21 Comments to “Bloggy Question 75: Stop Thief!”

1. February 18th, 2008 at 3:25 am
   Joanna Young said

   I really don’t know Liz, beyond knowing that I’d need to ask people who had more blogging experience than me about what I should do…

   I’ll follow the replies with interest as folk wake up to Monday morning :-)

   Joanna

2. February 18th, 2008 at 7:47 am
   ME Liz Strauss said

   Hi Joanna!
   It’s not a fun idea. anyway I look at it. I don’t think anyone really knows. :)

3. February 18th, 2008 at 8:49 am
   Anthony Lawrence said

   I’d expose him. Lay him out naked on the mountain surrounded by examples of his theft.

4. February 18th, 2008 at 9:09 am
   Scorpia said

   First thing I’d do, after calming down, would be to hit a search engine and look for “content theft” or similar.

   This is a big problem on the net; it’s so easy to lift material from other sites and post it as your original content.

   So I’d look to see what others did in this situation and choose the best methods for my own situation. Of course, there are no guarantees anything would work.

5. February 18th, 2008 at 9:27 am
   ME Liz Strauss said

   Hi Anthony!
   He comes around here leaving links for traffic again and that’s what’s going to happen. I have zero tolerance for people who think they can steal. :)

6. February 18th, 2008 at 9:34 am
   ME Liz Strauss said

   Hi Scorpia!
   I’ve done that a few times. Everyone has their own version of dealing with anonymous theft. I’ve never seen a situation written up about dealing with someone who was a “friend” of sorts.

7. February 18th, 2008 at 9:38 am
   Anthony Lawrence said

   How can you call such a person a friend?

8. February 18th, 2008 at 9:51 am
   Scorpia said

   “Friend” or not, makes no difference. The question is, how do you get this person to stop stealing from others works. There are no easy solutions, so it’s best to search around first and try to find what may work for you.

   Sorry (but not surprised) to hear you’ve had the same problem, Liz.

9. February 18th, 2008 at 9:59 am
   Jonathan Bailey said

   These cases are tough. If you want a quick and easy answer, I’m the wrong guy. But if you want some thoughts on the issue, I’ll see what I can do.

   Dealing with these matters is tough. First and foremost, if you have reason to believe that you are linking to content that is an infringement, remove the link. That’s not only good practice, but good legal strategy. You don’t want to link to suspect content as you could be forced to remove the link later. This saves headaches and time.

   Second, if the person is misusing anything you wrote, there are legal avenues that you can use. You can file DMCA notices with the host and get the content removed from the Web or from the search engines and get it removed from the indexes.

   If the person is only misusing content from others, get those people involved. Notify them of what is going on and let them know what their options are. Some will want to take action, others won’t. Respect those wishes but if you can get a few who do want to put a stop to it, organize their efforts and have them send in the notices.

   In my experience, resolving these issues in the public light never works out well. I’ve dealt with hundreds of cases and no case that has gone public has ended well. The excuses never end and some people are just too gullible. Even when you “win” you waste time and involve your name in an ugly matter.

   Work to resolve this issue with as little drama as possible, that is what I encourage.

   I hope that this helps and if there is anything I can do to assist, please let me know!

10. February 18th, 2008 at 10:11 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Anthony,
    No worries there. The term “sort of friend” applied before, not since. :)

11. February 18th, 2008 at 10:17 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Scorpia,
    I’ve mostly dealt direct. Made folks take things down or pay me. Once I ran a front page piece with the headline “Is this person stealing your content too?”

    That got a quick response. :)

12. February 18th, 2008 at 10:28 am
    Paul OFlaherty said

    As I see it, once you’ve tried the civil “behind the scenes” approach you have little recourse other that to out the guy, lay his actions bare and leave him to the mercy of his peers.

    After all, peer pressure can be positive too, especially if used to motivate someone to stop doing / do the right thing.

    Once his actions are made clear to everyone his community (if he has one) will decide if they want to put up with his content theft or not.

13. February 18th, 2008 at 10:42 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Jonathan!
    As always you bring the best advice on this subject I’ve ever heard on the Internet. You are guy. Thank you for watching out for all of us. :)

14. February 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
    Dar said

    Hi, Liz! :-) I don’t have any great solutions, but here’s my thought: If the commenter’s goal is to spread his links around, using others’ hard work, then removing his links (or even deleting his entire posts) would at least prevent him from being rewarded for his thievery.

    I’m not a legal authority, but I wonder if a clause could be written in the conditions for posting to the blog: “I hereby acknowledge the content I’m about to post is written solely by me, etc. etc. I understand there may be legal consequences for violations of copyright infringement, etc.

    Most article directories have a statement in place like that, before we can submit our own articles there.

    HTH. Many hugs. :-)

15. February 18th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Paul!
    Great to see you! Sorry you had to wait.

    I’m thinking your point about peer pressure is a strong one. Maybe the guy just has to learn the hard way. It’s not my style to bring down folks publicly, but some folks won’t listen to one voice speaking. :)

16. February 19th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
    CatherineL said

    Tough one Liz. I’ve only had content plagiarized once (so far as I know) but it was in offline media, and I responded by threatening legal action and sending an invoice for the work. I didn’t get an apology, but I did get paid.

    But, in this case, it would depend on how much this comment thief values their reputation I suppose.

    The blogger should think about trying it. I don’t know what else to suggest.

17. February 19th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Dar!
    Your comments are always helpful and welcome!This one is particularly useful, but it’s sad to have to think it might be as useful as it could be.

    Thanks for reading my convoluted sentence. I know you know what I mean. :)

18. February 19th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Cahterine!
    That’s the key, reputation. I have to be careful . . . in real life, my posts get to Google very quickly. I don’t want to slam someone’s reputation if I don’t need to. Offline is my first choice for a conversation. It so disappoints me when folks don’t respond to that.

19. February 19th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
    Laura said

    I’ve had on and off problems with scrapers that have taken the content from various blogs where I write. I find it to be really annoying, but I’ve also discovered that these blogs fail very quickly.

    If I can contact the blog’s owner by e-mail (I like having a written record) I’ll do so and ask them to stop using my copyrighted content. Another measure that I’ve taken is to include a link back to my own blog in posts.

    Once, I even posted about plagiarism and ended the post with the words “if you are reading this content on any blog other than xyz blog, then the content is stolen.” Ironically, within 10 minutes of my post, the entire post (including my disclaimer) had been scraped and placed on another site.

20. February 20th, 2008 at 7:00 am
    ME Liz Strauss said

    Hi Laura!
    Including a link back is a great way of keeping track of where content ends up. Though, it can have ill effects if lots of spammy bad back links start coming through. . . . Luckily (?) most scrapers who steal in an automated fashion have good taste in what they take.

    Sad to say I’ve heard too many stories about people who’ve had their copyright notice lifted and stolen along with their content. David Airey had a great post on this very thing . . .
    
    How to deter thieves from stealing your images and server bandwidth

21. February 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
    Bloggy Question 76: Where Are My Clients? - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. said

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