More Stolen Content

[LindaM]

Yuck! Just got an alert for this site http://www.natural-organic-store.com which gets all of its articles via RSS feed. Looks like most come from articlesbase. Though articlesbase removed my stolen content in October, they're somehow showing up here. They have disabled the 'contact us' option, so not sure how to get them removed. I think there's other CC stuff on there as well.

They're powered by wordpress. Is there any wisdom in contacting them?

Linda

[Lysis]

Hey Linda,

You could try contacting Bluehost

http://whois.domaintools.com/natural-organic-store.com

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Linda,

Make sure you contact CC support on this too - they'll be able to help you.

Kind regards,

Hayley

[LindaM]

Thanks for the advice Lysis and Hayley! I can't tell you how much I appreciate this forum...

Happy Turkey Day
Linda

[Debbi]

Here are two of my articles that were stolen. I'd check this Tyler Cleaver's AC articles out. There might be more CC articles in there.

How to Update Balances on Your Credit Report: What to Do When Credit Bureaus Get It Wrong
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1972008/ how_to_update_balances_on_your_credit.html

Five Powerful Ps of Weight Control
http://babeswithkids.com/articles/healt ... ndfitness/ 123-5powerfulpsofweightcontrol

Zabrina, I saw one of yours on Tyler Cleaver's page: How to Fix Errors on Your Credit Report.

I sent an email to support about these two articles a few weeks ago but haven't heard anything back yet.

[Debbi]

When I wrote to Support about my stolen articles, I was told to pursue it myself. Odd, I thought CC preferred to take care of this?

Anyway, I sent an email to each of the sites (AC and babeswithkids.com) and have not heard back from AC. But the BWK's site owner wrote back quickly and said she had taken down the article. She was mad because she had purchased it from dailyarticl.com a while back. She sent me a copy of the email they had sent her with her completed order and a plain text attachment of my article. It was my article, complete with Short Summary but no byline. I hope she gets her refund! I wonder how many other stolen CC articles are on that site? All I konw is they profited by stealing my work, grrrrrr.

The BWK owner said she liked my article and maybe she could buy it from me. I dutifully sent her to CC and put it in a little PR for CC. Hopefully, she will end up as a regular CC customer Something good should come out of this.

[ecdoran]

When I wrote to Support about my stolen articles, I was told to pursue it myself. Odd, I thought CC preferred to take care of this?

Anyway, I sent an email to each of the sites (AC and babeswithkids.com) and have not heard back from AC. But the BWK's site owner wrote back quickly and said she had taken down the article. She was mad because she had purchased it from dailyarticl.com a while back. She sent me a copy of the email they had sent her with her completed order and a plain text attachment of my article. It was my article, complete with Short Summary but no byline. I hope she gets her refund! I wonder how many other stolen CC articles are on that site? All I konw is they profited by stealing my work, grrrrrr.

The BWK owner said she liked my article and maybe she could buy it from me. I dutifully sent her to CC and put it in a little PR for CC. Hopefully, she will end up as a regular CC customer Something good should come out of this.

This is why I love this place! Writers here seem to be so honest and loyal. It gives me warm fuzzies I know you were only doing the right thing in asking her to order it from here, but it still seems commendable to me!

[Debbi]

AC took down my stolen article and banned the Tyler Cleave "author" who had other stolen CC articles up there. Yay!

The other situation is turning freaky though. The site owner contancted dailyarticle.com and asked for a refund. Dailyarticle.com then told her not to take down my article since she owned the copyright after purchasing the article from them I immediately fired off an email to dailyarticle.com and copied CC support, telling them to desist in claiming they had ever had any rights to my stolen article.

Ugh.

[Debbi]

Well...the problem has been resolved, I guess. Dailyarticle.com says their writer firmly believes they bought the article before selling it to them but that DA also believes I am the orginial copyright holder. So...DA purchased my article for full rights just now. This solves the problem for me and for the web site owner who purchased it from DA but still leaves me feeling creepy. Ugh.

[EricScott]

Glad to hear it's cleared up Debbi. That was a strange situation.

I hope to hear from Google soon about my stolen article that is on reauterspost.com along with a ton of other stuff from here. I thought it was kind of strange that CC basically told me to handle it myself through Google. Maybe that is how it has to be done since I am the copyright holder? I have no idea, but hopefully it will be taken down soon.

[Debbi]

Yes, I found it odd that CC Support told me to handle the problem myself. Is this the new policy now? I thought part of what made CC so great for authors was its promptness, diligence, and "officialness" when dealing with stolen content disputes. Can we have a memo from Support on the subject?

I think you are right about Google, that the copyright holder has to make the request.

[EricScott]

I agree, it would be great to have an official comment by CC on the way stolen content should be handled going forward. I don't have a problem handling it myself, but I thought the copyright infringement claim would have more power with CC behind it.

[Amy W]

Actually, I think any copyright infringement claim would have more power coming directly from the author. CC doesn't own the copyright to our work - we do.

If I were you, I wouldn't file a DMCA with Google as the first resort - try contacting the site owner. Like Debbi found, sometimes the site owner ends up buying stolen content from CC thieves. If you contact them and tell them the situation, they might take your article down, saving you the hassle of dealing with Google. If the site owner doesn't get back to you, send an email to their online service provider. I've had luck with this route in the past. The problem with Google - they can't shut the site down, they can only stop the site from showing up in searches. If a person searches with Bing - which I do - they'll still see the site and your stolen content.

[Amy W]

I really need to check for stolen content more often - he stole one of mine. If anyone wants to contact the site owner, his name is Stas Zikov, and his email is mortgageguidebook@yahoo.com.

[EricScott]

I wanted to contact the owner of the site, but there is no contact info and the comments on the blog is disabled. We'll see what happens. It's only one of my articles so it's not the end of the world. It's just very annoying.