Some say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But what if someone steals your content? It certainly can be infuriating. A common piece of sage advice given to internet marketers is to analyse your competition. But that doesn’t mean you should copy or steal from them.
Emulating someone shouldn’t equal copyright infringement. Not only does it hurt the company that’s being stolen from but it really doesn’t do much for the content scraper, either.
Make Sure You’re Not Stealing Content
• Articles which are available for syndication need links to be kept in tact. Most of these sites have a publishing tool that you can use to copy and paste from so that you don’t miss anything.
• Don’t steal photos. Be sure you’re using images that you have the rights to use. Some sites offer stock photos that are free and others are free to share but with attribution. Be sure you know what the rules are for photo sites before you take pictures from them.
• While it’s perfectly fine to use other peoples’ content for research purposes, ensure you have at least several sources for research so that you’re not just re-writing someone else’s work. Not only does it equate to content theft but it won’t help you in the eyes of your customer. Bring something valuable and new to your customers.
• Use anti-plagiarism tools to check your work and be sure you familiarise yourself with how to cite sources when applicable.
If Someone Steals Your Content
If someone uses your online content without your permission, you have the right to request that they remove it. Someone may link to your article with a block of text, which most would agree is good publicity but if someone publishes an article without your permission and / or doesn’t credit you, contact them and ask them to remove it.
But what if someone steals your content and they won’t remove it? You can do several things, such as:
• Notify their advertisers. Google Adsense, for instance, may ban their account. Telling a content scraper you will notify Google will often motivate them to action.
• Notify their webhost. They may even lose their hosting account and have their website taken down.
It can be frustrating when someone steals your ideas. Sometimes it’s not blatant plagiarism so you can’t always act but it can be close enough to be infuriating. How can you track what’s going on? Here are some tips to help track your content…
• Set up a Google Alert for your name and / or brand name. This will alert you when a new website is indexed with that name on it.
• Google article titles to see if they’re posted elsewhere.
• Sign up for a service through Copyscape or use Plagium, which will let you track actual documents. This can alert you when your content is found online and send you the URL where it exists.
While the internet is growing more and more each minute, so is content theft. It’s good to be aware that it happens and also to know what rights you have when it does happen.
Personally, it doesn’t bother me too much when someone (that obviously doesn’t have the ability or nouse to write their own articles) scrapes my content, as long as they leave my links intact. If they are blatantly stealing my content without crediting my work with a backlink, that’s another story.
About Sean Rasmussen
Timely words, sean.. I hear there’s a bit of this going around these days. Apart from the back-handed compliment concept, there is much to be said about integrity, honesty and truth.
I’m glad to know there are remedies, apart from the obvious disservice people ultimately do themselves.
Integrity, ethics and honesty will get you everywhere Jo. We will stick to what we do, and let them stick to what they do, and see who comes out in front shall we
Regards – Sean
There some good tips here Sean
I would of known where to start
Pingbacks are a very handy feature in WordPress (perhaps other blog platforms too) to let you know if someone has used your article. At least you can trace the link. But that’s only if they link – not if they copy & paste.
This is interesting news for me. I didn’t know there were so many ways to track possible theft of content. I am not sure I will do any of it. I tend to agree with what I think you are saying that getting paranoid about what you have written and who is going to steal it is a huge waste of energy and time. I prefer to be glad that anyone is reading it and if they want to take some of it, so be it. I hope they will paraphrase it and not copy, but I, at this point, am not particularly concerned.
If later on I get so famous that I should be concerned, I will think about doing something about it. But right now I feel I can use my time and energy better commenting on these articles.
Hi Sean,
I really don’t understand the need to steal someone’s content. If you don’t have the time to research and write your own articles, there are plenty of cheap options out there.
Still, I guess I just expect that people are going to steal your content especially as you become more successful. The thing that I hate the most is people who steal my ideas. Have you ever run an idea for a business past someone only to have them run off and do it? It’s not good.
I think ideas are much more valuable than content.
Hi Sean, great article. I just found out an hour ago when googling the name of one of my articles that someone had copied it verbatim and put it on his site with no credit to me at all.
The problem is, he changed the date of his posting in his WordPress to be 11 days before my original posting of it on my blog. I checked the Wayback Machine but of course he has caching turned off, the only copy they have of the site is from 2007. Is there anything you can think of that I could do about this thief?
Thanks for alerting us to this problem of stealing content, Roy. It sounds to me like an International Internet Police Force is needed to counter this and all other internet crime.
It can be quite hard to take action on Roy. All I can really suggest is to try and contact the person that has done this, maybe even by a comment on the post they have published. Apart from the other suggestions in this post, I am not sure of any other means of having the article removed.
