My article has been stolen

[iamyownboss]

Hi all,
I recently found that one of my unsold articles was posted on someone's website. I had included the full article in the long summary, as a few writers here felt that that would help with sales. Unfortunately, it was copied and the guy won't take it down or even acknowledge my email. I then filed a DMCA with Google, but was rejected on the grounds that they can't verify that I'm the author of the original that's on here. So, now I've added my real name to the long summary and to my author profile, but I haven't re-filed as I'm worried that if it's not enough I could be fined or something.
My question is - has anyone filed a DMCA for a similar case? What extra information did you include? Would really appreciate some insight from anyone who was successful or not.
Thanks!

[jak]

Have you emailed support about this? CC will surely verify that you are the author and may have more clout than you if they get on the case.

[jak]

PS. It would be good to let us have the site url so we can all check if our work has been plagiarised there.

[iamyownboss]

Yes, I did email support first, all I got was "Go ahead and file the DMCA". I was pretty disappointed.

[iamyownboss]

The site specifically promotes products of which my article is about. I'm pretty sure that it was copied by the person who posted the public request but did it for the sole purpose of copying submitted work without paying for it.
BTW, today I found this user on ezinearticles (http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Madhu_T_Tony) has copied another one of my articles and used it on various other blogger websites too. I've emailed him and ezinearticles, so I'm hoping this one won't require a DMCA. You might want to check his profile to see if any of his articles are actually from here. He has 7 up there.
This is really depressing - I'm going to stop posting the entire article in the long summary from now on - I can't waste time chasing after these thieves and CC won't help. I advise anyone reading this, especially new writers here, to be very careful about how much content from your article you make visible in the long summary. If you have the time and if your article hasn't been sold after a few weeks, google a random phrase from the article and put it in quotes to see what comes up.

[iamyownboss]

So, after I found one of my articles copied at ezinearticles, I contacted support there and they took it down. Then I tried to check his other 6 on there and I found at least one that was an exact copy of one that is on here! I've contacted the author here, so he'll probably look into it soon. I couldn't find a match for the rest of his articles, but he did change the title of mine, so it's still possible that he copied all of them. There's one there that looks awfully familiar to a public request that was put up a few weeks ago - about the best mattresses. So, if anyone here is reading this, please go check to see if your work is here - "http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Madhu_T_Tony".

[LMills]

I feel your pain. You are right, you are on you own when it comes dealing with article theft. CC may send one e-mail to a site manager for you and will verify your original article posting date. That's pretty much all the help you'll receive.

After dealing with dozens of article thefts and successfully removing every article - here's what I think works best:

Do fill out Google's DMCA form, but don't wait for them to deal with it. They can take 2-3 weeks to respond and, even then, they'll only remove ads off the site, not the article. If it's a spammy, useless site, the manager/owner may not even care, since he/she operates so many of these around the web.

1. Go onto dawhois.com.
2. Type in the site url.
3. Locate the ISP. (also check to see if you can find an alternative e-mail address for the thief)
4. Google ISP and log onto their site. Find the customer service number and make a call. They will put you through to the legal department or other help desk.
5. This personalized contact gets your case across quickly. They will advise how to fill out their DMCA claim and they, generally, take this very seriously.
6. They will contact the site manager and give him/her 24-48 hours to respond. If no response is received, they will shut down the site.
7. Make sure to Google the site a few more times, to make sure that the site does not re-post your article again (unlikely but can happen.)
8. Speed is extremely important because the longer your article stays online, the less likely you are to sell it.

In general, don't rely on googling your articles alone. Not everything shows up this way. If you write, consistently, for the web, it's wise to invest the $10 and sign up for Copyscape which will provide you with a package of searches for a year, and all unsold articles should be scanned periodically.

PS - E-zine is usually pretty responsive with direct contact from you but beware, they are attached to all kinds of junk sites around the web and your article may show up elsewhere if it has been placed in E-zines archive.

Good Luck!
Linda

[iamyownboss]

Hi Linda,

I really appreciate your taking the time to advise me. I have just filed a DMCA with the ISP of one of the websites. Ezinearticles has now removed my second copied article, but I found it in 2-3 other sites as well, so I'll look for those ISPs too. I have re-filed the Google DMCA for the first one too, as some writers on a revenue sharing site were recently discussing it. Apparently, they do remove the copied work and not just the ads. I'm guessing that in order for that to happen, we should select the "web search" option and not the "Adsense" option on their DMCA form.
Yes, I think I will get a copyscape subscription. Does it work similarly to Google Alerts? If I can set up an alert as soon as I submit an article and then just forget about it, it would be so much easier.
Once again, thank you!

[LMills]

Hi Again,

Regarding Google, I believe those authors are referring to Google removing a site from their search engine, not the article from the site itself. In the past, it was not easy to get them to take such action, maybe this has improved. I also read, recently, that they are developing new policies and will deal with plagiarism more aggressively. Honestly, by the time they've gotten around to even corresponding with me, I've usually handled the issue myself. Once I've filed all of my claims, I also write the site manager again, informing him/her of my actions. This has, occasionally, expedited removal even quicker.

I believe that Copyscape may have an alert feature. BTW, Google alerts are practically useless, so don't count on those either. At one time, I listed around 30 article segments and, though several of them were eventually stolen, I rarely received an alert.

Ugh, when you have multiple article thefts this can take way too much time! But still, web writers should never become complacent. When we don't take action, this emboldens thieves even more.

[iamyownboss]

Ok, so an update about the first theft - CC finally chimed in (maybe after reading this thread? ) and said they contacted the 'confused' client and he said he'll buy the article and will take it down from his site in the interim. The content is still up, so I'll wait and see.
Google also responded and said they will remove it from their search engines, so Linda, I think you're right about them not removing it completely - just removing it from search results. They replied very quickly to my claim after I re-filed it, so they must be taking plagiarism very seriously.
You're right about Google alerts -- I set up alerts for the 2 copied articles but haven't received any results from them. I'm going to go ahead and buy a Copyscape subscription now.
Thanks again for your help!

[UKWriter101]

I also had content stolen from the same thief on Ezine. Fortunately, they have taken the article down, but when something is published on Ezine, it automatically ends up all over the Internet on other sites belonging to them. Also, people steal content from Ezine all the time. It is all very frustrating, and it's not the first time it's happened either. Almost nothing ever sells for Usage rights either. I am also thinking of just putting 1/3 of the article in the preview window from now on, although I wonder if this would make a major impact on its chances to sell? Surely potential buyers want to see the whole article before they buy it. What does everyone else tend to do?

[iamyownboss]

I caught the ezine article copy a bit too late and found several more copies all over the internet. I decided to just abandon the hunt after Ezine took it down, since I really don't want to spend too much time contacting ISPs and filing DMCAs. I'm going to try including about half of my articles in the long summary from now on. Someone here suggested a while ago that she includes a bit of each paragraph in the article and ends them with "(end of excerpt...)", so that the customer still has an idea of all the content it covers. It sounds like a good idea to try.

[trisheart]

I really feel for you iam. It would be nice if some techie could come up with a solution. Even if you only put parts of paragraphs up someone could steal those and just fill in the gaps. Your work would still show up as plagiarized I think. I wonder if coming up with some sort of code that only registered buyers could use to view content would help? Probably not, especially if they are the ones who are doing the stealing, and if someone were thinking about becoming a customer how could they get an idea of what is offered here? I hope someone can come up with an answer to help everyone here.

[iamyownboss]

You're right - there's no foolproof way to prevent article theft, but I think many wouldn't want to make the effort to fill in the blanks, so if the no. of thefts are reduced, it's worth a shot for me.