I have been so busy this season that I am just now discovering that a Tumblr account owner decided to grab a handful of my blogs, repost them word for word and pic by pic with zero credit to me... Unreal. I work extremely hard on this content. To see it hi-jacked, re-purposed and passed off as someone else's just makes me so angry.
Ever the "how-to" girl (and because I don't mind putting the time, effort and research into creating UNIQUE content), I thought I'd go ahead and blog about the experience of discovering my content on another person's blog. What do you do about it? Can you protect this intellectual property? Let's get into it:
- What do I do once I've discovered my content has been copied? You contact the owner of the site or blog. Hopefully, they will remove the content. If not, then you will have to check if you can submit a formal complaint. Typically, the site will be publicly hosted on a site like Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc. I was only able to submit the request via their Tumblr account and Twitter since they didn't have a website with a published email. Turns out I was even following this person on Twitter (without the courtesy of a follow back I might add)... Seriously?
- Are there laws to protect me? I had friends refer me to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Inside this act is a title that deals with copyright infringement and it can be enforced once a claim of infringement has been made.
- Where do I go to file a formal complaint? Check out these links depending on the source of your infringement --> Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/dmca | Blogger (Google): https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en | Wordpress: http://en.support.wordpress.com/content-theft-what-to-do/
- Are there sites that I can go to or things I can do to check to see if my content has been duplicated? Yes. Check out the following links:
- Copyscape (You can type in your url and it will give you back sites that appear to contain content from your site)
- Google Images (Do a Google Image search of some of your most popular and most "pinned" blogs. This is just a precaution that its YOUR url you see under the image and not someone else's)
- TinEye (Allows you to do a reverse image search)
NOTE: Also pasting quoted portions of your text into search engines will do the trick...
Finally, here are some resources that helped me along the way, lest you need them...
- http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/check-copyrighted-material-infringement-11764.html
- http://blog.kissmetrics.com/find-remove-stolen-content/
- https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/157170?hl=en
Bottom line, the internet is big, but its also small. If I hadn't been so busy this season, I would have caught this much earlier. I won't be so lax next time. Keep an eye on your content people...
Til' next time, --ct