With so many people creating blogs, unauthorized use of your content is just a copy and paste way. It is very unfortunate, that when we blog, we open ourselves to the possibility that somewhere, someone might pass off one of our blog posts as their own or post our content without our permission.
To lift someone’s content from their blog or website and post it on your blog or website without permission is infringement of copyright, plain and simple. Just because you may have credited the author and provided a link back to the original article, it does not give you permission to copy.
Before you copy a post for your own blog or website ask the owner of the content that you want to reprint for permission. The worst thing they can do is say no, but most times you will find that they are more than happy to give permission.
What to do if your content is stolen?
If you discover that your work has been copied without your permission, a first step would be to contact the offending party via e-mail and request that they remove your content, or give you proper credit.
CopyScape offers a free service for tracking your content.
For more information regarding what you can do when your content is stolen, I recommend checking out this informative article by Lorelle Vanfossen.
Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements
Lorelle has several ways of checking to see if other sites have scraped her posts. Like Lorelle, I often do a keyword search for my name on Google Blog Search and Technorati to see if anyone has copied my content.
Remember that any time you want to post someone’s content in its full entirety on your blog, you need to ask for permission. Copying and giving the proper attribution is not the same as obtaining permission. Obtain permission, when permission is due.
What do you do when a site steals your blog’s content? What are your thoughts on blog content theft? Has your blog content ever been stolen? Share your opinion.
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8 responses so far ↓
Wrote: Aug 5, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Hi Rose,
Thanks for the article. Google Alerts can also be a good way to catch content theft.
Wrote: Aug 5, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I use & like Copyscape. I also use the link-tracking in Technorati to find blog addresses where I need to send out Cease & Desist notices.
Wrote: Aug 5, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I’ve found the most successful methods for staying on top of content theft is through trackbacks and Google Alerts.
CopyScape kind of got lost along the way and isn’t updated as frequently as most thought it would. I’ve had little success with that.
The inclusion of intrasite links, links within your blog post that links to other posts on your blog, generate trackbacks to those posts on your blog, thus appear in your Comments Panel. A quick peek at the referring site tells me if they are using my content fairly or not.
Thanks, Rose, for helping to bring this information to the public. We need to spread the word that everything on the Internet is not free. Assume if it is on the Internet, it is copyrighted. Ask first. They might say yes.
Wrote: Aug 5, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Thanks again Rose for another informative post, not a whole lot of people wanting my stuff, still its good to know what to do. I am amazed that there are people out there stealing other people’s work.
Wrote: Aug 6, 2007 at 1:28 am
I’ve caught 2 instances of it happening to me through my trackbacks. In both cases, I was given credit by the site after asking. This is one of those topics no one cares about until it happens to them!
Wrote: Aug 6, 2007 at 4:46 pm
A really quick and simple way to check if someone is stealing your content is to do a search for a phrase “in quotes” that is likely to be unique to your post. If you get more than one result, check out the other pages to find out if they’ve stolen your content.
Wrote: Aug 7, 2007 at 1:56 pm
I definitely favor Google Alerts over Copyscape. Unless you can afford to pay for your Copyscape searches, it is almost useless for a blogger.
As far as what I do when someone steals my content, I think my record on that speaks for itself…
Wrote: Aug 8, 2007 at 2:01 am
Thanks for the tip Brian.
I tend to use Google Blog search more than I use copyscape myself Jonathon.
Damien it happens to me all too often.
My pleasure Bob and you never know.
Lorelle, thanks for the tip and the article.
Thanks Steven and blue. I’ll keep that in mind.