Content copied without permission

[tomcatuk]

First up, I spotted someone copying content from my site this week. He'd pasted together text from one of my pages, with another paragraph of text from another site and used it to make himself out an authority writer. This cobbling together of content seemed to work, and he pushed me below himself and Netscape (he'd also posted the content there). Presumably his domain has "trustrank" to be able to get away with this. His homepage has PR5 if that means anything at all.

I contacted him, told him he was out of order, and he has removed the content from his own site. The Netscape content remains though, although I have tried using their "report" link to point out that the text wasn't written by the submitter. Part of the message I sent him also pointed out that pretty much his entire site's content, on a huge variety of topics was written by other people and would he like me to contact 20-30 or so of them which may have helped sway his decision or not.

Now I'm starting to look at other sites that come up with top ten Google positions for keywords that relate to my site. Not sure whether to be surprised or not, but there are several that are populated with content that copyscape quickly and (seemingly accurately) reveals has been simply scraped, copied & pasted from other, much older sites.

Is is a serious nono for me to start reporting this kind of thing through Google? Would you do it if a site ranked better than yours for your favourite keywords on the strength of content they didn't (and quite likely would not be capable) of writing themselves?

[carpediem]

Hi tomcatuk,

It would depend on the content - are you the original owner? I would always notify them first before reporting anything to Google.

Legal info here:

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Hope that helps,

Danielle

[marcel]

expose him

[suzstephens]

The takedown procedure of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Safe Harbor provision are an excellent, no-cost way to go after copyright violators. I used it recently when my former sales representative, Cherie Young, illegally represented a dozen of my web site designs on her web site as if they were her own designs. It took a couple of weeks, but I was eventually able to get her ISP to block access to her pages that contained my site designs. Google "DCMA safe harbor takedown" to learn more about the process.

[bj]

Yes, you should go after content scraped from your own site, if you feel it's negatively impacting you. Oddly enough, I usually get traffic from the true scraper sites, which are pulling from my rss feed, since they have nothing else there except google ads, and people will click the attribution link if they like the content they're seeing. So weigh that a bit against what's actually taking place, and what it's doing or not doing to you.

Re going after sites that rank better than yours but are copying content that has been copied from sites other than yours? To me it would seem like your time would be better spent simply making your site as strong as it can be by adding more original content often and doing other stuff like linkbuilding.

[wige]

Originally Posted by bj

true scraper sites, which are pulling from my rss feed, since they have nothing else there except google ads, and people will click the attribution link

Would sites like this, which are reposting RSS content and provide an attribution link, be considered scraper sites? The original purpose of RSS feeds was to make the content available in a portable platform so the data could be embedded in other places, including web sites. I strongly doubt that RSS content would even be subject to the DCMA because by nature of being placed in a document designed to be reprinted infers an intent for that data to be public domain, or at least an attribution license. I think what is being referred to here is essentially plagerism, where the content in one web site is cut and pasted into another without permission (such permission could be implicit when content is put into a feed) or attribution.

Disclaimers: IANAL and all opinions are IMO

[halfmexi]

We spent 2 weeks and a few hundred dollars to produce a perfectly translated SEO services page for our Spanish clients... and within 2 weeks a site in Mexico took the content 'word for word' and made it into their 6 page SEO website! I guess we should be honored that we created such a good page, but... I went after him - 1 email direct to the offender (no reply), then the 2nd I copied his ISP. Fortunately the ISP was a legit group and they persued their hosted client - took a week, but finally our content pulled.

We got lucky... using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a slow drawn out process and he could have just changed the words around too. Always pays to check your log files, if I hadn't seen him coming to our site a dozen times I wouldn't have checked him out and he probably would have beat me and got some good rankings from our content in a few weeks.

You should attack these jerks head-on and usually the ISP can be your best friend in this situation, especially if you can prove your copy being of an older date than the thief's version. Leave the Search Engine's as a last resort.

BIL

P.S. that Spanish translated page is now the most popular and highest ranked page on our site - go figure?

[Jerryb]

I'm not sure if it's wrong but on my blogs I often use a paragraph from a site if it pertains to the subject of my blog. I always add a link and give credit to the site where I got the info. Saying "Click on this link for more".

Then again, I often get info from Wikipedia and refer back there.

I do blogs on subjects that interest me, but I can't know everything about those subjects so I spend a lot of time researching them.

I don't think it violates any copyright laws as long as you're not using the whole article and you are giving credit where credit is due.

