Copyright Infringed – I’ve Been Copyright Infringed Upon!

Shiver me timbers, I was a bit torn today as to which topic to write about – keeping up motivation when things are not going so well in your business or about something else that I read a blog post about only 2 weeks previously and now the subject of that blog post is affecting me.

I’ve flogged the old motivational stuff a bit over the past few months so rather than sounding like a broken record, best not go there again just yet

So today’s post is about what to do when someone “steals” your article and swipes off the bio box, therefore you get no credit for your work.

Sherryl’s case is slightly different to my own, but there are obvious similarities. She had a blog post swiped and was given no credit.

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(Sidenote: I’ve just noticed Sherryl’s Alexa* ranking when I got the link to her post. Its gone up from something around 350k 2 weeks ago, to about 250k today. Its a relatively new blog too. But the number of comments on all her posts puts my blog to utter shame! Seems to me that if you want to learn how to gain a very successful blog very fast indeed, you should copy Sherryl Perry (and of course my ol’ mate Tia Peterson over at www.bizchickblogs.com/, who has done pretty much the same thing with her blog, which now ranks around 73k in Alexa). Shows you what you can do if you pay attention to the social networking scene rather a lot more than I do ).

*Alexa ranking, for those who are not familiar with such a ranking – basically it determines how popular your blog or website is, and it compares to every other site which is known to Alexa – which is pretty much every website online, I guess. Simply speaking, the lower your Alexa ranking then the more popular your site is, but its not just down to that. There are other factors that go into the algorithm to decide the Alexa ranking, which include how long folks spend on your blog or site etc.

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Let me explain what has occurred.

I’ve been having to labour (slave labour ) over my own article writing of recent because my outsourcer has become so, so slow at delivering her work that I’ve almost given up waiting for her. I mean – how can 4 x 300 word spun articles take over a week to complete? I know these days it takes me about an hour and a half to complete one 300+ word spun article and it is labour-intensive, no doubt about it! But…

Yup, it does take me that long to write up my spun articles – I think I must be putting a whole lot of effort into them, because I can normally write about 10 x 150 word articles which are non spun within the hour, providing I am fully focused, which is a rareity!

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And because its taking me so long to conjure up my articles, I do expect to get credited for them.

I’ve been using Article Marketing Robot to blast out quite a lot of stuff over the past few days. Ah, okay – I can maybe only get one article written each day and then my energy levels are spent. But hey – one article is a whole lot better than no articles, and I soon get fed up with writing articles, so every single one that I manage to do I’m actually real happy with!

In days gone by, if I had only managed to write a single article per day I would have been really upset with myself and thinking that its not nearly productive enough.

Those days are now long gone. If I can do one single really good quality article in a day then I am a happy chappie. Because what this means is that I may then be able to churn out around 25 articles in a month, which for me is simply awesome! And the amount of SEO etc that I can do with 25 good quality articles is rather a lot.  (Watch this space… me, write 25 articles in a month? You must be joking, right?!)

And furthermore, at the moment I’m fairly enjoying the “one article per day” thing. Its not like I’m flogging myself and hating what I am doing. Oh no, not at all. Would I ever do that now – would I?

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Anyways, I’ve gotten into the habit of checking the links to my published articles – you know – the ones that you are informed about via your email after you’ve submitted them to article directories.

I’ll follow the link through and check the article, and ensure the bio box is intact and then copy/ paste the article web address and ping it to ensure it gets indexed, at least by Google. I never used to do this, but I’ve gotten into the habit of it, and I rather enjoy it because its nice to see my work out there on the web.

Even with the really slow internet connection I’m using right now, it merely takes a few minutes to check a small batch of articles and then to ping those web addresses, so its time very well spent.

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Well, yes – you guessed it. There is one such article directory which is not well known and has an Alexa ranking of almost 1 million, so its not as yet well visited by folks.

This article directory is publishing other people’s content without a bio box intact.

Throughout the article they have various links dotted around, which I presume are paid links. And there is a lot of Google AdSense on there too, so basically what it would appear that the owner of the directory is doing is swiping content and providing no credit for it, thereby enhancing their own click thru rates on their ads.

Naughty, naughty dearest webmaster!

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I’ve contacted said webmaster by commenting on one of my own articles, and I’ll see how that goes. I presume that will be enough to persuade the webmaster – or indeed – webmistress, to take the article/s down, and to provide full bio box credit in future for any articles published. But if not, then more action will be taken. I’m not letting this go!

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Paul Novak was very helpful on Sherryl’s blog in her post about a similar incident to this. He said its wise to contact Google AdSense folks and tell them that this was occurring and that in this case Google’s terms and conditions were actually being broken due to using content which is breaking copyright rules and regulations to show their ads.

Well, I’ll hopefully not have to go this far, but if this web author does not either replace the articles’ bio box or take the article/s down altogether, my next step will be to contact them again and threaten them with this action.

And obviously if this threat is not enough, then you know what comes next. And I get the impression that Google do not mess around with this either. If you break their terms and conditions regards their AdSense stuff and if they find out that you have, then you are almost certainly doomed to having your account permanently suspended.

I’ve seen this happen even with some very big AdSense hitters, who are making really great money from AdSense, and for Google. Google don’t bat an eyelid. They just terminate the account regardless – much like god would do, I guess.

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So, if you are not already checking your own article submissions to various directories, then perhaps you should begin now. I can bet you that this case and Sherryl’s case are not the only ones. There is absolutely no doubt that this sort of thing goes on time and time again, and I for one think its time that it stopped. How say you?!

Tagged as: copyright infringement in article marketing, how to deal with online copyright infringement, what to do when someone steals your article