Great article Sean. As a newbie blogger coming up with my own content has been somewhat of a challenge, so I really try to be cautious of copying content word for word and making sure that what I write is coming from my own mouth. What I’m finding that’s difficult for me is I’ll come up with an idea for a post and do a search and lo and behold someone has already written about it. Maybe I’m not to the point where I can come up with something original every day but that’s my goal. You are definitely someone I try to emulate though, keep up the excellent work.
Hi Chris
)
It can be hard to come up with unique topics, if you can great, if you can’t, I don’t see a problem with it. Just about every topic will have some sort of article written about it somewhere, the key is to write something that is better, has a better title, or better information etc. (and of course getting that article to rank higher than the others
“What if someone steals your content” is a very good, and timely for myself, article Sean.
And Chris.. your comment sums my (similar) position up well.
Great to read your response Sean.
As you say, it is almost impossible NOT to find something, somewhere, on the web today,
about any subject you could possibly think of…
So, as you have taught us in the Learn and Earn competition, use some of it if is good but write it better, and with integrity.
This is good for me. Thanks to you both.
Chris, it is the language that constitutes plagiarism, not the idea. My blog is extremely original because it is reporting on what a spread of Rider Waite Tarot cards have to say, and because I am original anyway.
You could take an idea appearing in my work, and write about it yourself – same opinion – and it would not be plagiarism.
I had one of my blog articles “scrapped” and although I was worried at first, I got excited cause it was a news source site that actually believed my witty Jackie O article was fact. Which stills baffles me – but I digress. I have a “Witty Sam” signature which I normally put at the end of every blog – & in this case I forgot at first so on the other site there was no source name (ie ME) where it came from.
BUT – I left a comment on my blog on their site thanking them for putting my blog on their site. And they approved it. So the link back to my site – Home Page is there. They did leave my links in tact, & there was a link to a different blog article on my site.
So all in all – it ended well. And I was lucky that my comment was approved & links left in tact. And as Sean & Zodiacs assured me, it’s a win-win situation. I couldn’t agree more. The more people that get to read my stuff, it’s just one way of getting my talent out there to get comedy writing jobs.
I appreciate the extra info on how to track your links via services of Copyscape etc. That will come in handy…
Sounds like it worked out okay in the end Samantha. Good to hear the article was published on a reputable site and they left your links intact. It still wouldn’t have hurt them to ask your permission first
Hi Sean
This article is so important as it has made me aware of how content can be stolen, what I can do about it, and how to prevent it from happening. There is loads of great advice here.
I checked out the link to anti-plagiarism tools and I advise anyone reading this who may have overlooked that link to go and check it out as there are 20 best and free anti-plagiarism tools which is absolute gold in my opinion. Thanks Sean, a great article.
Hi Sean,
This is a great article I had not considered that anyone would want to steal posts, when I first started I was told you could copy other peoples ideas but you had to rewrite it in your own words.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with finding ideas and making your own articles from them Rita. The problem is, that many people don’t go to the trouble of using ideas, they just re-publish the exact article, which is basically stealing
Hi Sean,
I have always wondered about this. Thank you for the advice.
Christine
You know, I was researching Jean Henri Farbe’s experiement with processionary caterpillars, to use as analogy on another topic after having heard Zig Zigler use it on a video. So, not only did I find the exact paragraphs from one source to another it is very difficult to discern where the first literary reference was made…all to say, yes people are theives out there!
Recently, I composed a marketing approach on a new product line using an entirely new target audiance; sent it up my ladder only to have the person above me return it with very minor edits; I am talking maybe 3 sentences at most, and sign it with his name! Today he sent me a pdf of same with a copyright, created by tagline on it….I am so upset right now it is hard to concentrate…
Two in one day!?! See why I am reading your blog? Thanks I feel better now.
Z
A dozen sites appeared under my trademarked company name’s url, TarotVerbatim.com. Many of them had full articles or more than one – no attribution whatsoever, carrying ads of competitors, ads for large companies. One even had my entire web site scrolling on it. I even found one listed under tarotverbatim.com that had an operating SelfGrowth.com web site. Yahoo itself has ‘Other Sponsored Sources tarotverbatim.com’ and it’s not me. Yes, Yahoo! And they did not remove it. I called advertisers, I wrote nice professional emails, followed up by insane nasty emails. One of the offenders is a large advertising company. A crank email from me has slowed them down. Two sites are currently there.
So this can be a huge problem. And you don’t have to be ‘big’ to have a bunch of crooks latch onto your site and your work.