Should You Be Concerned About Content Theft?

In a perfect world, the content you write and post to your website and business blog would be considered sacred.  After all, you’re the one who wrote it – why would anyone else feel free to help themselves and plagiarize your hard work for their own websites?

Unfortunately, this mindset is all too rare in the digital world, where content theft is a rampant problem plaguing many websites.  In some cases, the unauthorized sharing of digital content occurs simply because site owners are not familiar with copyright policy, which automatically grants full copyright authority to the content creator.  When you consider how many times you’ve simply pulled a picture from another site to use in your personal documents, it’s easy to see how pervasive this mindset has become.

But in other cases, content theft occurs due to more nefarious purposes.  There are websites out there that profit by “scraping” content from well-intentioned blogs and posting it to their own pages, where they generate revenue through advertising dollars.  In these cases, no attempt is made to provide attribution to the original author – the content is simply stolen and used “as is” on other websites.

As you might expect, seeing your content stolen and used in this manner can be quite frustrating for the business owners who have invested time and energy into generating their own content.

But what can you – as a single business owner treading water amidst a sea of scam artists – do to protect your content and ensure that your copyrighted materials aren’t used unlawfully?  Or, to look at the problem from another angle, is it even worth your time and energy to go after these spammers?

We’ll address the second concern later on in this article, but for now, let’s look at the process by which content scrapers are caught and prosecuted.  Clearly, the first step towards bringing these scam artists to justice is to find out if and when content theft is occurring on your website.  After all, if you don’t know that content theft is occurring, how can you stop the situation from happening?

The easiest way to determine if your content is being stolen is to use a tool like CopyScape, which compares the content on your website to the text found on other sites and highlights matches based on similar words.  If you decide to make content theft prevention a part of your website strategy, visit the CopyScape site about a week following the launch of each new post on your site and enter the post’s link into the site’s search tool to uncover matches.

Keep in mind that the company’s free tool isn’t 100% accurate, so you may also find it helpful to take advantage of their premium scans, which allow you to compare blocks of copy from your site across even more websites for a small fee.  Or, if you’d rather take a “hands off” approach to the monitoring process, take a look at the company’s scanning service, which will automatically check the content on your site for matches across the internet.

Hopefully, when you run these searches, no scraped results will turn up, meaning that your content hasn’t been stolen and you’re free to go about your business.  But what if you do find matching results that indicate your posts and articles have been scraped?

If you decide to go after the websites using your content improperly, the first step is to send a polite email to the site owner asking that your content either be removed or credited properly with a link back to your site.  Remember, most people online aren’t familiar with digital copyright law, so these site owners may be unaware that they’re using your content inappropriately.  Before you jump to conclusions about whether or not your content has been maliciously appropriated, give the site owner in question a chance to rectify the situation.

To find the site owner’s contact information, visit his or her main site – most websites these days have a “Contact Us” page which will give you the necessary details.  If you aren’t able to find the webmaster’s contact info on the site itself, conduct a DNS lookup, which should give you the email address stored on file with the domain’s registrar.

In your initial email to the site owner, be polite, but firm, informing him or her exactly what content has been used inappropriately and what resolution you would like to see.  If you would like the site owner to remove the content altogether, be clear about your expectations.  Or, if you’re comfortable leaving the content “as is” with an attribution link, specify a date by which the link should be added.

In many cases, this initial contact will be enough to bring about the resolution you’re looking for.  However, if the website owner fails to get back to you – or worse, adamantly refuses to remove the plagiarized content – it’s up to you to decide whether or not to take further legal action.

The next step in the process of resolving copyright disputes involves sending the site owner a DCMA notice, which details your claims to the content’s ownership in accordance with digital copyright laws.  This notice can be sent directly to the site owner or to the website’s hosting provider if you aren’t able to get a response from the webmaster.  In many cases where content has been maliciously stolen, web hosting providers may be more helpful than the site owners themselves, as these providers don’t usually like the idea of having scraped content hosted on their servers.

If, after taking all of these steps, you still aren’t able to come to a resolution, you’ll need to contract the services of an intellectual property lawyer to take the case further.  Copyright cases like these can result in major judgments in your favor, but be aware that getting there isn’t a cheap process.  Even though default judgments against copyright infringers can be claimed for hundreds of thousands of dollars, be aware that it may cost $50,000 or more in legal fees to prosecute a content scraper.

When you see your content being copied, it’s up to you to determine how far you want to take these proceedings.  In many cases, the time and cost associated with pursuing legal recourse may not be worth it for your business.  As frustrating as it may be, it’s sometimes a smarter choice to let copied content go un-avenged in order to prevent your legal battles from overwhelming other aspects of your growing business.

However, another thing to keep in mind is that having your content scraped may not have any negative consequences for your business in the first place.

As a business owner, the value you provide to your customers comes from your unique products and service offerings – not just the original content you provide on your company website or blog.  As long as you continue to provide exceptional value for your customers, they’ll keep coming back to your site, regardless of where else your content may be duplicated online.

Image: s_falkow