How To Deal With Copyright Infringement

1. Copyright Infringement - How To Spot It

How To Find Who Stole Your Content

First, you will have to find out if your content has been stolen.

How do you do that?

Finding Text Content Copyright Infringements

Just use Google. Here are just a few Google queries that you can use to detect copyright infringement for text content.

1. intitle:“title of your content” to search for pages that have your content’s title in the page title
2. inurl:keyword to search for webpages that have a certain keyword in the url
3. -site:yoursite.com to exclude your website from the search results. Otherwise your site will show up when you search for your content.
4. OR you can use this operator to combine multiple queries. So the query will find results matching either one or another condition

Example: Let’s say you are a photographer and you wrote a piece about “A Photographer’s Journey From Beginner To Pro” example.com/photographer-journey-beginner-pro

To find if your content has been stolen you would do a Google search like this:

intitle:"A Photographer's Journey From Beginner To Pro" OR "A Photographer's Journey From Beginner To Pro" OR inurl:"photographer-journey" -site:example.com

2. How To Report To Google A Website For Stealing Content - DMCA Google Notice

Once you identified the stolen content and the website that is posting it without permission you can file a DMCA notice to Google.

There is a DMCA Google service, but it’s not too friendly imho. Anyway, this is the most effective way to stop the copyright infringing material to spread through Google.

Depending on the type of copyright infringement, Google has multiple forms that you can use to submit your DMCA claim.

DMCA Google Notice For Web Results

If you want to file a DMCA report for Google web results go to: DMCA Google Notice For Web Results

These reports act like legal DMCA takedown notices, so Google is forced by law to take action.

You will have to fill in your name and state that you are the copyright holder or legal representative for the copyright holder. Describe what the copyright infringement is and then very important:

1. place one or more links to your original content
2. place one or more link to the infringing page

The good news is that most of these DMCA takedown notices are handled swiftly by Google and it takes about 24 hours for them to remove the infringing result from their search results.

DMCA Google Notice For Images

If you want to file a DMCA report for Google Image search results go to: DMCA Google Notice For Web Results

The data you need to put in is similar to the DMCA Google report for web search results. The only difference is that, instead of the link to the infringing image, you will have to copy/paste the image search result link. Simply right click on the infringing image search result and copy the link.

3. How To Deal With Content Copyright Infringement Outside Google

Reporting copyright infringement to Google will probably get resolved by Google removing the pages with the stolen content from the search results.

But, the content will still be out there. What else can I do to remove stolen content from a website?

Besides hiring a lawyer and suing the site, here are a few other things that anybody can do.

Contact The Hosting Provider Of The Website With The Stolen Content

Learn this term well “DMCA Takedown Notice”. I’m not a lawyer, and in some cases hiring one could be the only way to resolve a copyright infringement case.

But, any person can request to have their copyrighted content taken off a website if it constitutes copyright infringement. Assuming that contacting the website owner and asking him to take down the infringing content has failed, here’s what you can do:

Use a tool for IP whois lookup and input the domain of the infringing website. This will give you info about the hosting provider that hosts the infringing website. Usually this contains a contact email address. Look for something like abuse@hostingprovider.com and send them an email explaining the situation.

There are some requirements for the DMCA notice:

1. Make it in writing (this includes both hardcopy or digital);
2. Sign it (whether in writing of via electronic signature: just put your name) by the copyright owner or agent;
3. Identify the original copyrighted work (or works) you claim has been infringed;
4. Identify the material that is infringing your copyrighted work;
5. Include contact information so the designated agent can reach you, if necessary;
6. Include a statement your complaint is in “good faith;”
7. Include a statement the information in the notification is accurate; and
8. Include a statement that under penalty of perjury you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Source : Freeitsolution