Plagiarize me once, shame on you. Plagiarize me twice, shame on me.
On Halloween I filed two DMCA notices with the Google Adsense program. My goal was simple, stop known plagiarists from profiting from my words. Yesterday, Google got back to me regarding the notices I faxed in:
We have received your DMCA complaint dated 10/31/06. We are currently reviewing the complaint and will contact you when we have completed processing the request.
We appreciate your patience during this time.
Regards,
The Google AdSense Team
Today, I checked the two sites I caught stealing from me and I could not find a single Adsense ad. I did see the spaces where the ads used to be. If phase 1 was to submit my DMCA notice, phase 2 must be for the plagiarising webmaster to plead his case to Google. I’ll call this the ‘red handed’ phase. As of right now, it feels good inside to know that I am causing a thieving bastard some hardship.
One of the two notices was sent regarding a website I had previously caught plagarising. I had emailed the guy, who said he would remove the post (and did). However, at some later date he put it right back up. I didn’t bother with a followup email this time. Not a bad result for my first DMCA notice. Note to self: sign the printed documents before your fax them in…
Fake WordPress Planet is Dead
The plagiarising website weblog-pla net has been down for a week or so now. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the nasty fake content it was stealing from me (I was using AntiLeech), but in general its a really bad idea to ask your readers to click on ads, buy firearms, and celebrate illegal drugs — maybe that is why it is down?
All of Spammer Den Kokareff’s Sites are Dead
Over the last month or so I was consistently receiving 3-4 spams a day that would direct visitors to the website webwerkz.com. According to the spamhuntress, the site was run by someone named Den Kokareff. I was tired of dealing with the spam so I started to log an abuse ticket with Den’s webhost everytime I received a spam pointing visitors to his site. Josh Abraham of Sitelutions.com (the spammers webhost) was very courteous and understanding of my complaints and sent a couple of warnings to the site owner to stop with the spamming.
Sometime last week, all of Den Kokareff spammy domains hosted at Sitelutions.com became “Under Construction.” There are no longer any shady Adsense fueled doorway pages on the spammers sites, just the simple “Under Construction” message. 3 victories for the good guys.
11 Nov 06
11:02 am
Congrats on all three accounts! This is certainly a great day. Hopefully there will be many more to come.
Thanks for making my weekend bright!
11 Nov 06
3:57 pm
When karma works, its great.
12 Nov 06
6:01 pm
Thank you for reporting about this.
I’ve had an author recently copy and paste one of my most popular articles [the link I included] - and “quote” me as the source for ONE paragraph halfway through the article.
If it was automated bot-scraping I’d actually be relieved… It would feel less premeditated and personal.
The article even begins and ends with quotations that I transcribed from podcasts I was citing, making it even more obvious. The overall effect is that he authored the article, piecing together a variety of sources, and then has the nerve to “mention” my original post.
Direct correspondence has resulted in the author apologizing and promising to correct it, on multiple occasions.
I’ve refrained from even discussing it because I don’t want to actually CONTRIBUTE traffic or attention to the offender.
I haven’t received response from Google, and wonder if I even register on their radar enough to matter. I’m sure they have worse cases to deal with.
Your victory is encouraging.
I’m eager for any advice you have on this kind of scenario.
06 Mar 07
10:38 am
deepthought - Karma ALWAYS works - just more delicious when we are present as witnesses
07 Aug 07
4:16 am
Wow, I did not know or realize someone can still our words. What is DMCA anyway?
07 Aug 07
10:17 am
Peter: The DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. It is a U.S. law that has many parts but the important one here is that it addresses under what circumstances Web hosts can be held liable for infringement by their users. It arranges it so that, when properly notified, hosts remove content that is infringing in order to ensure that they can not be held liable for the infringement.
It is probably the single most important law when protecting your content.
You can read more about it here: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
I hope that helps!
20 Sep 07
8:17 pm
Do you think you can let us know what you wrote in the DMCA notices? Is it complicated to write up?
20 Sep 07
11:44 pm
Nancy: Sending a DMCA isn’t hard at all, the worst part is finding out who to send it to. If you need a stock template you can find them on the Web, including on my site.
08 Apr 08
8:49 am
It arranges it so that, when properly notified, hosts remove content that is infringing in order to ensure that they can not be held liable for the infringement.
08 Apr 08
8:49 am
thank you soo much.
21 Jul 08
3:26 am
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22 May 09
2:47 pm
Spammers are disgusting. It’s always a good thing to have their Adsense accounts banned when they indulge into illegal activities. Well done!