One of the things I've noticed with great frustration is how at times some of my original content gets on other sites which are much more prominent on SERPs. AND they may not actually be stealing at all. Here's an example scenario:

Say I post an original article on my site. My site does not have commenting available (call me old fashioned) so my page remains as it is since the day it's posted.

However, say there is a site which uses a significant portion of my article as a verbatim citation with perhaps just a line of original text about it around it with either linkbacks or just a mention. Pretty legit use of content I'd say.

BUT, here's the interesting thing: that particular site has commenting available, and over time, gets a barrage of informed/uninformed/good/bad comments on something that I WROTE in the first place on my site.

And by virtue of that, Google ranks THAT site's page higher in SERPs because to Google that particular page has more to offer than my original page in terms of freshness and quantity of added material.

I know what the logical conclusion is: I should enable commenting, but may be I don't want my content to be commented on (don't have the time/energy to moderate, so rather do without it). Besides, most of my content is now years old, and allowing commenting only NOW makes it look even more desperate and too-late on my part.

Nice post FB.

I'll definitely join in.

Fighting stolen content is, for the majority, a complete waste of time. While you waste time fighting one, another just pops right up. I'd rather just spend my time making my websites better than trying to stop others.

The copy sites always fail on their own, just give it time.

Fighting stolen content is, for the majority, a complete waste of time. While you waste time fighting one, another just pops right up.

Not when you factor in the AdSense component. When you get their AdSense account closed, they tend to not copy your pages anymore as the incentive is lost and they know you aren't going to sit idly by and let it go.

By the way, "a complete waste of time" is what some publishers used to say about fighting/reporting certain AdSense business models. Now the word is out that it's risky and a lot of those sites have disappeared.

FarmBoy

Fighting stolen content is, for the majority, a complete waste of time.

What's the purpose of creating new content and letting others use it against you?

When I cracked down on content theft a few years ago my revenues nearly tripled in a year.

Besides, you can file a mass copyright for your entire website for less than $50 which allows you to sue for statutory damages upwards to $150K in the US.

So if you must let them steal, plan to profit from it.

I'm with FarmBoy, nail the AdSense scofflaws and it's more for the rest of us.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 8:37 pm (utc) on June 9, 2009]

I've suggested previously that every publisher take a little time to find just one content thief per week and then submit the DMCA information to AdSense as they suggest

It would be a hell of a lot easier if you could file your DMCA by email, and I know of people who can. That is for both AdSense and Google.

Faxing from Australia is incredibly expensive and snail mail is an absolute pain.

My content thieves also usually leave my copyright notices in. Work that one out.

My content thieves also usually leave my copyright notices in. Work that one out.

Some people do not think it's an infringement if they leave the copyright notice.

Some people do not think it's an infringement if they leave the copyright notice.

Some of those flawed thinking people have paid me many thousands to settle in the past.

I like them, we need more of them.

Good for you Bill. I tried a different tack which I mentioned in the companion thread.

[webmasterworld.com...]

We'll see if that helps.

How do you typically find out that your content has been placed on another site?

Mostly by accident. Sometimes people write and draw my attention to it. And Google send me emails for:

Google Web Alert for: allinurl:www.example.com mostly that results in scraper directories.

Also there is in Google Webmaster Tools [I think] a facility to seek pages with similar content. I haven't used it for awhile though.

Then when the mood takes me, I get Google to search for certain phrases unique to me that I have used in my topics.

That last one works every time.

How do you typically find out that your content has been placed on another site?

I have CSS hidden keywords scattered throughout the pages that not only ID them as mine, but finger the IP address of the visitor that scraped them.

They tend to remove my CSS and just display the text and VOILA! there it is, the search engine crawls it, I check to see what's newly indexed every now and then.

They really have no excuse when I can directly tie them back to the scraping event.

Also, I have scripts installed that thwart bots after a few pages so there's not much copying going on anymore, not like there used to be.

Well you guys reminded me to do some good ole copyright infringement hunting today and send off those DMCAs.

It still makes me boil inside every time.

One of the worse culprit is Blogger, and it's one of the most difficult because you can't contact the author and Google's procedures are more complicated than most. People still uses faxes? You get the worse Adsense publisher infringing scum on this blog network.

One of the worse culprit is Blogger, and it's one of the most difficult because you can't contact the author and Google's procedures are more complicated than most. People still uses faxes? You get the worse Adsense publisher infringing scum on this blog network

In my personal experience, 100% correct in every respect mentioned.

