Anyone have any suggestions to help cut down on content theft?! I ran copyscape and found 3 sites that copied entire pages from my site (including live links, not exactly what I had in mine in getting outside links) and several others that took chunks. I've just had it. Any ideas?

is your content copyrighted?

Visit www.come2az.com and get the details of her lawyer from her copyright link and the bottom of her page.

Yup. Aside from suing these people, I'm not sure what else I can do. I may try to file complaints with the state attorney general and the FTC, but I'm not sure they would allow them.

suing them is pretty much all you can do. Contact them and tell them to take it down or your going to sue.

There's an easier way that has worked for me before. First, you can ask them to remove it and if they don't - then you can contact their web host and let them know that they've stolen your content. They may work with you and take their site down. Or, you can contact Google and report them and their site will be pulled from the search engines.

Perhaps just letting the offender know that you plan to pursue those methods would be enough incentive for them to remove your content.

Good luck!

I understand your frustration. The one big problem with the internet is stolen ideas and intellectual property. Everytime you post on the Internet, It's considered "public domain". Because the Internet is world wide that's a good thing, but that's also a bad thing as well. Someone from another state, country or another planet can copy anything you post and there is no way that you can do anything about it. Everytime you put something on the internet you have to understand that this is going to be a problem. There are programming techniques that are available that will help eliminate this kind of problem, but they all have drabacks and a great deal of times, some of these techniques are not universally recognized by browsers. The important thing to remember is, if you don't want it stolen, don't post it on the web.

Public domain or not, the minute that you publish the info to the web it is protected by federal copyright laws.

I agree with VirtuAllin - contact their web host provider. I usually send an email to the owner with a CC to the host provider asking for the site to be removed if the owner does not comply within 48 hours.

For me, that always takes care of the situation.

Did that. Point 2 responded with a basic "not our problem, take it up with the agent". The ostrich approach, stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away.

Sorry, Jade. You don't have many options here. Maybe they will be nice enough to take it down.

virtueallen has a good post. I would follow that instruction. Likely you will get the result you need.

Let us know how this all pans out for you.

I've dealt with this Internet copywrite issues for quite a few years, and with MANY violators.

First let me clear up a few opinions:

"Or, you can contact Google and report them and their site will be pulled from the search engines."

Oh that ain't going to happen! Google does not, and will not get involved in personal squabbles.

"Everytime you post on the Internet, It's considered "public domain"."

That couldn't be further from the truth. If it's an original work of yours, just because you publish it on the Internet doesn't make it public domain. It's like you're saying, if you print it in a newspaper, it's public domain because is so easy to get...?

"Point 2 responded with a basic "not our problem, take it up with the agent"."

That will be the typical response from most, if not all hosting companies. First of all, how can you PROVE it's YOUR original content? If you went to court, could you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were the first one to write it? I doubt you can... The ONLY copyright violation that I've "won" was someone stole website software, and I could prove it was mine because the thief couldn't even tell the attorney what each line of code did. If the thief happen to be a good programmer and knew the code syntax, I would have been out of luck.

In summary, about all you can do is put your time and effort into creating NEW content. The search engines know who's page was indexed first, so any subsequent page will be considered duplicate content. Just stay ahead of the competition be contently creating NEW content and don't waste your time and energy in copywrite issues. I would send them a polite email asking them to remove your copywrited material, and any further questions from them should be directed to your copywrite attorney. (hopefully this will just scare them into complying)

I hate to say it, but I think you're right Greg. Its too bad the NAR won't set some guidelines. After all, they are supposed to care about ethics but I guess if its stealing from the web they don't care.

Take the offender's email address(es) and subscribe every known newsletter to him. He'll be so busy cleaning up, he won't have time to steal your content