Google's dismissive DMCA communication

[browsee]

We've submitted DMCA notice yesterday. We've received the following communication from Google. I am really surprised to see this kind of dismissive email from Google as the scrapper from Canada copied word for word from my page. What other options are available to me?

Thanks

Hello [Name],

Thank you for your note.

We have received and reviewed your attached DMCA complaint. At this time,
Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning
content removal. As always, we encourage you to resolve any disputes
directly with the owner of the website in question.

If you pursue legal action against this site that results in the removal
of the offending material, our search results will display this change
after we next crawl the site. If the webmaster makes these changes and you
need us to expedite the removal of the cached copy, please submit your
request using our webpage removal request tool at
[google.com...]

Regards,
The Google Team

[Samanthatouch]

Some time ago someone had a similar problem and had success with contacting the advertisers directly when the ad network was not responsive (it wasn't adsense but since I can't find the link to the thread I don't want to name names).
Maybe you can see who is running ads that are showing on the copied pages and ask them to block those sites in their adwords account.

[Planet13]

Definitely follow up on the registrar and web host, as long as they are based in the United States. Remember, the DMCA is an American law.

So is there anything that can be done about companies / hosts that are NOT in the US (if they aren't using adsense or another US based ad network)?

[Asia_Expat]

Turns out a few resources had, including one Google Blogger blog (100% stolen content) with Google AdSense ads!

I've had success in getting stolen content removed from Google's 'Blogspot/Blogger' service, and my take down demands are now up on the Chilling Effects website... It did however take two attempts. The first time they wrote to me to say the content had been removed, but it hadn't... I wrote again and pointed out that it was still online, and it was taken down within minutes.

The owners of Wordpress were far more professional and responsive in their approach to DMCA. I think I mentioned elsewhere on WW that I managed to get some of my content removed from a Wordpress blog owned by one of the Wikileaks advisory board.

[browsee]

Maybe you can see who is running ads that are showing on the copied pages and ask them to block those sites in their adwords account.

Scraper is using "AdSense", I am planning to file AdSense DMCA soon. It is also hosted in US.

[browsee]

Just got another email from Google. On the bottom of the email reply I can see my url and scraper url.

Hello [Name],

Thank you for your note.

We have received and reviewed your complaints, and we are still having
difficulty locating the allegedly infringing content.

We ask that you reply to this email and provide more information utilizing
the following format:

1. (a) Copyrighted URL: www.__________.com
(b) Allegedly infringing URL: www.__________.com
(c) Make reference to the exact text/images which you feel are in
violation of your own material.

Please include all the URLs from your various tickets in your reply to
this email. Once we better understand what your contentions are, we will
be able to further investigate and take appropriate action. Thank you in
advance for your cooperation.


Regards,
The Google Team

[g1smd]

People at Google can't see the infringing content?

Are they looking in the Google cache or browsing the site as a normal user?

Does the other site serve different content for different visitors perhaps?

[outland88]

Maybe Google is making more money off the ads on the copied content versus the original?

That pretty much goes without saying and could be shown in a courtroom.

The laws also deal with intent to copy. Lawyers have told me that the slicing and dicing of the original material is a dead give-a-way that the offender knew what they were doing as opposed to no changes. It's much what the ordinary person would perceive by comparsion in a courtroom. If it's painfully obvious judges discourage wasting valuable courtroom time.

Actually one of the many trickier things Google deals in is the response to the original DMCA notification. Google pursues a "cowboy and cavalier" attitude to the actual law. Federal courts have already held that upon notification the takedown should be "immediate". Not at the discretion or based upon the workflow of whom has been notified. Judges have further defined "immediate" can be within minutes of the notification. Immediate upon notification to the judge meant "right now" not five minutes, five hours, or five days from now. The reasoning behind this, paraphrasing the judges, was the law was created to deal with the "hit and run" infringement so common to the electronic age. This is where large profits can be stealthfully made within minutes, hours, or days while hidden behing obscured origins. Google could argue that they were an exception to the law but few judges would tread on reversing a sound previous ruling. The courts would likely find that the mere presence of the request was substantial proof that Google was aware of the problem from the "get-go" because of its unique position in the marketplace. Furthermore no matter how much Google proclaimed their innocence Google could not separate itself from lax enforcement and programs where the infringement was enriching them. Merely based upon that Google should have been even more aware than many extra help was needed to comply with the law. Was Google an impoverished company unable to comply? Did Google pursue a profitable and knowingly delayed course of enforcement by encouraging people to contact the offenders web site? Does Google offer to return the proceeds from the "ill gotten gains"?

Secondly is Google required to meet the standards of the "safe harbor" portion of the law. Nobody has to seek it but is Google an exception.

