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
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Tags: Advertising, copyright, google, marketing, Search Engines, Searching, Web search engine, World Wide Web
I’m a newbie, so although I’m certain that I’d be a tinge annoyed if someone were using my photography without compensation or acknowledgement, I’d also be very happy that someone thought my work was good enough to steal.
I’m certain this will change as I gain more experience and success.
I am sick of people expecting us to create content for free. I am angry that I am spending today fighting with someone who has used my material after requesting a quote but not purchasing a license, and now won’t return phone calls. This is an important issue and I’m glad you brought it up!
[...] New Media Photographer has Who is Stealing Your Work? [...]
I’ve had this happen on my sites in the past, and as you say, Google doesn’t take kindly to plagiarism and direct duplication of content. This is nothing new to them.
In the end, I learned there’s not much you can do (especially if those copying your work are in another country/continent) and just learned to deal with the fact that it’s going to happen.
What really did annoy me is that as well as copying the textual content of articles on my sites, they would actually display the images inline directly from my own servers (using my bandwidth, that I pay for, to pad content on their site).
A simple .htaccess redirect (if you have access on your hosting package to do that) which detects the URL of the referring pages to images, and substitutes the images to something else for those offending sites (for example, a GIF file containing text such as “See the original article along with images at yoururl.com!”) is an excellent way to help settle the score.
I like it!
I think you can be really diligent about checking for, tracking down, notifying, invoicing every infringer or you can only chase the big fish. Of course, the law is the law and maybe if you don’t chase everyone the big fish have an argument against your intent. It is a tough one. How much time, and it can be considerable, do you expend out of your shooting, writing, creative life? A good watermark is almost all you can do, though tools are being developed (your list and also tynt.com which I’m testing) to locate stolen content and to help make removing watermarks easier (Photoshop CS5). We do our best to stay ahead of the game, or at least keep up. Probably about the best we can do, and that might have to be enough.
Good point about photoshop 5.
One thing i have started doing for my images to make them easier to track with google is add some term for the filenames that makes them easily identifiable. I also now diligently add meta data and watermark them. So far most of the offenders have use the files as is so its been easy to track.
The unique file name is a good idea.
Rosh
I’ve had my copy swiped a few times, and the most aggravating thing is when the thief becomes belligerent with you after you’ve politely requested that they remove your material from their site.
In one instance, I had someone reply with veiled threats to sue me and demands that I not contact their client after they’d put my material on their client’s site as part of a package of online services they were selling (I’d sent copies of my request to both people involved). Once I sent links to the sections of the applicable law from copyright.gov back to both of them, the client sent back a polite reply and had my material removed from their site.
In short, the “content provider” left his client to clean up the mess…and continues to market themselves as an SEO, branding expert, and “content provider” extraordinaire.
Other posters are correct in saying there isn’t much you can do in such situations, but I think it makes sense to let those who take what does not belong to them that you are aware of their activities–in the hope that they’ll at least think twice before taking your “content” again because they don’t want the hassle of hearing from you.
I do take at least some small measure of comfort in the thought expressed by many that Google doesn’t like copiers, and that the thieves may be (as you suggest) actually advertising for you.
And on a tangential point…it isn’t “content” or, worse, “repurposed content”. It’s my writing, my work, please give it the respect it deserves