How To Deal With Copy Cat Bloggers?

March 4, 2008 by Shanker Bakshi
Filed under Ramblings

I was deeply upset yesterday when I read this post on my favorite blog about this sad plagiarism of a so close to the heart article originality written by Jennie and then lifted by a wicked brainless girl agzzzz ( “no follow” link) for her bumpy blog. The event deeply trampled my heart, as the article, which was lifted by this evil girl, was very sensitive special and to its original writer.

The first thing which comes to our mind while reading such cases is; what we will do when somebody steal our contents? There are some useful Plugins and web tools to protect valuable contents of your blog. These are some measures, which we can take to make sure the content thief stand in the witness box, thinking as why he did this sin? These are the precautions you can say but what are the steps to be taken if somebody bluntly does this peccadillo.

Step 1. Contact the site owner

The first step to be taken is to seize the thief from the collar. Make them realize that they are doing wrong and violating the copyright Act. In most of the cases it has been notice that if you contact and threaten them to delete the article they usually do that by making admission of guilt.

Step 2. Contact the hosting Site

If you can’t contact them as they don’t have “About me” or “Contact” page then don’t worry there are sites like whois, dnsstuff or alexa where you can search for website details. I use this site once when some one promises me to pay for my audio services and then cheat me with money. Well, who want to rub solder with law?

Step 3. Talk to the Big Boys of Internet

One thing, which I like about yesterday’s event, was that after finding her article stolen, Jennie made a help call on her blog to all her blog friends and within few hours every one was there for extending his or her help. That’s been so nice. Okay al right for screwing the thief and get them banned from google and other search engines you can lodge your complaint with Digital Millennium Copyright. But that an extreme step one should take this step after trying all other actions.

Tools for Prevention

No body would like to get trap in the above situation to avoid such content theft here are some really useful Plugin which will help you to protect your blog from copy cats roaming around.

1. HERE is a plug that automatically add copyright message to your RSS Atom Feed.

2. To win the battle as who have write the article first install this Plugin, it will assigns Numly Numbers (Electronic Serial Numbers / ESNs ) These numbers act as an electronic timestamp for copyright purposes to prove your article date and time.

3 Here is a Plugin with the help of which you can assign your digital signature in your RSS feed. This Plugin helps blog owners stay vigilant against unauthorized content use.

To combat splogs use of your content, this plugin will place a digital fingerprint, customized and tailored by each individual user of this plugin, into blog posts. The fingerprint is only visible in the RSS feed, not on the website itself.

What is Creative Commons License?

If the source you’re quoting has a Creative Commons license or public domain dedication, you may have extra rights to use the content. Look at the terms of the license to see what it permits and what, if anything, it requires you to do in return. The attribution license for example, lets you copy, distribute, and display a work so long as you name the original author. Share-alike lets you make derivative works so long as you use the same license for your re-mix. A work in the public domain is no longer under copyright, so you can use as much as you want in any way you like.

Extracted from EFF EAQ on bloggers rights

So if you are stating your work under Creative Common License you are authorizing for copy paste of your contents to your readers, yes, with only “some right reserved” and not all.

How you can register your contents for copyrights?

Registering your contents for copyrights costs you but it always better to get your contents register for copyrights. You don’t have to register your every single article as you can submit bunch of your articles in your submission for copyrights registration For the registration of works of U.S. origin you can make an application HERE, for bloggers of all other countries if they want to get their article registered for copyrights they can refer to the rules and regulations of their own country’s Intellectual Property Acts

Sign up to receive money making tips and other site updates. Subscribe to this blog via your favorite RSS feed reader or by entering your email address on the form below: