I've sent three emails and a certified letter to a website owner who has stolen one of my Hubs, following the DMCA protocol to a T. (I got the vital stats and a postal address from Who Is.) All with no response from the website owner. My next move is to contact the ISP, who is clearly stated on the infringer's website.
What can / will the ISP do? Is it likely that they will remove the offending page from their client's site?
Copyrighted theft has happened to me before, several times, but each time the website owner complied at my first notice.
Thanks in advance for sharing your experience and knowledge.
If the ISP is threatened with a lawsuit. They are most likely to strip the website down for copyright infringement.
At least, that's what I've read here before, from others, who have had their work stolen.
Hope I helped.
I've only had one or two instances where a website owner didn't comply with a NOI request. And in those cases, the ISP was very responsive when I sent the escalated complain to them. It's in their legal best interests to take down sites that are copyright violators, and most of them have very clear statements in their own TOS that forbid copyright violations.
Thanks Cagsil and relache.
That's the info I was looking for.
I have not threatened the infringer with legal action or with a notice to his ISP. Guess he'll just have to find out the hard way.
A legal step but a precursor to actual legal action could be the sending of a Cease & Desist.
There's plenty of examples online, even with a Google Image Search.
I once made a boo boo online and my web host were the first to get the C&D. So as well as them tracking down my contact details my friend (I had the material on his server, therefore he was my webhost) immediately took down the page and was on the phone to me.
A well written, clear and concise cease and desist could be the right step to take next when contacting the ISP who is hosting the page.
Forget about being nice. The very first contact they receive from you should be very threatening. I have been down this road too many times and nice does not work.
Greg, I've been down this road several times as well, and this is the first time that the infringer has been unresponsive.
There is nothing "nice" about the DMCA notice; in and of itself this notice should be sufficient to elicit action on the part of the infringer.
For the record, it is not my style or intent to threaten anyone beyond sending a notice that speaks for itself. If there's threatening to do down this particular road, my lawyer can do that. It's what he gets paid for...that's what I mean about the "hard way."
I'm assuming that when you say ISP, Internet Service Provider, that you really mean his or her's web hosting provider which may or may not be the same company.
Pretty much all web hosting providers have rules against copyright infringement. I would expect a quick response and resolution from them.
If by chance the web hosting provider turns a blind eye they probably are just resellers anyways. I would do a traceroute and figure out who they are getting their hosting from. Or who they buy their bandwidth from. Usually there are several levels to this. The ones higher up the food chain would respond.
I would be happy to help you to figure it out if needed. It would be a bit hard to explain. Good luck.
MyWebs, thanks for the good information and the offer of help. If the hosting provider turns out not to be who I think it is, I'll surely be calling on you!
there are some site that can do it for you copyscape.com is one of from them.
easyspeak, HP has a wonderful app they run against the content on this site to look for duplicate content on the net. If it finds a duplicate of your content, you will see a small red copyright symbol next to the title of your Hub in the list that appears on your "my account" page.
You can do this yourself quite easily with Google. Just copy a sentence or two from one of your hubs and then paste it into the Google search bar with quotation marks on either end of the sentence.
So if your hub started out with this sentence:
My hub has been jacked and I don't know what to do!
You would do a search for this:
"My hub has been jacked and I don't know what to do!"
Hopefully the only search result will be your hub.
I have had a few instances of content being stolen, in each case contacting the person has either been ignored, or resulted in an abusive email from them, suggesting that I stole their work.
In all these cases a quick e-mail to the ISP results in speedy removal of either the stolen content or the website.
The only exception to this seems to be blogger, especially when another blogger user steals your work from your blogger page.
I had a Blogger website that was pulling in around 30,000 visitors a day, only to be knocked down to around 200 a day after a series of unscrupulous people atole all my content and duplicated it on a tonne of other blogger sites.
I contact blogger about this, and they said something about being unable to prove the work was mine (which I did with word documents, invoices from my writers at the time, and comparing the dates of the blogs and my posts). To this day all that duplicate content still exists, and my old success has floundered in to a sea of nothingness
Since that experience I have massively cut back on my blogger activity. Instead I have focused on my own websites and websites such as Hubpages, where I have a clear legal right to my work, and can push action against sites such as Blogger when things are stolen!
I didn't know this about Blogger. Thanks for letting us know. I have to think about how I'll use Blogger now. I didn't think that they would be that irresponsible.
darkside, thank you. As you said, I found a couple of examples of cease and desist orders that are specific to copyright infringement.
thisisoli, what an unfortunate story. I don't have any experience with blogger, and after reading your words, probably won't in the future. Thanks for sharing this hard lesson.
