What to Do When Your Copyright is Violated
Submitting articles to sites such as ezinearticles.com is a great way for Prosper clients to get some direct traffic as well as some backlinks on relevant pages. Even if your article is not published by any sites, at the very least you’ll get a backlink from your ezinearticles listing because Google crawls those pages.
However, there are some website owners who will publish your content yet not include credit to you. This is plagiarism. In addition to violating the user agreements for ezinearticles, it’s also illegal. I recently had one of my articles plagiarized. I was showing a Prosper client digg.com via glance, and did a search for “LSAT”, which would bring up one of my dugg articles. It did, but the article was listed on another website. At first I was pleased to see that the article had been published on another site. Unfortunately, the website owner had cut off my name and link. If this happens to you, try the following.
Your goal is to get the backlink. So, your first step should be to contact the website owner and politely explain that you are the copyright owner and that it’s a legal requirement to post credit. Also state that you expect to have proper credit posted within 48 hours or you will take further action. Most likely this will solve your problem and within a day or two you’ll be listed as the author and have your backlink.
If you cannot find the contact information on the website, go to www.whois.sc and do a search for the domain name. This will likely provide you the needed contact information. You might also be able to contact the person via a social media site such as digg.com.
However, if after 48 hours you have not seen credit posted, you’ll need to do more. In the situation that I mentioned earlier, I had tried sending an e-mail to the website owner but the message came back stating that the e-mail address did not exist; I had tried calling but only connected to a fax line; I had sent messages via digg.com but received no response.
If you end up in a similar situation and are unable to contact the website owner, or if the website owner ignores your request (or flat out refuses), you can contact the web host. You may find the webhost’s contact information via www.whois.sc, then visit the webhost’s page and look for legal information, and look for the host’s policies on copyright violation. You are unlikely going to be able to simply send a quick e-mail asking that the host fix the problem; instead you’ll likely need to mail or e-mail a detailed message to the host with your complaint. For this, you may use the following template, which will likely cover the host’s requirements, although you may need to include more information.
Dear (Web Host) Legal Department,
My name is (Your Name). I am the copyright owner of (link to your ezinearticles listing). Under penalty of perjury, I attest that I am legally authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner of (link to your ezinearticles listing). I, in good faith, believe that this copyright has been violated at (link to webpage that has violated your copyright) because no credit has been given to the copyright owner. I request that access to this be denied.
Under penalty of perjury, I attest that, to the best of my knowledge, the statements within this notification are accurate.
Thank You,
(Your Name) – This serves as a legal electronic signature.
(Your Mailing Address)
(Your Phone Number)
(Your e-mail address)
At this point, if your notification meets the host’s requirements, the host will disable access to that particular page, and then contact the site owner about the problem. The site owner has the option to provide a counter notification, but it’s unlikely that this will occur. What will likely occur is that access to the page will be permanently disabled. In my situation, the hosting company disabled access to the entire website, which apparently had numerous violations.
Copyright violations of this sort are relatively rare and should not dissuade you from posting articles. However, should your copyright be violated, use the above information to get your just due.
by Michael Stone