Dealing with sploggers who steal your content

Recently, I discovered that some company blog had been stealing my articles and posting them on their own blog like they had written them themselves. One of their blog categories contained only one article that wasn’t mine, and it sounded familiar, and in the course of all this, they revealed that they think making your feed available means you’re inviting them to reproduce your content, which is ridiculous. That’s why I’m linking to the company below – you should go make sure none of your content has been stolen by them.

Anyway, here’s how I dealt with it.

• The company didn’t have a contact form or email address on the blog, but they had a toll-free number. I called them and, with some difficulty, finally got email info from them.
• I emailed them a Cease and Desist letter, which I will reproduce for you below, in case you ever need one.
• I reported several of the stolen articles to Google.
• I posted this little gem for their splogger to pick up in a few hours, if they didn’t comply.

And you know what really pisses me off? Google had been indexing their versions of my articles and leaving mine out. But let me tell you something: within ninety minutes, Google reindexed my versions of those articles and removed theirs. I’m not sure I’ve ever had anything that positive to say about Google, but I’m saying it now, with thanks.

Within that same time period, the company removed the articles. If they had not, I would have simply emailed them all to Google, time-consuming as that would have been, and contacted a lawyer. But since they did, I know that eventually Google will remove all their versions of my articles as they now come up as 404 pages.

Here’s the rather sarcastic response from the company:

Dear Blue Mushroom Administrator,

Please accept our sincere apology if you feel that we have infringed upon your rights.

I am sure at first glance it can be startling to see your own work on someone else’s website!

But rest assured that we were not copy/pasting your blog posts – but rather syndicating your content via the Feedburner.com RSS feed that you encourage people to sign up for on the homepage of your blog.

Since you have expressed dissatisfaction with us sending links back to your website via your feeds, we have promptly removed the feed from our site and no more of your posts will show up.

We wish you all the best with the sale of your website.

Sincerely,
Early to Rise Customer Support.

I responded with the following:

Every blog has a feed available. It is legally preposterous to infer from that that you have permission to repost it anywhere you like without proper credit. Besides, my website is clearly protected by Creative Commons, as you could see from the footer, and what you did clearly violated the terms:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Additionally, because YOUR versions of my articles were being indexed by Google and mine were not, there’s no telling what you’ve cost me in earnings through your unethical actions.

Since you have removed the posts quickly and I cannot in fact calculate what I might have earned, and because Google has responded quickly to my spam reports by removing your posts and reindexing my content, I will not pursue further legal actions at this time.

You really should educate yourselves on copyright law before attempting to administer a blog. This is your responsibility.

Their defense is absolutely ridiculous, but at least they removed the content. And now, here is the original C&D notice I sent them, which you can alter to suit your own situation as needed:

To whom it may concern:

1. I am the owner of the Website http://bluemushrooms.com. I am also the owner of the copyright in the material published on the Website.

The following is a list of JUST A FEW OF THE URL’s for my pages which have been copied on your site(s).

1. http://bluemushrooms.com/commenters-who-want-all-your-time/
2. http://bluemushrooms.com/march-2009-earnings-my-new-site-and-my-new-venture/
3. http://bluemushrooms.com/breaking-up-with-adsense/
4. http://bluemushrooms.com/preparing-your-site-for-a-digg/
5. http://bluemushrooms.com/feedburner-google-migration-is-an-unmitigated-disaster/
6. http://bluemushrooms.com/changes-in-direction/

Your entire “online business ideas” category is nothing but a reposting of my articles, as you can see from this page:

http://www.etr-online.com/tips/making-money/online-business-ideas/

2. This wholesale misappropriation of my copyright works has not been authorized by me and is an infringement of my exclusive rights as copyright owner. The infringement is also flagrant.

3. In the circumstances I demand that you immediately:

3.1.    remove all aforesaid infringing material from your Website(s), and notify me in writing that you have done so;

3.2    undertake in writing to desist from using any of my copyrighted work in future without prior written authority from me.

3.3    post a written apology on your website.

I await to hear from you by no later than close of business on October 28, 2009 failing which equivalent letters will be sent to:

* Your Web Host

* Your Domain Registrar

* Legal Support at Google and other Search Engines.

This is written without prejudice to my rights, all of which are hereby fully and expressly reserved.

Sincerely,

BlueMushrooms Administrator

And no, of course they didn’t post the apology. If this doesn’t work, then your next step would be to do what you’ve said in the last bit there:

• Go to WhoIs and find their webhost, if you can. This is not always simple, but very often they’re hosted with someone reputable who will remove a site as quickly as they can confirm your claim of copyright ownership. This deprives the splogger of income, and of services they have paid for.
• Ditto on finding the domain registrar. I’ve never done this one myself and have no idea whether they will intervene, but I know you agree to follow the law by owning a domain, and this is against all international copyright law.
• Getting help from Google. There are two ways to go about this. What I did today, and what I prefer, is to report the articles as “dupe content.” Or, if you use Google Webmaster tools, you can report it here. They say you’re more guaranteed to get a result if you use the Webmaster Tools form. But ws demonstrated today, Google reacts very quickly even when you use the first link, as I did, and this also deprives the splogger of traffic income. The page may remain up, but no one will find it via Google anymore, and that cuts out a whole lotta search traffic. Another way to go – and this is more of a pre-suing move – is report it to Google as a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That’s more involved and can’t be done by email, so it takes more time. But it sets up a helluva paper trail. I’d consider this option “the big guns” short of launching a lawsuit.
  • Be sure to include the link to your original content in the “Additional Details” box so they can confirm that you were first on the scene with that content.

All in all, very good results. When you’re dealing with a pure splogger that’s not attached to anyone who has any reputation to lose, they will probably ignore a Cease and Desist, and it might be extremely hard to track them down and sue them. In that case, I’d go straight to Google. I’ve done that a couple of times and the page was promptly removed from Google, which at least puts a dent in the benefits of splogging.

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Posted on October 29, 2009