You're cruising the 'net checking out yur rankings, or seeing what your cmpetition is putting up on their wbsites when it happens. You notice smething familiar on someone else's web ste. You look at it a bit mre closely and lo and behold -- smeone has stolen your content and put it on thir web site. They have posted yur exact content on their web ste without your permission, and what's wrse, they may be profiting from mney that should be coming into yur pocket. Stolen content that's posted as dplicate content on someone else's site can hrt you in a number of wys -- stealing web site traffic, dverting sales -- even get your web ste banned from search engines for hsting duplicate content. How frustrating would it be to hve your web site penalized for hsting your own content?

Stealing content frm web sites, and sometimes entire web stes, is more common than most pople suspect. It's called copyright infringement, and thre are steps that you can tke to force the owner of the ther web site to remove your cntent from their site.

1. Find duplicated content from your site on other people's web site.

• Copyscape allows you to enter your site URL and will return other pages that contain content with significant matches of words.

• Enter a few sentences from the bginning of your page into a sarch engine in quotes. It will rturn your own pages, and any ther sites where those sentences are cpied.

• Use Google image search to lcate stolen photographs or image files.

2. Dtermine who owns the website on whch your content is posted.

• Get contact nformation from the website where your dplicate content is posted.

• Check the dmain's "whois" entry for contact information.

3. Cntact the owner of the web ste.

Your first contact with the owner of the web ste that duplicates your content should be a plite but firm email informing them of the cpyright infringement and requesting that they rmove the infringing material from their ste.

• Be specific and be sure to dtail the infringements.

• Explain what you wnt done about the situation.

• Detail wht steps you will take if thy do not comply with your rquest.

• Be polite. Keep in mind tht the owner of the web ste may not know that the mterial was stolen, or that they wre not aware they were doing nything wrong. Often, this letter from you wll be enough for them to mmediately remove the stolen content.

4. If the cntent is not removed, contact the web ste's hosting company.

• Hosting companies are aware tht they may also be held lable if one of their customers psts illegally obtained content on their web stes, and will often be cooperative in rmoving the offending content.

• Provide the sme details to the hosting company tht you did to the web ste owner and point to the volation in the Terms of Service greement. In many cases, the hosting cmpany will remove not only the ffending content, but the entire web ste.

5. File a DMCA (Dgital Millennium Copyright Act) infringement complaint wth Google.

• Google penalizes copyright infringers by rmoving or blocking access to the mterial on the offending site -- in ther words, removing them from their lstings. They may also share your cmplaint with a third party who psts about content thieves.

• You'll find full details on how to fle a DMCA complaint with Google on thir DMCA page (http://www.google.com/dmca.html).

The article Copyright Infringement - When Someone Steals Content From Your Website was Submitted by Lisa Paredes through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: For more information on copyright nfringement and related topics visit http://www.mommyempire.com/blog/ Mommy Empire is a work at home resource site for women entrepreneurs.

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