: Content theft - Where can I go from here? I am the webmaster of a very successful blog in a fairly small niche. Recently our success has started to bite us with people copying posts on

@Chiappetta492

In addition to the great ideas already presented here, keep in mind that in the long run, Google knows where content is originally posted. So the offending site(s) will likely earn duplicate content penalties that will damage their reputation.

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@Shanna517

Two additional ideas.

If the posts are being automatically scraped from your site, consider including a standard footer within the body of your post - a footer that contains the name of your site, your site address, and a copyright notice. Then, your site ends up being promoted by the pirate.

Alternatively, if you can work out the IP address of the pirate, you could block it entirely, and stop them from browsing your blog.

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@Bethany197

Use interlinks. So visitors need to
refer other article to understand an
article completely. It also helps
categorization
Make your own examples. And refer
your site everywhere like article-stack.com/education/smart-learning/regular-expressions-common-elements-part-1.amty Better to put example images which
describe steps or procedure and
contains your logo.
Cliam your contents using myows.com/ or CreativeCommns
Use copyscape.com to search who is
stealing your contents
Write up a letter politly

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@Speyer207

I'd personally do a whois on their domain name, which will give you the name of the offender's host. Contact the host and inform them that they're hosting stolen content, preferably with a cease and desist on the letterhead of the meanest attorney you can afford. Problem solved.

There is software that could mess with his efforts to copy-paste. For instance, you could simply do a javascript disable on the right mouse button and the "c" key while they're on your site which would make life difficult, but not impossible. Tyny (http://www.tynt.com/) is a piece of software that appends urls to the end of copied content, which I bet could be done by hand with javascript if you were decent at writing code.

Of course there's always that time-honored and not-entirely-legal tradition of striking back. Post some of --his-- content on your site with a big highlighted note that you're sick of his site's constant ripoff of your work. Or, put up a page that tells why he's a hack and is unethical and then SEO the living daylights out of it so it becomes the top rank on google when you search his site....tell the whole story and prove evidence to shame him with your readers.

Unfortunate that hackers are never from little tiny outposts that you can just block outright.....

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@Deb1703797

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just make sure the benefit of stopping them outweighs the time spent trying to do it. It can easily be a losing battle, even if you win. That said, there are a few options available to you.


Find out if they are copying from
your RSS feed or scraping your page.
Add an user-friendly excerpts with
links back to the original article
and other articles on your site
within your text. If they're scraping
from RSS, just do that for the feed. You can also put your affiliate links, your products, your services, and your ads in the body text.
Use .htaccess to prevent hotlinking
of your images or to put your chosen
image in place instead (think: this
article was stolen from mysite.com or
something to that effect).
Try to isolate the IP address of
their scraper and block it.
Continue reporting to Google. Also, if they are serving AdSense or have any form of advertising on their site, report them to their advertiser and hit them where it hurts.
Find their host and try to contact
them about it.
Get a lawyer.


Of the options above, pick the low-hanging fruit, the one-time things, first. A lawyer should be a last resort.

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