More Stolen Content

[EricScott]

Sharion,

When I had a problem I sent CC support an email and they provided me a link to an online form where you can submit a DMCA with Google. It took Google about 2 weeks to investigate and take down the content. Unfortunately, I do not have that link anymore. Maybe someone else here or CC support can help you out with the link.

[Celeste Stewart]

I would still contact support about this. During the last rash of content thefts, CC had us contact Google individually and that was unusual. If we handle these issues by ourselves and don't notify CC, then the scope of the problem could become diluted and further steps to prevent theft may never be developed.

[Sharion]

I've sent an email to CC support. Thank you all!

The site appears to post virtually any article about cars, and several tax related articles that have nothing to do with cars.

http://cardonationorangecounty.com/

[JD]

Surely it's in CC's interest to deal with this and not rely on the author to do so. If an author fails to notify Google, for whatever reason, and a customer finds a copy of an article he bought for full rights appearing elsewhere (having been stolen), it doesn't look good - and could result in his demanding a refund from CC. I'm not too sure where the responsibility lies with this issue. For example, once CC has accepted an article, who's responsible for ensuring that any copyright infringement is dealt with appropriately? I know we as writers can work together with CC but maybe there needs to be some sort of protocol so everyone knows what's exepcted of them when this happens.

Jane

[Sharion]

I'm grateful for the many threads on this subject. I'd read so many old forum posts and learned so much.

Before I even submit an article to Ed, I create Google Alerts for it so that the moment it goes live, if it shows up anywhere I'll know about it. That's how I discovered the theft.

If I sell full rights, I wait a month for the refund period to expire and then remove the alerts. (The refund period is one month, right?)

[JD]

Sharion

I'm not too sure what the refund period is.

As for the Google alerts, see this is where I'm a little confused. I thought that if we posted the tag that's embedded in our articles when they're posted here at CC ('This article is the property of author JD and is being used without permission' or whatever it is) to Google alerts then that was enough and we'd be notified when an article was being used without our permission, i.e. when it was stolen. But I've never received any notice from Google about the stolen article that's posted at reuterspost.com, so I'm a bit confused.

Any light anyone can shed on this would be appreciated. Admittedly, I'm not the most technologically minded of people

Jane

[Sharion]

I have the Google alerts set up for both the tag that's supposed to be in each article and I handcraft individual alerts with random portions of each article. The handcrafted alert is what flagged it. Articles I've sold were also flagged, but never by the "property of author blahblah", always by individual portions of the article.

Setting the alert as I create the article makes the creation process easy and it's free. I know some authors here use Copyscape. I don't think Copyscape is free.

I imagine the Google alerts management window could get pretty long if you don't remove the ones you've sold full rights to. Imagine authors with thousands of articles...

[JD]

Thanks for the info, Sharion.

[Sharion]

According to the CC FAQ, the refund period is 5 days.

[Celeste Stewart]

I believe that refunds are rare. . . I've only had one since I began in 2006.

[Sharion]

I actually read about that, Celeste! You came up with a creative solution as you wanted to make sure the customer was happy. It sounded like your solution resulted in a happy customer who wanted to work with you.

[Amy W]

I'd also recommend plagium.com for setting up alerts. Celeste posted about it in another thread somewhere on here - thanks, Celeste! I've never once received an alert from Google, but I get alerts from Plagium every few weeks or so. It's usually alerts for non-stolen content - the two articles might share a few common phrases - but at least the alerts work. I have no idea if the "property of" phrase would work in Plagium, but it's worth a shot.

[JD]

Thanks for that, Amy.

[jrichards]

Just wanted to clarify that the Google Alerts section only works for content that has been copied automatically and posted from constant-content without any human review. If a human were to review it, it would be completely obvious that the text was there and should be removed. We've gone to some significant length to ensure that it is very difficult for people to automatically (with a computer program) be able to take content published here and use it without paying and really the lack of people receiving the Google Alerts just means that there aren't people stealing content that way, unfortunately there are other ways. Other types of thievery (by hand) are still possible, which is why it is always safest not to post the entire article.

Regarding contacting us with stolen content, we would like to be the first place that you go when you have stolen content issues. This let's us keep an eye on the situation and we are often able to have content taken down quickly because of our relationships with other sites (Helium, EzineArticles, AssociatedContent, Suite101, etc). In cases where a letter directly from the author appears that it will be the most effective way to have the content taken down, we can help you get started with how to get in touch with the website owner (sometimes, they don't have contact us buttons and a little digging is required). We're equally interested in having any stolen content removed as quickly as possible and will do what we can.

-jrichards
Support
Constant-Content.com

[Debbi]

JR,

Thanks so much for that clarification. I thought that was the protocol but when I contacted Support about a stolen article from AC, I was told by someone other than you or David to handle it myself. I am glad to get the final word on this