still runs adsense?

[flobaby]

I just discovered an entire site of mine was copied as well (with Adsense on it's pages, of course). I've contacted the owner and their host, but no response, so friday I faxed a DMCA complaint to Google. Looking foward to having his Adsense account terminated, hope it happens soon.

[ownerrim]

It's not the fact that adsense EXISTS that is causing the problem with massive content theft. It's the fact that google has standards for entry into the program that are only 1 milimeter off the floor and out of the dirt.

[elguapo]

1 mm? Maybe lesser! I can imagine how Goggle approved this guy when he has not even finished copying and changing the text of our homepage...But the thing is, he has Adsense already running on one page. We pressumed that he has other sites that has Adsense and may have used his Adsense code from there. Well, we will see what happens.

[elguapo]

Update: The offending website has been yanked out by the web host. Now it is a 403 Forbidden error. The guy also emailed us, pleading to us not to disable his accounts (e.g. Adsense, web hosting).

My trust in mankind has been restored :o)

[ownerrim]

"The guy also emailed us, pleading to us not to disable his accounts"

Haha. What sweet music this must have been to thine ears!

[tallguy]

IF ANYONE IS STEALING YOUR CONTENT, YOU CAN KICK HIM OUT OF ADSENSE.

ADSENSE SHOULD ENCOURAGE US TO WORK HARD, NOT STEAL CONTENT.

YES, GOOGLE IS SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WHOSE CONTENT IS ORIGINAL.

You can fax or mail them
-----------------------------------

Fax your complaint to:

[phone], Attention: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints

or send mail to :

Google Inc.
Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints
2400 Bayshore Pkwy,
Mountain View,
CA 94043
----------------------------------

For further queries, email their support.

[alika]

Great job. That should teach him one lesson..

[elguapo]

"Haha. What sweet music this must have been to thine ears!"

I look up the sky and feel the sea breeze softly caressing my skin with the loud "Sousa Band" on the background...

We appreciate the swiftness of the response of his Web Hosting company that did it in less than 24 hours after we emailed our complaint.

Google Adsense has not acted on it but the site is already gone. (for now, maybe).

Thank you all for your input.

[dacapo]

Like good old Karl Marx sayed Capitalism has the seed of its own destruction.Just take a look in our western culture ,all sacrifice in the Altar of Marketing.TV the first victim now the internet.How many of you keep on watching your free channels with all those tones of cheap trash(even BBC),i have to pay monthly satelite channels or to go to my local video club.How many of you buy any more Music CD,s when you can download for free any song you want.As a result of all above mentioned there never will be a new Dickens a new Defoe ,Twain or a new Elvis or Jimi Hendrix or Fred Mercury ,a new Wilder ,Huston,Hitchcock as well as people that will bother publish on the net Great websites with rich content and information.Why should they?#1 to be hijacked and copy from a scuam that wants to make a quiky dollar? to be eliminate by a google update?.
Thats the bad news about the future of our "western culture " unfortunatelly IS TRUE.

[fearlessrick]

I find dacapo and ownerrim share my cynical view of all of this. Why write anything of import on the internet? The spammers are keeping book, magazine and newspaper publishers in business.

[badtigger]

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, dacapo, but I don't see capitalism as being the problem. Rather it is the case of monopolies, and over-monopolization of capital. So many folks these days attack what they think is capitalism, and it isn't, its "corporatism", and it would have good old Adam Smith turning in his grave.