Currently Reading: Help, Someone is Stealing all of My Content! What can I do?

Help, Someone is Stealing all of My Content! What can I do?
July 15, 2008 - Categories: Uncategorized.
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Please share this post, we need to alert other bloggers about the possibilty that there content is being stolen.

I received an email this morning from AP he wrote “Just so you know, your content is being stolen. I assume this is your original content. Let me know if you read this”. Yep, I have read it and have investigated it. And I am pretty pissed off.

Let me make this clear, I don’t mind anyone using, borrowing, and duplicating any snippets from my site. You can even remove the copyright notice on any of my WP themes I honestly don’t worry about it. Some sites duplicate the entire post and leave a link back, again I don’t mind. I have even had some people copy the entire CSS file of speckyboy.com that is flattering. Some readers have asked how I did my logo, and I gave them a free .psd file of it to help. What I am trying to say is that if you want it, the chances are I’ll give you it.
So, why am I pissed off?

If it was one post, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid, if it was two or three it may have alerted me. I stopped counting at twelve. Yes, twelve!!! Completely copied, all the way down to my hellish grammar and terrible spelling.

The thieving site is actually pretty popular, so I would urge everyone who has a site similar to speckyboy.com to visit freeziq.com (I hated having to type that link), and have a look and see if any of your content has been stolen.

There is no real way of stopping this site, other than pleading for fairplay and common decency. The editors certainly don’t have that, so I am not very optimistic.

If anyone has had there content stolen from this site please get in touch with me. If you are one of the lucky ones and haven’t been robbed share this post and alert others.

Thanks to Lorelle on Wordpress for these great articles:
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content.
Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements.

Thanks to AP for his email.

UPDATE: An apology has been posted on the offending site, and credit has been given on each post (I even got credit for a post I never wrote, which I have informed the REAL author).
I don’t see the matter as being totally closed, but I believe it is going as far as I can take it.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and support.

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12 Comments so far

  1. Mac Tips on July 15, 2008 3:09 am

    Hey.

    Unlucky about your site. I hate having my content stolen. Anyway i’ve done a bit of research, i was bored. It looks like he is hosted on Godaddy (check with http://who-hosts.com/). If you send a DMCA takedown notice or something similar to godaddy, they should take it down for you. There are some good sites on the web about this sort of thing which I am sure you no about. BTW, you can also contact Google Adsense through one of the advert (you have to click on one of the google links in the ad, not an ad) to notify them about this. They should be on your side if you explain it properly.

    Hope this helps. Email me if you need any more info.

  2. Kaiserlino on July 15, 2008 4:08 am

    MAn…i am really sorry to read that here…
    All your posts “stealed” from me I always link here and just post and intro, so people can come here…

    I had the same problem with a huge brazilian site, they are usually posting from the same sources i visit and also using my images. Credits? None…

    Seriously i don’t know what to do with them since my site doesn’t have the same popularity.

    Yours btw is so far famous, you will solve this soon :D

    Good luck

  3. TC on July 15, 2008 4:49 am

    I had content + designs + code stolen (duplicated i should say) from my own WP site and i managed to contact the hoster + the domain name hoster and have the f*cker’s site removed until they changed every single thing they had stolen.

    Then, those people kept on stealing news entries and ideas, and design layouts but they were way more cautious when they did it so i felt better.

    But seriously i felt like someone had raped me when i discovered someone had stolen all my hard work and to this day i’m still very paranoid and suspicious everytime i see a site that looks like mine or ideas and designs that seems to look too close to my stuff.

    I also dont hesitate to send an email to designers when i see a website that has been stolen from them or even the © link removed from WP themes etc. I just can’t stand people stealing work from other people now that it happened to me.

    Dont let it happen and contact the hoster etc. ASAP. I’m sure you can do something about it.

    Also send a newsletter to all your contacts and ask them to boycott the other site, it works well and very quickly the people running the site will undertsand how pathetic they are.

  4. Brian Purkiss on July 15, 2008 7:12 am

    They posted an apology.

    But even so - I’d still be pissed.

    I’ve had a post or two of mine stolen… which is flattering. but still ticked me off.

  5. Adam Pecharka on July 15, 2008 10:27 am

    I don’t think I would be so infuriated if your site wasn’t such beautiful design and implication. This site is an asset and should not be undermined by thieves motivated by pure ad revenue. This is disgusting, as I’ve seen it happen with my sites and artwork before.

    This is ridiculous. There is an apology but the content stays. I would for sure alert their host to this issue.

    No problem about the alert. I hate to see an intelligent designer have his work taken by someone that can’t even put together a credible site. I will be watching this for developments.

  6. Susan on July 15, 2008 1:10 pm

    Ugh, that’s awful. I had that done to one of my environmental sites not too long ago. :(

  7. Rachel Lyle on July 15, 2008 6:47 pm

    I condemned the people who do such things, I can’t imagine how they duplicating others work, well the main culprit is to become popular…I salute you for being cool.. it is not easy that you do original content then suddenly it is stolen.

  8. wangjel on July 16, 2008 6:03 am

    now you have two site :d
    greatings
    wangjel.com

  9. Prerna(from India) on July 17, 2008 11:26 pm

    Don’t worry specky You are the best that is why u r being copied original reamins orignal remember this and it always go long way I am ur regular vistor in a day I click on ur links atleast twice I know u r the best and u will reamin best keep it up keep on doing we r there to visit u and others are also there with u

  10. Prerna(from India) on July 17, 2008 11:37 pm

    Do u know that once I was making a design for a client my friend sitting beside me copied my design and his design was get approved means before the things come online they were copied.

    I told this to my friend he said that when people start copy ur work that means u r going right so My friend don’t worry its painful and irritating But ur visitors know that ur best

  11. Thomas on July 26, 2008 9:40 am

    Well I have a more serious case, some idiot made a copy of my site and content and either started using it themselves (several times) or they started selling it to others. What’s happened is that I’ve found several clones of my site and have managed to get several pulled.

    But there’s a few that are hosted on Yahoo’s webhosting (paid) that Yahoo refuses to pull even after proving that the content is copied from me, they demand that I send them a whole whack of personal ID and information, which I find unnecessary considering the site source code has clear traces to my site and Google has cached copies of my site and there’s proving that my site was around first. Plus they have img links directing back to my site. I need serious help in getting Yahoo to pull the plug, one of the clones I got removed was from the same owner as the one still active - so he took notice on that particular domain and changed it to a video host platform.

    While the main one I found is still active, fortunately I don’t think it gets a lot of traffic - but still I want it pulled down and I want to know if there selling this script or something. I freakin hate domain squatters, because the more adventurous ones copy people’s sites and use them instead of just parking them as they normally would. From my snooping I find most are from Asia or Russia, which isn’t note-worthy except that it seems to be from the same few people who are operating these steal content.

    I actually came here from the other sites apology to you, it sucks but at least you got credit in the end. You actually seem quite generous in that you really didn’t go after him.

  12. Dejan on July 28, 2008 3:42 am

    Yes you are so right, it also happens to me a lot lately i ran into sites which have copied like half of my web site and changed author name… it’s really a shame

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