Stolen Articles

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evaku
Posts: 184
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:46 am

Stolen Articles

Post by evaku »

Hey everyone!

A client of mine just let me know that an article he purchased had long ago been scraped and posted here:

edit -- the article was taken down

I've contacted CC and the site, and I'm just wondering if anyone has any other suggestions. I know that Google has a copyright removal page. Has anyone every successfully used it before?

Thanks for any help!
Last edited by evaku on Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Word Gypsy
Posts: 469
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:16 pm
Location: USA

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by Word Gypsy »

So sorry that this has happened. It's such a common occurrence anymore. I've used the complaint form successfully many times. Good luck! WG~
Lysis
Posts: 1529
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Re: Stolen Articles

Post by Lysis »

The DMCA process should work well. And, if enough people complain about the site stealing content, it will affect their rank. And oh how I love to see the content thieves QQ at webmaster central that their rank was affected by DMCAs.
HiredGun
Posts: 311
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2014 2:45 pm

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by HiredGun »

Have you tried Googling the titles of your non-sold CC content (in quotation marks)? Scrapers are 'borrowing' titles and even short summaries. :evil:
Lysis
Posts: 1529
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 2:08 pm
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Re: Stolen Articles

Post by Lysis »

The good news is that as long as your site is stronger, you'll outrank a scraper. Actually, if a scraper outranks your own content, it's a sign that your own site has quality issues.

Still freakin frustrating though.
HiredGun
Posts: 311
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2014 2:45 pm

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by HiredGun »

Lysis wrote:The good news is that as long as your site is stronger, you'll outrank a scraper. Actually, if a scraper outranks your own content, it's a sign that your own site has quality issues.

Still freakin frustrating though.
Won't having an article title plastered all over the Interwebz impact sales though? Thinking of adding alternate titles at the bottom of each article as an 'extra' for buyers (33% showing).
gators18
Posts: 41
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 2:46 pm

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by gators18 »

evaku wrote:Hey everyone!

A client of mine just let me know that an article he purchased had long ago been scraped and posted here:

http://www.hayward-dispensary.com/need- ... a-edibles/

I've contacted CC and the site, and I'm just wondering if anyone has any other suggestions. I know that Google has a copyright removal page. Has anyone every successfully used it before?

Thanks for any help, and if you have written about the topic of marijuana, I suggest checking the site out yourself. I just noticed that they have also stolen an article from beconrad:

http://www.hayward-dispensary.com/fasci ... marijuana/

Which, according to CC, has zero sales.

https://www.constant-content.com/find-f ... earch=true
I'm not sure you can use Google's copyright removal for a sold article. You are no longer the copyright owner.

This webpage has a phone number and address. I'd call followed by a sternly worded postal letter including the penalties for copyright violation.
Lysis
Posts: 1529
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Re: Stolen Articles

Post by Lysis »

HiredGun wrote: Won't having an article title plastered all over the Interwebz impact sales though? Thinking of adding alternate titles at the bottom of each article as an 'extra' for buyers (33% showing).
I suppose if the customer checks, then it will affect sales here. But, ultimately, if the customer has a killer site that's very popular, even if a scraper stole the title, the customer site will likely outrank the scraper.

If the customer's site has quality issues or a manual penalty, then it's more likely the scraper will dominate.

The issue is that no one wants to admit that their site is low quality, so they always blame scrapers for their issues. :D But, duplicate content is not an issue for high quality sites.
evaku
Posts: 184
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:46 am

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by evaku »

Wow thank you for all the comments and good info guys :) I did contact the site (with a very sternly worded e-mail :wink: ) and got a very brief e-mail today that makes it seem as if they will do something about it, so I am hopeful and will keep my eye on it for the next few days.

I do Google some of my non-sold articles from time to time (it's hard to do for all of them because I'm in the hundreds!) and it always comes back okay. This is the first time this has happened to me (to my knowledge anyway!)

Thanks again everyone!
evaku
Posts: 184
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 2:46 am

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by evaku »

So it actually turns out that the site in question had purchased my article from iWriter, which infuriates me even more!! They were nice enough to take it down "in good faith," and I'm very grateful that this wasn't more difficult than it had to be. It has been wonderful dealing with them, actually! Now I'm left wondering how often articles are stolen from here and sold on iWriter!
HiredGun
Posts: 311
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2014 2:45 pm

Re: Stolen Articles

Post by HiredGun »

evaku wrote:So it actually turns out that the site in question had purchased my article from iWriter, which infuriates me even more!! They were nice enough to take it down "in good faith," and I'm very grateful that this wasn't more difficult than it had to be. It has been wonderful dealing with them, actually! Now I'm left wondering how often articles are stolen from here and sold on iWriter!
Do you show 100% of your articles in the long summary?
Lysis
Posts: 1529
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Re: Stolen Articles

Post by Lysis »

lol iWriter. The home of the plagiarizing writers and scams.

iWriter is where all of the stolen content from Elance showed up. The iWriter would throw up a job with a stolen or fraudulent CC number and then tell writers they had 40 hour a day work for them. Then disappear and not pay. If the Elancer was smart enough to use Elance's tracker software, they'd get paid. But most of them didn't.

Anyone buying content from iWriter is in for a big, plagiarized surprise.
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