This last week I been having problems with a blog hosted on WordPress.com . Let me just say WordPress.com SUCKS .. That is a bit better.
This blog first stole my "Famous Landmark" picture that usually comes up #1 in Google Images. Then they edited it and said it was no longer my picture when it clearly was the same image. They just painted over my © example.com on the picture.
So I complained to WP and they removed both images. Next the blog posts a private email publicly exposing my email address for all spam bots to see. And another copyrighted picture of mine.
I complain once again. Email address removed and 3rd copyrighted image removed. Then they post my IP address opening me up to attacks. More complaints.. IP address removed..
By now I'm demanding they delete this blog for 3 copyright and 2 privacy violations and harassement all within 1 week instead of just deleting the offending content.
All WP has done is to issue them a warning. Any other web site would have deleted their account for 5 TOS violations in my opinion. Ugggg I'm soooo fed up with WordPress.com and this blog to say the least.
I do have screenshots, saved web pages and emails to backup all my claims.
thanks everyone. this is all great info. i guess all the more reason to use hubpages.
Website_examiner posted about "myfreecopyright" plugin. So next time you post something make sure you get digital fingerprint of your content with help of that plugin.
Might have to take a look at that, does it stil work if people select text and copy it though?
@ thisisoli You may wish to go read their FAQ that explains how it works. I just got done adding all of my hubs to it since I been having trouble all week with copyright theft.
Now all of my hubs display their logo with a link below that says: "MyFreeCopyright.com Registered & Protected" that links to the copyright on their site. This shows a potential thief it really is protected.
Its a good proactive step you can take to later prove you published an article first.
I would suggest adding hubs by the full URL and not the RSS feed. RSS method only grabs the meta description part it looked like whereas full URL takes a snapshot of the full hub text.
http://myfreecopyright.com/frequently_asked_questions
skyfire and MyWebs, thanks for posting the info about myfreecopyright.com.
We on HP shouldn't have to take this extra step, since HP's "copyright" link is quite clear about contributors holding copyrights. But it is also true that too many leap without looking, never reading the fine print. The myfreecopyright graphic is sort of like using a sledge hammer instead of a rubber stamp. But, in this world where we write, protecting against theft needs to be a work effort built into the writing process.
after getting a response from Maddie in another thread it looks like linking to them on all your hubs may be a bad idea. Thinking I'm gonna so screw it and see what happens
I saw Maddie's comment on the other thread.
Sometimes the sledge hammer is the thing that will work to prevent theft. Perhaps the graphic is sufficient and the link doesn't need to be there.
Since you've gone through this effort, maybe you'll have some results about effectiveness to publish in the next few months?
Update.
The host of the infringing site disabled access to the site within hours of my notifying them. This doesn't mean that my stolen words are removed from the infringing site; but it's a first, quick, and positive step when the site owner is not responsive.
ISPs and hosting services don't want to play around with this nasty business. They are on our side.
Thanks to all who commented here.
by Mackenzie Sage Wright 8 years ago
I have a problem. Encyclopedial.com has reprinted about a dozen of my articles, word for word, with no credit to me and without permission, and just keeps scooping more out of my hubpages. I cannot find anything on the website about who to contact, or the company that owns it. So I went to one of...
by Ronald E Franklin 8 years ago
I'm planning a hub about one particular actor in one particular scene of a movie. Without a visual representation of the actor in the scene the article would be meaningless, but no free or non-copyrighted photos appear to exist. To me this seems a classic case for Fair Use, as reflected in this...
by premsingh 15 years ago
If any content of the hub is being copied by someone and used elsewhere, its not the fault of hubber. This is nice that HP is motivating hubbers to file DMCA to the concerned site and take appropriate action,who is going to waste time to fight with the copyright violators. HP has witnessed...
by Kenna McHugh 11 months ago
Joyce Maynard:I’ve been following, with ever-greater concern, the story of how Artificial Intelligence has slithered into our culture and taken hold. This week brings particularly alarming news.If you had told me, fifty years ago, when I published my first book (the year was 1973; I was 19)...
by LiamBean 11 years ago
About once a week I peruse my hubs to check on traffic, comments, and just generally see how things are going. One of my hubs, "What Are The Benefits of Eating Bananas," had the copyright symbol next to it. I know from past experience that this means hubpages has found my content...
by Kitty Fields 13 years ago
I decided to do some google searching of my own hub topics to see where my hubs were ranking in google SEO and found out that about five of my hubs were posted to some website's facebook page with no direct link back to my hubs. The website is called ggberry.com and is some sort of travel blog...
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |