Sunday, June 5

Stopping a blog content thief

Ok, lets begin by saying that many people that make free tutorials are not just doing it for the fun of it.  (yes it is fun, but that isn't the only reason to do it!)  I know that I do it to help people but also to get money from my ads, others I know want readership, others yet just want the good feeling from a comment saying "brilliant!" so there are many many reasons to make great content.  In fact as many reasons as there are bloggers, so when someone just ups and TAKES whole posts at random... well something can be done.  I mean it is against the law to steal copyrighted information. Lately I have been on the victim end of this so I thought I would write a nice little "how to" on stopping the offender.

There are 4 methods of handling this issue: the pushover, the play nice, the big guns and the tell everybody.

I don't recommend the pushover at all or the tell everybody until the play nice and the big guns have been used, just saying.

The pushover: you ignore it and hope it stops.  In fact you may make more content that they steal, and never address the issue at all.  It may or may not ever end, if it does it is because someone else did one of the later 3.

The play nice: you email them.  Many times the person doesn't KNOW they are actually breaking the law (or pretends not to) and will happily change what they are doing (for your content at least).  Of course some people will just say you can't stop me hahaha and you will need to go to the big guns.

The big guns: No web host nor ad service *that I know of* will host/pay a person known to be breaking copyright law, so if you can find the ad service and make a complaint, you are all done (usually you can just google the ad service name and add on complaint form and get it).  If it is for print is can be harder, but many ad services will still pull all ads from someone breaking the law. This is especially true after The Griggs Incident.  If you know for a fact that someone else is being stolen from, this is a good time to send a friendly, "hey I found your blog because of this one... love yours by the way!" comment.  Such sites rarely just steal from 1 person.  It is often many so many can help with the shut down process.

The tell everyone:  I have not actually heard of this happening but it is basically a class action lawsuit.  The law is on your side and not the thiefs so you would win, but it hasn't EVER gotten that far that know of.