Finally most of what I mention is not subjective and can be proved in a courtroom. To me Google is and wil always be a company who exploits copyright law to enrich themselves. Take away that and they're just another 25 dollar search engine stock.

[browsee]

Does the other site serve different content for different visitors perhaps?

Nope, they can see both url's. Not sure why they changed the tone?

[tedster]

Looks like someone sent you the wrong boilerplate for that first notice - and maybe the second one too, but at least it's not dismissive.

[g1smd]

Last year I was sent the wrong boilerplate over and over again on another matter. It was as if someone read six random words in my message then hit reply. Having explained why their previous answer was completely irrelevant, they sent the same message again, several times. Google's front line "customer service" is often beyond abysmal.

I think netmeg has also experienced much the same on several occasions.

[outland88]

That is a form they send out when they're having problems finding the content. There are also defunct forms that still appear and they don't respond to. Sometimes a simple refresh will show the old ones. Again make it as simple as possible. Leave nothing to assumption.

[deadsea]

What's more ridiculous is the fact that you actually believed what Matt Cutts said.

Didn't anybody learning anything from his famous page rank sculpting video?

mrguy: are you talking about this video? [youtube.com...]
Which part of his advice do you find so wrong?

[netmeg]

I think netmeg has also experienced much the same on several occasions.

I have indeed, but all my experiences like that were with AdWords.

[Shatner]

Here's my big frustration with DMCA notices right now. I've been filing them with Adsense, on the scrapers stealing my content and using Adsense to profit off it.

Here's an example of what happens when you do that.

1. Adsense notifies the scraper you have filed a notice... but doesn't actually do anything to his account.

2. The scraper admits that he is stealing my content to Adsense and then removes that content (he pulls the text out, but keeps the pages there, with my stolen page title and his adsense ads), responds to Adsense telling them he has removed the content he stole.

3. Adsense sends me a notice telling me that since the infringing content has been removed they will not do anything to the scraper's Adsense account.

4. The scraper is now free to go right back to stealing without interuption.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here? Basically Adsense now KNOWS that this person's site is a scraper site which steals content. They've looked at it, the person running it admits it. And they are choosing to go ahead and let him keep running Adsense anyway.

That's wrong on so many levels. They are basically encouraging content theft.

[browsee]

Thanks for all replies. Here is another email from Google team. They removed only 1/2 of the urls I submitted. I will submit AdSense DMCA for remaining URL's.

Hi [Name],

Attached is a list of your complaints pertaining to these removals.

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have completed
processing your infringement complaint. The following webpages have been
removed from Google:

[Removed Urls]

Please let us know if we can assist you further.


Regards,
The Google Team

[indyank]

This seems to be the new google way of dealing with DMCA complaints.I was successful in getting a few removed earlier.But, I get the following replies now.

Hello,

We have received and reviewed your attached DMCA complaint. At this time,
Google has decided not to take action based on our policies concerning
content removal. As always, we encourage you to resolve any disputes
directly with the owner of the website in question.

If you pursue legal action against this site that results in the removal
of the offending material, our search results will display this change
after we next crawl the site. If the webmaster makes these changes and you
need us to expedite the removal of the cached copy, please submit your
request using our webpage removal request tool at
[google.com...]

[incrediBILL]

Did you file a legit copyright?

If so, and Google rejects a valid DMCA, you just won the lottery.

[indyank]

incrediBill,

The page in question was heavily copied.Looks like someone in a popular forum copied the content.Then it has been copied in several other forums and sites.I had reported 15 pages to begin with.I got this reply for a few.

In the content, i would have linked to some other related pages on my site and all these copycats have ignore those links and retained the anchor text as "text".

I tend to use a punctuation mark a lot and one can easily find the same in this article.Even if google weren't clear about who the original author of the content was, taking a look at the writing style and comparing it with other articles on the site would easily prove the owner.

But google seem to have decided to push it back and make it as difficult as possible to remove the copied content from their search index.

[TheMadScientist]

I think incrediBILL was asking if you filed with the copyright office?

It's actually something I've thought about doing for some things I'm working on, because then there's no argument from anyone about origination, and like incrediBILL says, anyone (in the US) who does not respond to a proper DMCA complaint is in hot water...

[FranticFish]

I'm in the UK and have just found a large number of sites scraping a client's content. At present he outranks the scrapers but we're moving to a new domain and I'm worried that this will make Google think that he is no longer the original. The Wayback Machine confirms content is his since 2005. I want the scraped content offline before we switch domains.

Approaching Google is not an option when a site is hosted in the UK, so if the site owners won't take it down after a phone call, we'll be trying the web hosts, CCing the site owners in. Anyone have any experience of that? Do the majority of UK web hosts care or not?

