Stolen content, best strategies

[realmaverick]

Hey guys,

I've been approached by a couple of artists on my website, complaining of blogs stealing their work and not giving credit.

I took some time to investigate how big the issue is, and there are literally thousands upon thousands of blogs, taking their work, uploading to mediafire and giving absolutely zero credit.

I have told them I'll do my best to help them. I will request they either remove the content or provide a link back to the source.

Is there anything else I could/should do, in order to make this as successful as possible.

Any advice would be great.

Many thanks.

[tedster]

Have you set up authorship mark-up for these writers? That's a very useful step.

[realmaverick]

Hi Tedster, what's the best way to go about that? I know there's schema data, rel=author etc. I read a couple of sources, stating that you should an email address that belongs to the domain name and that should be your Google+ email. Which would all get terribly complicated.

[tedster]

There's a lot of documentation around. Here's some Google documentation: [support.google.com...]

Essentially, your authors should each have a Google+ profile page with a decent "head shot" thumbnail - and then you use the re;="author" markup on their articles to indicate who they are. The head shot can end up being used in the SERPs when their article ranks for a query. That can really boost clickthrough!

There are some slightly more complex situations when authors are published on more than one website - but it's still a relatively simple process.

[backdraft7]

@tedster - do you know if this can (or should) be applied retroactively to existing works? Is it needed on every static web page or just blog articles? Perhaps a new thread on authorship is in order.

[Leosghost]

How is using "authorship" and a G+ account going to prevent anyone stealing these works, claiming them a their own, and uploading them to media fire ?..or any other cyber locker..

3 words ..it is not..

Nor is it going to force any blogs to give them credit..

And there is no guarantee that using Google's proprietary "authorship system" nor joining it's G+ system it will help the actual rank..

Essentially, your authors should each have a Google+ profile page with a decent "head shot" thumbnail - and then you use the re;="author" markup on their articles to indicate who they are. The head shot can end up being used in the SERPs when their article ranks for a query. That can really boost clickthrough!

So to counteract IP theft, the suggestion is to tell the IP owners to give even more personal details to Google ( who are no doubt allowing the IP infringing "blogs" to survive by allowing them to run adsense ) ..and if the artists do this ..the hypothetical result is that

That can really boost clickthrough!

..for "can" read "may" ..as in not guaranteed..

And the artists work may still be outranked in serps by the infringers ..and if the infringers are on page 1 and the artists are on page two ..all the "head shots" in the world are not going to get a click through to the real owner ..the click will have happened the page before..

Give media fire and Google take down notices, DMCAs , whatever, it is up to them to clean up, and remove stolen material from their serps and servers , not for webmasters and artists to be expected to give them even more details about themselves to possibly outrank their own stolen material..

Google via the "authorship" and the G+ system are indirectly blackmailing webmasters and creators, they could stop IP abuse without it..they don't want to , as it suits them not to..

Unless threatened with the law they are always on the side of the IP infringer..because their own business model is built upon IP infringement..

[tedster]

do you know if this can (or should) be applied retroactively to existing works? Is it needed on every static web page or just blog articles? Perhaps a new thread on authorship is in order.

We did - it makes plenty of sense to me.

and if the infringers are on page 1 and the artists are on page two ..all the "head shots" in the world are not going to get a click through to the real owner ..the click will have happened the page before..

I agree with this. However, my results were that within a couple of weeks of using authorship mark-up. the infringers were no longer outranking the original author.

Stopping the infringers head on is a frustrating effort - they seem to grow like weeds. I only have time to go after the worst ones, or the ones that start to steal rankings.

[Leosghost]

G could fix this and all other related IP abuse problems, scraping and spinning, automated or human re-writing "à la ehow"..very simply ..if they wanted to..

Just give a "submit url" button ( IIRC they used to have one ) either on their search page ( best place ), or on WMT ( worst place, not every webmaster has an account nor wants one )..I don't use WMT , nor will I ..and a huge number of webmasters don't even know WMT exists..

Webmaster creates a page or pages, or alters a page/pages.."submits" immediately..G's system "time stamps" the submission..original attribution assigned..copies not indexed..semantic analysis ( which they claim to be really good at ) would pick up most of the human spun stuff that came along after..

ehow they could just remove as it actually 90% of the time where it's "authors" plagiaried their "reference material" from..<= I won't be holding my breath for them to implement this one..

pubhubsubbub doesn't cut it, as a method of getting in quick after content production.. as it is complex to set up for the average webmaster and was not designed to be run via static sites..

The problem is of Google's making..if they did not make it so profitable via adsense to run sites built from other people's content or creative works or IP, or to link to it on cyber lockers or torrents..most scrapers and content farms ( euphemism for scrapers, and IP abusers, using human re-spinners ) would vanish overnight..

G even runs adsense on certain well known high traffic cyberlockers and on well known high traffic sites that only consist of links to warez and cracked software and abused IP..

