Sooner or later someone will steal your content.

It's not a very nice thing to do but it does happen.

Some people steal content because they are lazy, others because they are foolish and greedy but whatever the reason it tells you that you are doing something right. People wish they had content like you do.

Do not give up.

What you can do, what you should do and what you can do to prevent it are what we are going to be looking at today.



Recently it was discovered that ohwebhosting.com was stealing content from a number of sites including this one.

There were a number of options open.

1. Ask Nicely

Use DNSstuff.com to get a contact address, email or phone number and ask them nicely to take down the stolen content and not to steal any more. Point them to ezinearticles.com or some other free article directory where they can get all the free content they want.

Ask but do not yet demand. If they are willing to remove the offending content then you have solved the problem without any hard feelings.

2. Ask Not So Nicely

If they do not play the game write a stern letter. Carefully look up the words cease and desist and use them correctly.

Demand and do not ask.

3. Hit them in the pocket

So they refuse or ignore you.

Okay then, time to get tough.

When a person steals content most of the time they are trying to earn money from the adverts they can show.

Examine the advert links and you will find Google AdSense most of the time. If you don't you may find a link with numbers and letter in the URL. part of the URL might look like affiliate-id=xxxxxx or affid=xxxxxx or even ref=xxxxx all amount to the same thing.

It is the user ID of the person that stole your content.

Follow the URL and if need be use to trace the advertising partner. They don't usually try to hide thier identity (as they have nothing to hide).

Now you can visit the affiliate program website and look for contact information.

Politely explain that thier client is using stolen material to promote products and then give them enough time to panic about brand integrity and ban the user.

Ouch! They won't do that again.

But that is often not enough.

4. Sweep their legs out

Web site hosts often get very upset about illegal content being on thier servers as police and governments have been known to confiscate very expensive hardware which they will never see again.

The host does not want this so use DNSstuff.com and this time look up their DNS information.

You are after the name servers which you should look up to find the host.

Visit the hosting site and again politely inform them that thier client has put stolen content on the server. Request it be removed.

The chances are it will be taken down quite quickly.

It is also possible that the thief will loose the hosting contract and have to go else where. Again hitting them in the pocket.

If you followed all the steps above then they will know it was you and take care to steal else where.

But what if they, the host and the advertiser don't care?

Apart from writing a post saying XY and are stealing my content and hoping that thier auto theft devise posts it you have two more options.

Childish Answer

Google for SpamVampire and set one up to download thousands of copies of the sites images until the quota is spent. Get all you friends to do the same. Do it all at once so the site is expensive to run.

This is probably illegal and certainly the low route to take and also could upset your ISP.

So you risk arrest, Loss of ISP and more importantly loss of moral high ground.

Mature Effective Answer

Get the local phone directory and get a consultation with a lawyer or solicitor that gives the first hour free and get ready to file a suit.

If you both live in the same country it is much easier but chances are they live somewhere else.

It's a long and tricky process but you could well force them to attend a court in the location of your choosing to be told off and fined.

It can get expensive so be careful.

Secret Third Answer - the technical one

Spend the day filing blacklisting and abuse reports with search engines and blacklists so that search engines, filters, firewalls and other technical methods of stopping sites that are bad for you block the thief too.

Also you should block the site's IP address so it can not harvest any more content or if feeling childish and you know how you could feed it some content of your own choosing when you detect the IP address...

The result will be felt later if they try to sell the domain and discover that it has been sullied.