What is the main condition for promoting your website? An appropriate niche being found? A brilliant advertising campaign? A good neighborhood? Of course, all these factors are of high importance, however, there exists the most significant consideration – that is content. In combination with smart linking and some other Internet marketing tips, good content can increase your site’s traffic incredibly, bring it to the highest SERP positions and make much profit.
Just imagine: amazing and captivating, original and logically organized, relevant and keyword rich content, sweet delicious content with an appetizing golden brown crust… But suddenly, to your horror, you discover that someone has stolen the basic feature of your site and now your content can’t be called unique anymore. What will you do?
In prehistoric times thieves were torn to threads or just fed to wild animals. People of the Middle Ages subjected them to tortures. Two centuries ago swindlers were killed in duels. But nowadays such steps are a little bit out of fashion, in addition, there is a more progressive way to punish tricksters – I mean DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
As a United States copyright law, DMCA outlaws production and distribution of devices which serve to obtain the access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes removing copyright management information, like the author, title, copyright owner’s name, terms for the data use and some identifying symbols. Such illegal actions as abuse of the copyright law and dissemination of anti-security tools imply various civil penalties – from banning the plagiarist website to imposing a fine or even imprisoning.
The law includes several exceptions, and not any borrowed data is considered the violation of DMCA. Thus, the act allows to use online information for educational, governmental and law enforcement purposes. Another example is computer programs or games coming in obsolete formats and requiring the original hardware to get access to; in this case the necessary programs are “borrowed” for the preservation or archival reproduction purposes.
But what if that isn’t the case, and your content, based on the best SEO copywriting technologies, was shamelessly stolen and placed onto other site(s)?
First you should determine the extent of the offense and try to find out about the infringer as much as possible. You can contact the circumventing websites’ owner directly or send him/her a warning letter. If your message is ignored, and the copyrighted content wasn’t removed from the offending site, make up a DMCA infringement notice by yourself, or with the help of a lawyer, and send it to the hosting provider.
To attain its object the notice should meet certain requirements. To make it clear, your notice has to contain detailed identity of the copyrighted material, such as identification of the web page or posts where the data was published and the URL coming with the title, name of the source and date, – or the link leading to the initial post. Then it should provide the identity of the infringed data, its name and all accompanying posts and pictures, if necessary. Don’t forget to include your contact information, like email or fax. The DMCA notice is concluded with the signatures of the copyright owner and the author. Such host as Google require handwritten signatures, yet in most cases an electronic one is still valid. (Learn more details and examples by visiting Google’s DMCA department on the web.)
The majority of hosts will reply to your DMCA notice within 1-3 business days. In most cases the response is favorable, as any host doesn’t want plagiarists on its service. Nevertheless, don’t send the notice without being completely sure your content was stolen, otherwise such actions will be considered illegal.
There are many example when, thanks to the DMCA’s interference, circumvented data was removed from the the sites-offenders, and the latter were even banned. So, be aware of these methods standing on guard over your website reputation.