Is Digital Point Endorsing Content Theft?
The DP Forums
I’ve been a member of the Digital Point webmaster forums since September 2006, finding it a decent place to interact with other web-minded folks as well as a venue for conducting business. I’ve sold links, advertised sites, and have gotten press release customers through DP. Indeed, other than Sitepoint, there isn’t any other place on the internet I prefer to visit. DP’s forum is where all of the action takes place — if you haven’t visited the site, please go ahead and see for yourself.
Your Proprietary Content — Stolen And Rewritten
I haven’t been as active on DP over the past few months as I had been initially, but I do try to stop by the forums several times each week to keep up with the latest conversations. With 31 forums and dozens of sub-forums available, DP’s scope is tremendous. However, I usually spend most of my time on the Business section to track sites being sold, domains offered, and the like.
DP has a Copywriter forum which is, in my opinion, not accurately titled. Yes, copywriting is covered, but you can also find many discussions about content writing, article writing, and so forth. A “Content Creation” sub-forum is a popular place for members to pitch their services and that is where the trouble begins.
For instance, I recently read a post where someone is offering their editing services for an extremely low price. This member states that she will edit 300 to 800 word articles and return them to the customer. Although this particular post doesn’t indicate that the “editor” will rewrite third party articles, you can find your share of people on DP who do that or customers seeking this service. Yes, some articles for rewrite are “private label” or “open source” articles, but in other cases I have learned that the origin of said article(s) is highly suspect, i.e., they are likely lifted from another site.
My Behind The Scenes Personal Battle With Stolen Content
Although I cannot point the finger at Digital Point regarding a personal, not-yet-resolved situation involving an article I wrote, I did recently learn that an “author” lifted approximately 80% of my material to produce a thinly-veiled rewrite of something I produced three years ago. In this situation, my mistake was to offer that article to an article directory — although I welcome reposting with author attribution elsewhere — this person apparently liked the article enough to take it, make some changes, and sell it.
For the record, the reputable article directories have strict guidelines forbidding plagiarism; my mistake was pushing the article out front and center where someone probably thought that the topic covered had wide appeal and was worth using for her own devices.
How To Respond To Content Theft
At this point I will not share what action I am taking against this author and the site running the lifted material. I can tell you that I have several things in play that should bring about a satisfactory response to the offense.
If you suspect that something you wrote has been stolen, then you may want to consider taking one or more steps including:
- Contacting the person who swiped your work and order them to remove it and all copies of it from the internet.
- Get a hold of the web host and inform them that they are hosting a site containing pilfered content.
- Contact Google and ask them to remove the page (or site) from their search engine. If the site is running AdSense, you could also ask Google to suspend their account.
- Learn what procedures Yahoo and MSN have for isolating sites containing plagiarized material.
- Seek compensation for monies made off of your stolen material.
- Take your case to court to claim damages.
A note to the offending party may be the only step that you need to take, especially if you clearly state that further action will be taken (as outlined) should the matter not be settled to your satisfaction.
Be Careful Whom You Hire
Content theft of any kind is absolutely wrong and should not be tolerated. Be careful about hiring anyone who claims to be able to write about virtually any subject as no one can possibly be knowledgeable enough to write intelligently about dermabrasion, hemi engines, or sub-prime mortgages without doing extensive research (and charging you $10 for a 500 word article at that). If they insist that they can, then you may end up hiring a plagiarism peddler and eventually find yourself on the receiving end of a content writer’s ire.
Believe me, we writers do regularly check to make certain that our content has been stolen.
Copyscape, anyone?
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Though I agree with most of your article, especially the last part about being careful who you hire, I wanted to offer some input on responding to content theft.
First, one should be very familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and use the law accordingly. It is REQUIRED in order to get works removed both at the host level (if the host is in the U.S) and at the search engine level. Also, Adsense requires DMCA notices as well.
Second, before you can go to court with your claim, you need to register the work with the U.S. Copyright Office. Otherwise, you can not sue in federal court and you can not win statutory damages. That makes it financially infeasible to go to court over such matters.
Finally, to add to your mention of Copyscape, I encourage people to use Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) to check for infringing materials and get suspect sites emailed to you. Beats the heck out of searching yourself every so often.
Hope that this helps! Please do not hesitate to write me if there is anything that I can do for you!
Thanks for you input, Jonathan. I do use Google Alerts for some topics but not all. Since I write under a wide variety of topics, I would be flooding my email inbox daily with alerts.
I doubt legal action needs to be pursued in most cases as a threat or “cease and desist” letter will likely get the intended response.
I will check out the DMCA site for more information — thanks again.
Infact I am using also Alerts and not only for the content but also for linkback to my domain. So I have setup an alert, one per week to report me back. I used a trick, in the search terms I added: link:submitsuite.com and also link:www.submitsuite.com
Regarding DP, I am a big fan too, but as in every place dishonest people are everywhere.
That is a good idea, Cristina. You cover both possible addresses to pick up links to your site. I’ll have to give that a try.