You might be surprised to learn that your online writing, photography and videos are being used by someone else on the Internet in an attempt to make money. These content thieves operate on the theory that using previously published material along with Google ads will lead to piles of cash.

Some do make money using this method; most do not.  One reason this approach doesn’t work well is that Google recognizes and redirects readers to the original content source .

I checked copyscape.com the other day to see if anyone was using material from my photography Web sites to promote their sites.

Turns out, people are swiping my content. I was a little peeved at first. Then I wondered: did I encourage content theft? On my roshsillars.com site, I write about the importance of photography in marketing.  I can recall encouraging others on one of my podcasts to use my ideas to promote the importance of good photography in marketing. Whether I encouraged people use my concepts, it’s not a good idea to use other peoples wording exactly.  The reality is some people just copied my site.

There is justice. If people swipe your content word for word, chances are they will gain very little search engine traffic. In most cases if visitors from the other site use the swiped information they saw from the imposter Site in a search engine it will benefit you. Chances are they will end up directed to your site not the imposter site.  In other words, they are advertising for you.

If I’m concerned about an image or video being taken, I don’t post it. Or I’ll make sure I have a good watermark on it.  If nothing else, I know I will get some free advertising out of the thief.

It’s a touchy subject, what are your thoughts?

Below are some links to helpful tools.

http://www.copyscape.com : Search the Web to see who might be using your writing.

http://www.tineye.com : This is a reverse search engine that tracks who is using your photographs.

http://www.copyright.gov : Use this site to copyright your work.

http://www.google.com/alerts : This helps you keep track of key words.

http://copyrightspot.com : Another site to detect plagiarism of your work.

http://www.doccop.com Here is another plagiarism detector. I’ve not tested it.

It’s a touchy subject, what are your thoughts?

Rosh