Content copied without permission

[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 http://www.webproworld.com/content-d...ringement.html

[Clarrie]

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...

[tomcatuk]

Wow, lot's of replies to wade through - thank you each and every one of your for taking the time.

My main issue with the infringement is really down to the sheer length of time & effort spent putting the pages of my site together - each one is carefully hand written, the CSS & HTML. They are light on text content, but that text is very carefully written. Google gave the infringer a page one result for the exact query my page is built for and shoved me to page two. My page is full of information - translations into Korean for each move & rollover images explaining everything, whereas the infringer's page merely used my text to display a page loaded with 20 or 30 different advertising programmes (Adsense being one of course).

I'm probably as angry with Google - it weighs a page highly with content it's duplicate content filter should have known damn well has been on show in it's index for months already.

With regard to reporting other sites that are beating me in terms of SERPS, but haven't actually produced any content themselves, I think I'll go with Marcel. Google seem to be in need of telling when they are displaying poor content.

BJ is also right of course - I'll maybe have to revisit that page and assess what I can do to make it as strong as possible, without just tapping the keywords into it half a dozen times of course!

[qh4dotcom]

Also view http://www.webproworld.com/content-d...ringement.html

If the webhost will not help, you can also complain to the domain registrar of the copycat site.