I was inspired to write this post after finding out this week that someone had completely copied the text on my website, word for word, passing it off as their own and even stealing my client’s testimonials. They say imitation is flattery, but I certainly didn’t feel that way at the time! The main emotion was anger and disbelief that this was happening. How dare they?!
So, after managing to calm down at bit, I began searching for what I could do about it and how to effectively respond. What follows is a summary of my findings, in the hope that it helps anyone else who finds themselves in this awful predicament.
Oh, and the offending party did take it down in the end by the way, after step 2 luckily!
If you find someone has plagiarised your content:
- Calm down! Try to feel flattered and remember that the person is innocent until proven guilty. Their website may have been created by a third party whom they trusted; therefore they are as much a victim as you. Or if they wrote the content, may genuinely not believe there was anything wrong with copying yours. If you get your attitude right before you tackle the situation, the outcome will be all the better for it.
- Gather your evidence. Take a copy of the website, whether printing it out or saving an offline copy. Also gather proof that you are the original owner of the website copy, such as information about the age of your site. Print out your Google page rank, Alexa.com and web archive information (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php). A copied website is likely to be new and won’t have all this yet.
- Send an e-mail to the site owner politely asking them to remove the content immediately. You can probably find contact information on the website, or you can do a Whois lookup on the domain http://www.whois.net/ (this will also tell you who the webhost is which you will need next). You may find some examples of suitable wording on the web.
- If this does not work, you should then contact the website host directly (as found above). Tell them that their client has abused your copyright and you wish for the website to be removed. Present the evidence you gathered above to prove you are the original owner.
- You can also file a DMCA infringement notice http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm with search engines and ask for them to remove the duplicate website from their search results.
- If all else fails you can always expose them to social media sites. I posted my outrage to Twitter and got some great support back as well. It may work by shocking the offending party into removing the content, especially if they don’t want their reputation to be destroyed. It also really told me who my friends are (some in high places too!).
Of course it is always best to seek professional legal advice for any copyright infringement situation (and we are not solicitors or liable for any action you do take as a result of the advice given on this post), but hope the above pointers may be of some help before you have to!