Most web sites want the extra traffic that the links bring them, and most webmasters, I would think, would enjoy the fact that someone likes their work well enough to let others know about it.

Am I wrong?

[suzstephens]

Copyright attorney Ivan Hoffman has an article about blogging:
ttp://www.ivanhoffman.com/blogging.html

[wige]

As webmasters become more concerned about the search engines filtering of duplicate content, I think they will become more concerned about having their content copied. My advice would be to err on the side of caution and ask first if they don't have an explicit policy on the site. Wikipedia, for example, lists on every article their policy regarding reprinting the content (attribution license, they even have a link to generate an appropriate attribution statement).

[suzstephens]

"Giving credit" is not the same as asking permission and may be a violation of copyright. It is always best to ask permission before using someone else's material. Here is a guideline for book authors that you may find helpful:
So You Want to Write a Book? Chapter 7

[bj]

Jerryb, quoting from another site and attributing the source, if it's done right, constitutes "fair use". I'd read up on that so you don't go far wrong. Usually it's meant as a way to show in a quote what someone else said so you can then agree or disagree with it IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Pulling whole articles verbatim constitutes scraping and plagiarism.

Wige, just because you have a feed on your site does NOT imply permission to scrape whole articles, and is, in fact, a violation of the DCMA, if one cares to pursue it. I've chosen not to if the site at least sets up the feed so that it doesn't reprint my whole article and so that it attributes me with a link. Though if they started appearing above me in the SERPs I might change my tune on that.

[cz]

"Giving credit" is not the same as asking permission and may be a violation of copyright.

Agreed but I love it when webmasters post a few of my blog paragraphs and send me a very complimentary link. I forgive you all!

[hitsusa]

In another downward trend, I've been spotting more and more scraper sites that copy entire article directory sites, but remove all the author bios and links or keep the URLs inactive.

It's nothing but blatant copyright infringement and of course, every single one of them has Google AdSense all over them.

Here's a couple of examples:

Find999 .com (funny part about this one is all the stolen copyrighted articles are placed within a folder called "lawyers")

freedoc .info (gets heavy search traffic - strips out all author bios and links)

interpret .co .za (they put all of their swiped content in a folder called "art")

mowspace .co .za (seems to be duplicating the efforts of interpret. co .za down to even the "art" folder)

resources- free .com (Most blatant of the thieves - has about 200,000 articles - includes bio box, but no live links at all on any article)

Of course in your DMCA complaint, big G wants you to tell them what search tuned up those results so they can block them from displaying the page. Too funny!

And of course, they never strip them of their AdSense accounts...

[quantikev]

A possible alternative, if you are looking for one...

If you find the webmaster is responsive to your requests, you could try to use negotiation skills to change their bad habbits from the perspective that perhaps they haven't yet come to appreciate the tremendous effort others put into their own work.. and that they may not be aware that copying directly from those works could actually reduce the potential of their sites to gain traffic due to duplicate content filters.

They may not be considering that it would be almost as easy to write documents in their own words, and create what would effectively be a new and separate piece of work.

Then again, it may prove entirely ineffective at changing their behavior.. in which case the other suggestions would be a great solution to the problem.

Just another option

Kevin

[wige]

I agree, having a feed is not signing away your rights to the content, but by having your content in a format created for the syndication of content (including reprinting on other sites) that reprinting could very well be considered fair use. This is why if this reprinting is not desired a copyright notice to that effect should be included.

[TrafficProducer]

Also view Webhost won't do anything about copyright infringement

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by quantikev

A possible alternative, if you are looking for one...

If you find the webmaster is responsive to your requests, you could try to use negotiation skills to change their bad habbits from the perspective that perhaps they haven't yet come to appreciate the tremendous effort others put into their own work.. and that they may not be aware that copying directly from those works could actually reduce the potential of their sites to gain traffic due to duplicate content filters.

They may not be considering that it would be almost as easy to write documents in their own words, and create what would effectively be a new and separate piece of work.

Then again, it may prove entirely ineffective at changing their behavior.. in which case the other suggestions would be a great solution to the problem.

Just another option

Kevin

Copyright theft is THEFT - do you really negotiate with thieves? No doubt we should use our negotiation skills to explain to our friendly local burglar that he should learn to appreciate the tremendous effort we put into our work to be able to pay for the TV, video, DVD player and computer he's carrying out of the door, and to explain that it would be almost as easy for him earn his own money...