I just wish someone could give ASA a heads up about this topic and the DMCA thread.

I'm with FarmBoy, nail the AdSense scofflaws and it's more for the rest of us.

If it works for you guys, more power to you.

...and it's one of the most difficult because you can't contact the author

I don't want to contact the thief. When AdSense takes a look in response to the DMCA submission, I want them to see the AdSense ads right there beside the stolen content. If I contact the thief myself first, that gives him time to clean things up before for a while.

If it works for you guys, more power to you.

The efforts of other publishers can benefit all publishers, including you, in two ways:

1. If I get a thief's AdSense account shut down and he has also stolen some of your content, he is no longer making money off my content or yours

2. As more AdSense accounts get shut down and the word spreads, more thieves will be hesitant to engage in future content theft, especially those who have some stolen content and some original content

FarmBoy

Fighting stolen content is, for the majority, a complete waste of time.

I have personally lost significant amounts of AdSense income because of copyright infringers. Three months after taking down over a dozen high level infringers (including a university lecturer's web page at a major university), the money is flowing back to me.

The efforts of other publishers can benefit all publishers

I could easily see someone creating a site to start and organize some kind of movement like this.

I could easily see someone creating a site to start and organize some kind of movement like this.

Heh! I'll give that some thought. Any ideas or suggestions?

FarmBoy

Three months after taking down over a dozen high level infringers (including a university lecturer's web page at a major university)...

I've been amazed how often the thief is associated with a university or K-12 school system. Back when I used to contact the site owners directly, they usually pleaded poverty that they had to take content from others (without attribution) because they had no funds to develop their own.

Meanwhile the poverty-stricken universities were building $100,000 stone entrance gates where a sidewalk entered the campus and the poverty-stricken K-12 schools were spending upwards of $10K per student per year.

FarmBoy

I've got a question..

Over the last 9 years I periodly change a word or two on my home page... Of course then when I search for an exact sentence I miss many stolen pages from months or years ago.

So, my question is does, say, a 9 line paragraph have to be identical on the other site or can it be considered stolen if a couple of words are different?

can it be considered stolen if a couple of words are different?

From my understanding, the "derivative works" part of copyright laws protects an article even if it is rewritten with different words, but is more or less the same in terms of ideas, structure, content, etc.

Heh! I'll give that some thought. Any ideas or suggestions?

I imagine a resources section regarding copyrights law, a mission statement about authors getting fed up with being copied on the web, some educational pages for victims, helping them find their stolen content on the web, but also some clear pages explaining to infringers why what they did was wrong so it can easily be linked when sending a complaint, maybe even some pages for web hosts on how to deal with infringers on your network, possibly a blacklist of hosts that need to wake up and be more proactive, a forum to coordinate collective efforts toward specific massive infringers (I sometimes notify other authors to help bring someone down), etc. Just a site to promote "the cause" ;) A lot of webmasters aren't aware of being copied.

I think the copyright infringement could definitely be affecting my site... just did another round of checking and sent 25 DMCAs over two days - only checking 8 of 300 pages. Some sites replicated the content 50 times but I only bothered with 1 DMCA for them.

I wonder if any of you guys were among them :)

With a very large site, how would I even begin to try to protect myself from thieves/scrapers?

With a very large site, how would I even begin to try to protect myself from thieves/scrapers?

Whitelist access to your server to just allowed bots and validated browser user agents:
[webmasterworld.com...]

The set up a DMZ security zone, which many of us do in the Spider forum, which is set up massive deny lists of all known data centers since real visitors don't live in data centers, we block them and punch holes in the firewall as needed for various sites we allow.

Also, blocking specific countries you don't do business with, if you're an ecommerce site or such, can solve a lot of problems. One of the spider forum members only allows the US to visit his site, that's it.

Then you can manage the scrapers that don't want to be caught, hiding out as browsers, using server side PHP or PERL scripts that stop bot behavior

Last but not least, tag your content with hidden tracking bugs easily found in SEs.

Almost all of this can be done with automation using PHP or PERL and can be run before each page viewed, even if you have a static site.

It's basically installing a very elaborate port 80 firewall, loads of fun and very educational too!

If all the honest webmasters here report splogs, even one per week, we may see significant reduction in bad content on the web (assuming Google acts on the report and disables their AdSense account).

stealing content with one or two new unique lines at the start , in the middle and at the end is what is used by content stealer now.

Even some so called gurus are encouraging to use content like this...

it is really a serious problem and i think it is a good idea if we all can report at least one website with content stealing to stop this...