If they can automatically and aglorithmically spot "quality" sites, and parse content well enough to rank it and deliver adsense ( even at one time "site and content targeted adsense" ) then they can certainly spot ( and remove, and close adsense accounts ) IP abusers..

But instead they turn a blind eye ..and actually actively facilitate this IP abuse..when it suits their bottom line..as they did with pharma ads..

[tedster]

You've described the issue very well. However, I still don't think submission would resolve it - because only a small fraction of sites would use it. Still, it does sound like a start. I've often wondered how the Google Search team sees this idea. It's certainly been floated a good bit over the years - can't be new to them.

Another issue here may well be the Chinese Wall between Adsense and Search. There are many good effects of not having much coordination between these two verticals at Google. We tend to think of Google as one thing, but the segmentation is quite strong.

For example, when the Search team first released Panda, the Adsense team was quite blind-sided. And as we've discussed here several times, they continued to recommend practices to site owners that Panda was set up to demote.

[netmeg]

All true, but it's the world we live in, and it's probably more practical to try to figure out how to work around that, since G doesn't seem to be interested in defunding the scrapers.

[realmaverick]

Rather than send a takedown notice. I sent a very polite message, requesting that they credit the artist and my website as the source. I sent 10 emails last night, so far I have received 4 responses, all of whom, agreed to link back to the source.

I personally find that quite amazing. I wasn't expecting such a good response, but it's certainly a promising start.

If we were credited for even 1/4 of the stolen content from our website, we'd gain thousands of inbound links.

[Lame_Wolf]

Raise a DMCA and be done with it. Blogger are good, although sometimes slow to respond to DMCA's. I've lost count with the amount of DMCA's i've raise with them, but by far photobucket users are the worse offenders.

[Lame_Wolf]

I sent a very polite message, requesting that they credit the artist and my website as the source.

Tried that with blogger/blogspot. Only worked once. Most of the time these people do not respond to posted messages.

[realmaverick]

I don't think blogger users, will be as conscious about their reputation, as a hosted website. So far my response rate has been promising and definitely something I'll test further.

[Lame_Wolf]

realmaverick, in the case of privately owned websites, I either write to them and ask them to link back, or if I want it removed, I ask to whom do I send a DMCA to, you or your hosting provider. Funny enough, the content is removed.

Nowadays, I tend to the hosting provider first. I just can't be arsed with a lot of sites. More work for me if I write to the owners... wait for a reply etc etc.

[outland88]

I personally find that quite amazing. I wasn't expecting such a good response, but it's certainly a promising start.

In other words you're offering the thieves a deal at the expense of the original owners with the link-back.

I imagine that altruism will die off rather quickly once you realize how many Adsense content thieves there are. Plus if your site is utilizing Adsense Google could turn around and kill your own cash flow.

[ken_b]

I sent 10 emails last night, so far I have received 4 responses, all of whom, agreed to link back to the source.

If we were credited for even 1/4 of the stolen content from our website, we'd gain thousands of inbound links.

Do Follow?

[realmaverick]

All dofollow. 1 link was sitewide sidebar, on a pretty big site. As they'd taken a lot of our content, so it was either that or remove it all. The others were directly to the source page.

[realmaverick]

In other words you're offering the thieves a deal at the expense of the original owners with the link-back.

Thanks for rewording my post and making assumptions, but no, my users are happy for blogs to give exposure to their work and a link to their work, is their preference. However, if no link is offered, they'd like their work removed from the website.

As always with my websites, my users come first.

I imagine that altruism will die off rather quickly once you realize how many Adsense content thieves there are. Plus if your site is utilizing Adsense Google could turn around and kill your own cash flow.

If the website is just utter trash, I'd ask for removal. The blogs were all reputable websites, however for whatever reason, they seem to believe because this content isn't textual, they don't have to give credit.

[Hope_Fowl]

Webmaster creates a page or pages, or alters a page/pages.."submits" immediately..G's system "time stamps" the submission..original attribution assigned.

No need for a manual submission to Google about changed content. There already is a mechanism which many CMS use: the Google sitemap ping, an HTTP request which invites Google to reexamine your sitemap.

[Leosghost]

As I wrote above ( in the post you quoted from ..surprised you didn't notice that I said I knew all about the CMS "ping"system ..also known as pubhubsubbub ;-)..it is of no use to static sites..

Plus it does not time stamp the change ..and so attribute first publication ..it merely "invites" G to visit your sitemap ..in their own sweet time ..

Hence the need for manual submission methods aswell..

Methods that would say .."here is new stuff and when your spiders get there ..remember you heard about that content first on that page..all later content that is the same or re-spun is then by definition scraped and should not out rank the site or page which gave you the first notification"..

Not every site is a CMS..funny thing is though ..almost all of the scrapers are on a CMS..

[Str82u]

GO to the webhost, make your DMCA claims, if you prove it, most hosts remove it/block access/force take downs