If the owners of the site where your article ended up without proper credit is are still unwilling to make the necessary changes, the first thing to do is to contact the ezine publisher and let them know content from their site was stolen and by who. They have incentives to stop that kind of activity too.
If you have the time and energy and it's an American owner who stole your content, the next thing to do is to contact the Cyber Division or the Financial Fraud Unit of the FBI (http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx being one of FBI’s sites for intellectual property theft reporting)
You can also contact Google at gmail-abuse@google.com or spamreport@google.com (Google's spam reporting division). Since Google has the ability to make your site never show up in searches, they can do at least that much to the offending site.
If the theft is of a more serious nature, or if you so feel inclined, you can also hire an intellectual property rights attorney and start serious legal procedures against the owners of the site that stole your content.
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Arc Rev One
Premium
If you want to know if your articles are being stolen go to google web alerts and create an alert for the title of the article in quotes, ex."my article title".
Every time a post appears in google matching your title they will email you with the link.
I have been ripped off many times, though usually it is a poor rewrite of my original article (identical except a few synonymous word changes) so I guess technically is isn't really stolen. They don't bother changing the title though which is kind of stupid on their part.
Anyway I used to get angry and tried to contact them etc. but you will find if you write many articles, you will be spending all your time trying to get justice and it is nearly impossible to rectify and not worth the effort.
The funny thing is my site seems to benefit even without the links intact. I always let google index my article on my site before submitting it to ezine. (the odds of someone finding the article on my site and stealing it are zero, but ezine articles get ripped off constantly).
I don't have proof but I think google is sophisticated enough to detect a duplicate article and give credit to the original indexing of that article. My site has leapt up the serps it seems even faster once I start getting web alerts for many duplicate (or near duplicate) listings.
Just my theory though.
Every time a post appears in google matching your title they will email you with the link.
I have been ripped off many times, though usually it is a poor rewrite of my original article (identical except a few synonymous word changes) so I guess technically is isn't really stolen. They don't bother changing the title though which is kind of stupid on their part.
Anyway I used to get angry and tried to contact them etc. but you will find if you write many articles, you will be spending all your time trying to get justice and it is nearly impossible to rectify and not worth the effort.
The funny thing is my site seems to benefit even without the links intact. I always let google index my article on my site before submitting it to ezine. (the odds of someone finding the article on my site and stealing it are zero, but ezine articles get ripped off constantly).
I don't have proof but I think google is sophisticated enough to detect a duplicate article and give credit to the original indexing of that article. My site has leapt up the serps it seems even faster once I start getting web alerts for many duplicate (or near duplicate) listings.
Just my theory though.
Reply
PMV
Premium
This is great info and I'm really glad you've provided it. It's one of those things that hasn't happened to me (that I know of) yet but it's great I don't have to worry about it anymore coz now I have straightforward actions to take without getting all frustrated coz I don't know what to do! So thanks. Paula.
PS I Love the burn in hell bit though I'm disappointed you left out the instructions for ensuring they do LOL !!!!
PS I Love the burn in hell bit though I'm disappointed you left out the instructions for ensuring they do LOL !!!!
dabears
Premium
This is great info and I'm really glad you've provided it. It's one of those things that hasn't happened to me (that I know of) yet but it's great I don't have to worry about it anymore coz now I have straightforward actions to take without getting all frustrated coz I don't know what to do! So thanks. Paula.
PS I Love the burn in hell bit though I'm disappointed you left out the instructions for ensuring they do LOL !!!!
PS I Love the burn in hell bit though I'm disappointed you left out the instructions for ensuring they do LOL !!!!
sanawife
Premium
This is good information. Last month I found out that someone lifted my article from Articlesbase.com and added it as a post on their blog. They left off my name and my link, leaving the impression that they were the authors. I had to do some detective work to track the owner down as the blog site had no contact information whatsoever.
I tracked them to another website based in the Philippines. I sent them an e-mail quoting the Articlesbase.com terms and conditions for reprinting articles. They responded immediately and added my name and links, and blamed the "oversight" on a Wordpress plug in they employ to search for articles and post them to their blog. I don't know if a plug in is to blame or not, but their blog site is full of articles that they probably ripped off and the original authors have no idea they're doing it. If they hadn't responded to my e-mail and agreed to rectify the situation I wouldn't have known what my next steps would have been, so thank you for this information.
The ironic thing about it is that it was EzineArticles.com that brought it to my attention after I submitted the article to them. They found the article on the blog site and thought I ripped off the article, so they suspended my account! I was able to prove that it was my article and it all worked out, but it just goes to show how messy things can get.
I tracked them to another website based in the Philippines. I sent them an e-mail quoting the Articlesbase.com terms and conditions for reprinting articles. They responded immediately and added my name and links, and blamed the "oversight" on a Wordpress plug in they employ to search for articles and post them to their blog. I don't know if a plug in is to blame or not, but their blog site is full of articles that they probably ripped off and the original authors have no idea they're doing it. If they hadn't responded to my e-mail and agreed to rectify the situation I wouldn't have known what my next steps would have been, so thank you for this information.
The ironic thing about it is that it was EzineArticles.com that brought it to my attention after I submitted the article to them. They found the article on the blog site and thought I ripped off the article, so they suspended my account! I was able to prove that it was my article and it all worked out, but it just goes to show how messy things can get.
dorothy101
Premium
This is good information. Last month I found out that someone lifted my article from Articlesbase.com and added it as a post on their blog. They left off my name and my link, leaving the impression that they were the authors. I had to do some detective work to track the owner down as the blog site had no contact information whatsoever.
I tracked them to another website based in the Philippines. I sent them an e-mail quoting the Articlesbase.com terms and conditions for reprinting articles. They responded immediately and added my name and links, and blamed the "oversight" on a Wordpress plug in they employ to search for articles and post them to their blog. I don't know if a plug in is to blame or not, but their blog site is full of articles that they probably ripped off and the original authors have no idea they're doing it. If they hadn't responded to my e-mail and agreed to rectify the situation I wouldn't have known what my next steps would have been, so thank you for this information.
The ironic thing about it is that it was EzineArticles.com that brought it to my attention after I submitted the article to them. They found the article on the blog site and thought I ripped off the article, so they suspended my account! I was able to prove that it was my article and it all worked out, but it just goes to show how messy things can get.
I tracked them to another website based in the Philippines. I sent them an e-mail quoting the Articlesbase.com terms and conditions for reprinting articles. They responded immediately and added my name and links, and blamed the "oversight" on a Wordpress plug in they employ to search for articles and post them to their blog. I don't know if a plug in is to blame or not, but their blog site is full of articles that they probably ripped off and the original authors have no idea they're doing it. If they hadn't responded to my e-mail and agreed to rectify the situation I wouldn't have known what my next steps would have been, so thank you for this information.
The ironic thing about it is that it was EzineArticles.com that brought it to my attention after I submitted the article to them. They found the article on the blog site and thought I ripped off the article, so they suspended my account! I was able to prove that it was my article and it all worked out, but it just goes to show how messy things can get.