[superclown2]

There is an easy answer to all this: you block scrapers from your sites.

I'm in the UK. Every new server I put up has an iptables file that blocks anyone from AFRINIC, APNIC, LACNIC, Russia, Turkey, Holland and Germany. Oh, and every USA university! I check my stats regularly and when I find foreign bots I check them against my list of friendly ones and block them if they don't match. I check the UK ones much more carefully to make sure they are not coming from genuine ISPs but if they come from hosting companies they go in the trashcan too. There is a .htaccess script on every site blocking the usual user agents that these bots use. It's hard work but I now have an iptables file of about 3000 lines (a lot of them /8) keeping these parasites at bay so I do NOT suffer from copied content.

[incrediBILL]

yes, file with the copyright office - you can do a bulk submission of an entire site at once and then refusal to honor a DMCA request has statutory damages attached, but the legal fees to pursue it can be steep unless you have a slam dunk and an attorney takes it on contingency.

[FranticFish]

There is an easy answer to all this: you block scrapers from your sites

That won't work for me: the content that's being ripped off in my case is an FAQ and Guide section on an SME website that has been appropriated by the SEO company or webmaster for sites hosted mostly in the UK.

[Shatner]

@superclown How do you have any time to actually create any content that might be scraped, it sounds like you're spending all your time chasing scrapers. For 99% of independently owned, non-corporate sites what you're proposing is not feasible or easy.

[FranticFish]

I can see though that if you are a country-specific SME, blocking all IP ranges but those of your own country and then specifically allowing certain trusted bots in from the US could stop some content theft. I suspect that at least some of the content we've had stolen was nicked by outsourced web developers overseas.

If your business is content then, given Google's apparent disinterest, it looks like blocking scrapers rather than chasing them could be the way forward in a lot of cases - especially if you run more than one site and can reuse the initial effort expended to get your block list together.

[jecasc]

Maybe they are just fed up at Google with being misused as internet police. If you put up content and someone infringes your copyright it is at first a matter between you and the content thief.

When I read here that some don't even bother anymore to contact the infringer or write a cease and decist letter but go to Google as first resort - no wonder they get more and more reluctant to respond to complaints.

Filing a DMCA with Google should be the last resort when everything else failed, not the first thing you do just because it is easy for you. Google is a search engine and not a free executioner to take care of your legal matters, because you are to lazy or to cheap to do that yourself. And yes I know it is hard, nevertheless it is you obligation to try to resolve this issue yourself and not use the power of third parties that are not directly involved to your advantage just because it is free for you. If you are to cheap to invest some paper and a stamp, then maybe you deserve to get your DMCA request rejected.

[walkman]

Filing a DMCA with Google should be the last resort when everything else failed, not the first thing you do just because it is easy for you. Google is a search engine and not a free executioner to take care of your legal matters, because you are to lazy or to cheap to do that yourself.

Wow! First it's the law,
Second, if Google didn't penalize victims most wouldn't care, but now they aren't ranking for that article and have their entire sites are penalized because of how Google is doing things.

And you can't hire a lawyer each time someone steals your 620 page article.

[jecasc]

And you can't hire a lawyer each time someone steals your 620 page article.

Writing a cease and decist letter does not require a lawyer and you do not need to visit lawschool to find a template online. But that's the least people should do. And if that fails they can still contact the host or the search engines.

But nowadays some are not even doing that, instead they are unloading a ton of URLs to the hosters and search engines and let them sort things out for them. No wonder they are swamped and do not react properly anymore. And that hurts everybody.

[wheel]

It's the US law. If you're in the US, if you're hosting stolen content, you're responsible for following the DMCA, part of which means the hosting company follows the steps and may end up taking down the material - or they end up being responsible for it. They're making money from it, they own part of the responsibility. And if they simply follow it, apparently they get absolved or responsibility.

It's a great law. Without it, as you can clearly see from this thread that most people have no ability to prevent people from stealing their content.

[jecasc]

It's a great law. Without it, as you can clearly see from this thread that most people have no ability to prevent people from stealing their content.

Cease and decist emails and letters have always worked for me so far. I never had to file a DMCA complaint with a third party. Of course I would do it as last resort - when someone would not react. And of course sending cease and decise letters only solve the issue and do not give the satisfaction of punishment some might feel when they see a website removed from the Google SERPS.

But I can tell you where swamping search engines and hosters with DMCAs because of pure laziness lead: Longer waiting periods until the issues are resolved, getting requests declined and in the long term maybe even a revision of the DMCA - when hosters and search engines are fed up being misused in that way and start to complain and lobby for a revision, making it harder to file DMCA complaints. And that would hurt everybody.