Stolen Content and Usage Rights

[JenniferScott]

Hi, everyone. I was notified by Constant Content back in August that an article of mine was appearing on some content scraper's site. CC said that my unique and full rights options were now disabled, and that I could only sell usage rights unless the stolen content was removed from that site.

I tried contacting that site's owner (futile), and then filed a DMCA with Google. The article was then removed from the scraper's site.

I notified CC on 8/5/11 that the article had been removed, and asked that my full rights be restored. No response. On 8/12 I forwarded to CC the notice I had received from Google stating that the offending content had been taken down. No response. On 11/10, I again emailed Support, re-told the story, and asked for help. No response again, and I still only have usage rights. Any suggestions?

[Lysis]

It's possible that the scraper got scraped. That happens too. Check the content to see if it's found in other places.

[JenniferScott]

I did run some random phrases from it through Google, and nothing came up, so I doubt it. I guess I could run the whole thing through Copyscape, too, just to be sure. But I really don't think that's the issue. Thanks for the input. I appreciate it.

[Lysis]

Maybe I'm reading your OP wrong, but you said that you filed a DMCA with Google and Google removed the content from the site. That's not how it works. A DMCA with Google removes the content from Google's search engine, not the site.

So, I think what happened is the content is still on the site, CC has the addy of the original site, and they checked with the site and it's still there. It could also still be in Google's cache, and they found that as well. It takes some time for Google to remove it from cache.

ETA: It also means the content is still available on Bing and Yahoo.

[jadedragon]

It is more profitable to spend time creating new work than trying to get rights back on stolen work IMO.