How To Defend Yourself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Website Text
I knew one day it would happen. Someone stole the text from my website and used it on their own website. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels!
So what do you do? First, understand that most hosting companies and domain name registrars will take down a site that is fraudulent or that plagiarizes someone else’s site, as long as you can show them proof. They’re on your side.
Next, gather as much information about the offending site as you can. Print out all pages from their site where the plagiarized text resides. Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html and get all their registration information. Also, try http://www.alexa.com/ and find whatever information you can there. I’ll write more in a few days on the explicit tasks necessary in this research phase.
Finally, write to the offending site owner and tell them that you found plagiarized text on their site. List the URLs of the offending pages along with the copyrighted URLs of your own pages. Give them two or three days to either delete the pages, or re-write them so that they no longer include your text. This is not the time to play nice guy! Tell the offending site owner that you are copying their hosting company and domain registrar on the letter, and do so.
Make sure when you write this email or letter, you don’t use any passive language, and do not say “please”. Demand your rights. It is illegal and unethical for them to do what they did and they need to stop doing it immediately. I’ll post a sample letter in the next few days.
Always put a copyright statement on your site. If it took you a long time to write your text, you should be the only one benefiting from it, not some unethical person who is looking for a shortcut.
I have written to the four sites that stole my text. Two of them are in Australia. Did they really think because they were on the other side of the world that I couldn’t find them by doing a simple Google search?
And you want to know a real hoot? One of these people actually called me, asking about becoming one of my clients! I’m sorry, but how dumb is that? I went out to her site and saw my text on it!
I will be posting their websites here in this blog if they do not fix the problem immediately. I’m not afraid of a little publicity, but I bet they are!
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11 Responses to “How To Defend Yourself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Website Text”
Leave a Reply
Category: Website Planning
Tags: copyright , plagiarism
Karyn,
I am sitting here writting to you with my jaw dropped. I cannot believe people would do this. It shows how much they enjoy your work (in an odd way) but it also shows how little they think of their own capabilities and integlligence.
Good luck in getting them!
Sandra
03 Feb 2006 at 10:49 pm
Sandra,
What I found really amazing was that they didn’t just steal a phrase or two, they stole PAGES of text from my site.
Thank goodness for Google.
Karyn
03 Feb 2006 at 11:13 pm
I would guess this happens all the time. It’s so hard to monitor.
04 Feb 2006 at 3:35 am
Karen, you have my sympathies. I have had an entire website including look, feel and BANDWIDTH stolen as the yutzes (plural) that did it put the full links to my image files. That really cut to the quick. And they had the temerity to upbraid ME for “not being willing to share as we’re all in this together”. I called their ISPs and got the suckers shut down. Another graphic I made has been on countless websites and we’ve fought every one. Most people simply don’t realize what they’re doing is wrong (though ignorance is no excuse) and a simple reference to: http://www.whatiscopyright.org sets them straight. You might want to put this URL on the main blog page when you write your follow up. Education is everything! Especially when it’s a newbie – most of the time they truly think that anything on the internet is free. Whatiscopyright.org is very explicit and written for the plagiarist.
Another good reference is copyscape.com, which has banners and further protections you can put on your site pages. The one file I KEEP FINDING all over the energy coaching world (my niche) on other people’s websites, I put the CopyScape banner on the head and footer. That’s stopped a lot of it.
Google does rule indeed…
Good Luck!
Maryam Webster
04 Feb 2006 at 9:43 am
Hi, Maryam,
How did you ever discover that someone had linked to a graphic on your site?
Karyn
04 Feb 2006 at 2:49 pm
I use the copyscape tool, as well, scanning pages on a somewhat regular basis – and I, too, am amazed at how many sites so blatantly cut and paste from mine to theirs.
What I’ve found, though, is that most often it’s not the site’s owner who has done the deed, but their web designer. And once I show the site’s owner how much has actually been scraped from me (I send them the copyscape URL which beautifully highlights the duplicated text), they typically apologize and quickly have it removed.
Every now and then there’s a particularly silent/non-responsive person and I have to turn up the heat. But for the most part, they’re more embarrassed than I am annoyed.
04 Feb 2006 at 4:51 pm
Hi Karyn,
You can take a look at your sites stats in whatever hosting tool you use and if you do depth stats, you can see where the image is being called *from*. When I saw that http://www.dumbasscoach.com (not their real URL) was calling on 20% of my bandwidth, I went and looked, then looked at the source code of the plagiarized pages at multiple sites. A check of the offending site’s source code clearly shows the links back to your own site. And if the links are being hit a lot, it will show up as bandwidth hogging in your stats. A distinct no-no and very illegal. So check the source code wherever they have an image inserted!
Cheers,
Maryam Webster
05 Feb 2006 at 9:08 pm
I see that you took down my comments on Taming the Paper Tiger. What are you thinking to do about, though?
Should we do what you suggest as below?…
“Every now and then there’s a particularly silent/non-responsive person and I have to turn up the heat. But for the most part, they’re more embarrassed than I am annoyed.”
24 Jun 2006 at 11:28 am
Actually, I did not take down your comments about Taming The Paper Tiger. You posted your comments related to THIS post:
http://www.passionforbusiness.com/blogs/2006/06/passion-for-stealing.html
…not related to the post “How To Defend YOurself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Website Text.”
Take a look. Your comments, and my reply, are still there.
24 Jun 2006 at 11:51 pm
Karen this is so timely, as one of my students just asked for advice about this very topic. I’ll pass this on to her…thanks!
Ellen
21 Jul 2009 at 1:36 pm
Glad you found it helpful, Ellen. I have this problem so often that my virtual assistant has a monthly “task” to handle plagairism problems. She’s good at it, too!
Warmly,
Karyn
21 Jul 2009 at 2:35 pm