How to Deal with AdSense DMCA Policy Violations

[arunpalsingh]

My policy center is flooded with DMCA violations and page-level stoppage of ad serving. It is a medical website and al articles are written by me.

Few of the articles use external images which are duly credited and linked back.

Is it some kind of glitch? Because my "About" page is also in that category and it does not have an image.

Right now I have 65 notices, which means 65 pages in a site that has about 800 articles.

The site is about 17 years old. And I have never ever received any intimation from any owner of the work previously.

Just sharing because it appears very strange.

I am not taking any step now because the notice does not even mention whther DMCA is due or text or image.

But I might be staring at the end of Adsense use on my site if it goes to say more than 100 pages.

With yesterday adding a total of 55 pages, it does not seem impossible.

[edited by: not2easy at 7:51 pm (utc) on Aug 3, 2021]
[edit reason] Split off / Cleanup [/edit]

[arunpalsingh]

I recently posted on Adsense policy violation flooding my account because of DMCA issue.

Now I received DMCA notice from Google Search as well.

It seems that someone has copied my entire website and created DMCA complaint, which though it should not have, passed the manual scrutiny at Google.

My site is 15 years old and built over a period. Barring few name changes, this copier has kept everything as same.

Even I am being shown as the author of the articles on the copy site. It seems like someone got a hand on the backup file and I have no idea if that can happen or did happen.

At first glance, anyone can find the difference between original and copy. But Google could not. I am not sure if there was manual scrutiny or not.

Have filed counter DMCA yesterday.

The site is hosted in Ukraine and have sent a take-down notice to the host too.

Do not know if something can be expected.

Just wanted to apprise everyone.

[edited by: not2easy at 7:53 pm (utc) on Aug 3, 2021]
[edit reason] Sliced post cleanup [/edit]

[not2easy]

If you take no action you could be assisting the person who copied your site and filed a DMCA to succeed in attacking your site. If you have years of creating and owning the content on your site you should be filing a DMCA against the other site. Only an attorney in your jurisdiction who understands DMCA can tell you the exact actions to take but in general, when you receive accusations you are supposed to defend your work. If you ignore it, your host could receive legal orders to shut down your site.

I am not a lawyer and the advice given here is generic without any consideration of your location which may make a difference.

[arunpalsingh]

Thanks @not2easy.

I made a counterclaim and Google said it has forwarded that to the complainant. It says it will wait for 10 days and if there is no court action initiated by the complainant, then they would reinstate the pages for search.

I wanted to know from fellow members

1) Can I make a DMCA claim against the site in spite of ongoing DMCA filing and counterfiling
2) I did send a take-down notice to host of the stealing site. But I have not received any communication from them. How can I proceed from here?
3) How can Google respond to obviously false complaints. Just a look at both homepages and about/contact pages can make one decide who is copying whom. The guy is too lazy to change the author's name or links that still point to my social media pages. Wherever he has changed they pint to main page of social media site.

For example in contact page, he has mentioned contact site to be its FB page which actually is home page of facebook.

Could you suggest any online help agencies free or paid that effectively deal with DMCA.

I came a site that is named as DMCA and ends with .com

Any view/review about that site.

Thank you very much.

[not2easy]

I am sorry but we have no way to research your needs for help with legal issues. That is something you need to look into for yourself because laws are different in different places. As far as getting information about Google's process for DMCA you can read that here: [support.google.com...]

There are some helpful links for case research in the Charter of our Content, Writing and Copyright forum here: [webmasterworld.com...]

The DMCA is a US law and there are other versions of that law in countries around the world which is the reason I suggest you look for local legal assistance if you need legal assistance (you may not need any).

You can read more about the concept in wikipedia which might help in understanding what to do. We do not review sites or services here so I can't help with your question about a specific site. If you first understand the concept of DMCA you should be able to see whether you need professional assistance. You can read about many cases discussed on this forum over the years by using our search form: [webmasterworld.com...]

[arunpalsingh]

Thank you. Let us see how this turns out to be.

[not2easy]

You cannot just wait and see. If you do not respond to their claims on your content it is assumed that you agree with the people who filed the charges.

Have you read the information on how it works at that Google link above?

[arunpalsingh]

Hi all,

Finally, things happened. After 10 days of Google DMCA counterclaim by me Google reinstated the pages.

Though the host of the copying site never responded, I see that content [whole site] of the copier has been removed and it has 403 error now.

Thanks for all your help and concern @not2easy. I appreciate.