Recently I spent some time using Copyscape in a much more systematic way than I usually do, and I found a much greater number of sites using my text without my permission. I usually send an email to the website owner saying that the text is being using without my permission and please remove it immediately. Generally this is effective. But this time because there were so many, I thought to send DMCAs to the webhosts instead. I used a boilerplate DMCA notice from a legal site, modified with the pertinent info. This got me a range of responses, but one thing I noticed was that when the webhost passed the email on to the site owner, the site owner was truculent. One ranked me out about how you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Another "thanked" me for being so "loving." So I wondered whether it was better, in the experience of other folks here, just to send an email to the domain owner instead of a DMCA to the webhost. Perhaps the fact that the DMCA has such a legal sound to it made people behave more defensively (leaving aside any discussion about whether they have a right to be defensive for stealing my text). I thought the DMCA would be better because it has no "passion" in it, ya know? Whereas my individual emails to website owners are usually rather brusque.

The other thing I wondered is how worth it this is. I found that people using my text ranged from folks teaching "classes" in MSN groups to would-be competitors using my text to sell their products. There were so many that I decided to focus on the competitors only. Is it worth pursuing people who are using even great gouts of text in supposedly "educational" contexts? Someone told me that not defending your copyright even in those contexts was bad for your copyright. True? I only have so much energy to devote to this issue. I really had to triage this last time.