How To Fight Content Thieves

It can be really annoying when you run a google search for some custom keywords in your blog post and realize that certain sites that copied your content ranks even higher than you. It’s even more frustrating when you visit the blog just to see that you’re not given credit for the hard work, no backlink, absolutely nothing. Sometimes, such lame bloggers even make it seem as if you even copied them, getting credit for your hard work and sleepless nights, making money off your blog posts without feeling guilty about hurting anyone. Content thieves are everywhere, they simply copy bits and pieces from other blogs and build theirs with it. I’ve seen my blog posts appear on many sites on the internet, it makes me proud sometimes that my stuff is worth stealing but it hurts when someone takes credit for your work. This is called plagiarism and these category of people are not real bloggers, they are called sploggers (spam bloggers).

Protecting Your Copyright

In order to protect your content, you must copyright every one of your blog posts. This includes having a copyright symbol on your blog although content thieves often ignore this as most of them have no clue what it means.

You must also register your copyright. Registering your copyright involves someone that knows about the law doing that for you and that is not free. You have to spend some cash to register and protect your blog content under the law. However, I found a free service that protects your blog content by registering your copyright all for free. They give a unique copyright number to you, and registers each and every blog post you publish (with date and time of publishing). Myfreecopyright.com is what I use and every blog post i make is protected by copyright.

Although google updated its algorithm on detecting copied content and ranking original posts higher than plagiarized contents, some of them with good search engine optimization technique still manage to get away with it.

However, it must be mentioned that certain bloggers using auto blogging software cannot be totally categorized as plagiarists. Auto blogging involves creating a blog without doing anything but getting contents from other blogs’s RSS feed automatically. To make this work to your benefit, be sure to link your posts. This means you should always reference your older posts in your blog as they give you a free backlink each time your content appears on their blogs.

How To Report Content Thieves

If the blog stealing your content and infringing on your copyright is hosted on blogger or using any product by google including google adsense, you can file a complaint under Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Google has a page for this where you can report content thieves.



http://www.google.com/dmca.html

You can as well report a wordpress blog to it’s host . To know the host, running a nameserver look-up will definitely help. Most web hosts have their terms of service and having contents infringing other people’s copyright might simply be a way of violating this terms of service. If you have as much dislike for content thieves as I do, then fight them and protect your creation.

avatar
Don Caprio is a full time blogger / web designer living in Nigeria and apart from blogging, my other obsession is music. I'm a self-confessed Tupac fan, an iOS lover, an Android user, a Windows 8 power user, a writer with a 5-year old unfinished novel... and the list goes on and on. You can add me on Facebook, follow my updates on Twitter or add me to your circles on ! You can as well grab my feed and get updates through email.
avatar

@doncaprio

Tech blogger at http://doncaprio.com Web designer at http://doncaprio.org
Top 5 Ways to Reduce your Blog’s Bounce Rate http://t.co/sCwot72QHP - 21 hours ago
avatar
avatar

Get free daily updates through email

Comments

  1. avatar Silvani Ltd says:

    Don. Well done on a good job. I like this…

    What actually does it mean to copy another man's "hard" work?

    Is it by writting the same blog that another blogger has written but maybe adding more infos and making some changes to it?

    If this is what it mean then 99.8% of blog writers are guilty of this offence.
    why because if for example you write specifications on Nokia C3, somebody somewhere have already written that before you and you just copied from that writer.

    Then if you say this is not what it means to copy another blogger, then what is it?What actually does it mean to copy another man's "hard" work?

    Is it by writting the same blog that another blogger has written but maybe adding more infos and making some changes to it?

    If this is what it mean then 99.8% of blog writers are guilty of this offence.
    why because if for example you write specifications on Nokia C3, somebody somewhere have already written that before you and you just copied from that writer.

    Then if you say this is not what it means to copy another blogger, then what is it?

    What actually does it mean to copy another man's "hard" work?

    Is it by writting the same blog that another blogger has written but maybe adding more infos and making some changes to it?

    If this is what it mean then 99.8% of blog writers are guilty of this offence.
    why because if for example you write specifications on Nokia C3, somebody somewhere have already written that before you and you just copied from that writer.

    Then if you say this is not what it means to copy another blogger, then what is it?What actually does it mean to copy another man's "hard" work?

    Is it by writting the same blog that another blogger has written but maybe adding more infos and making some changes to it?

    If this is what it mean then 99.8% of blog writers are guilty of this offence.
    why because if for example you write specifications on Nokia C3, somebody somewhere have already written that before you and you just copied from that writer.

    Then if you say this is not what it means to copy another blogger, then what is it?

  2. Thanks for this. I have Copyright info on my blog but it hasn’t stopped people content stealing.
    Maybe this will be a little extra protection!

  3. mehn sad sad day.
    finding my content littered on many nigerian newbie and pro blogs..
    Don – I’ve contacted the ones i can to remove it.. for others.. i’m doing trying the dmca link but the options are not clear.

    I’m reporting for which product? search of adsense?
    Cos when i select ” A page appearing in Google’s search results is violating my company’s trademark rights ” i get to way to report it
    S Briggs recently posted..Top 3 Unanswered QuestionsMy Profile

    • To report the content violates your copyright and should be removed from search, Select Web Search > I have a legal issue that is not mentioned above > I have found content that may violate my copyright > Yes, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed

      Accept the aggreement and make the report.

Speak Your Mind

*

CommentLuv badge