The right steps to take when someone steals content from your blog are to:

  1. Pressurize the person who steals your blog content
  2. Write the hosting service provider of the blogger who steals your content
  3. Write the blog owner that duplicates your blog content directly.

1. Pressurize the person who steals your blog content

You can actually mount a lot of pressure on the blogger who steals your blog content by doing the following:

  • Blacklist the Blogger Publicly

One of the ways to blacklist the blog content thieves who steal content from your blog is blacklisting them publicly, maybe via social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, or Pinterest. If you have a very large following on social media, this can be an added advantage in that you can broadcast a content thief mentioning the blog name, blog URL, and every other necessary information about him.

You're also covered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get anyone who steals your blog content dealt with simply by filing a removal notice.

And apart from the drastic actions mentioned above, you can also take other legal actions which though may be costlier than the rest.

In most cases, I haven't gone beyond contacting the content thief directly and have been able to always get my content taken down despite all sorts of excuses they usually gave me.

  • Write the Content Thief's Advertisers

Contacting the thief's advertisers is a good way to have your stolen content taken down. You can simply contact the advertisers who own the Ads displayed on the blogger's blog that their Ads are found displayed on someone who stole content from another blog.

The advertisers will then contact the blog owner informing him of the accusation made against him and demanding the taking down of such content lest they remove their Ads right away or refuse to pay for clicks generated from the Ads.



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Triblu Premium
Hey Israel,

Many of us learned yesterday that a DMCA takedown notice can be issued for no infringement at all, as one high-earning, IMer and WA member is going through this right now.

If it is THIS easy to abuse the DMCA takedown notices then this option may end up disappearing, as being used to destroy someone's business was never the intention of a DMCA tackdown notice.

Personally, I have installed plugins in hope of slowing down my sites being scrapped, however, I have to be honest in that I'm too busy to continually check for this happening.

Wasn't all that long ago that content that had been shared on my hobby websites since the '90s was literally copied and pasted in the EXACT format I created it in and shared in a Wiki site that Google ended up ranking well above my hobby site for this information.

Needless to say, since then I no longer have a lot of faith in Google punishing those who copy content.

Having said all this... it is only my take on this issue.
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Defiant6 Premium
The scary thing is, is that scammers and those who steal and copy content may even fight you themselves over who is the true owner of the content. I just can't help but think of the lawsuit that MOBE issued to the owners of Wealthy Affiliate that took them over 3 years to fight and the amount of money that they had to spend to defend themselves.

The only thing we can do I guess is to just be vigilant and do what we can to try and minimize the chances of our content from being duplicated or stolen. I think there's a plugin out there that can actually help with that, but I don't remember the name of it.
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Triblu Premium
Holy-molly, I had no idea WA had been sued. You're right, that cost would have been enormous indeed. Glad it didn't put WA out of business. WOW!

Yes, there are many different types of plugins you can use to discourage scraping.
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Defiant6 Premium
Kyle actually just recently posted about that lawsuit and it is a very interesting read. Check it out:
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Triblu Premium
Thank YOU for sharing the URL. I no longer receive emails notifying me of blogs so I appreciate this.
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Israel17 Premium
Kudos to you for the update! Much grateful! I've gone through the update and found it so informative and challenging. Thanks for the passion!

You may go through any of the following resources at your leisure. Thanks! Israel Olatunji

Israel Olatunji
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Israel17 Premium
Thanks for the comment, Triblu! Much appreciated! It's true that a DMCA takedown notice can be issued for no infringement at all. I've also seen a case in which a pro blogger was issued a takedown notice without copying content from another source at all, but when the pieces of evidence of the claims were demanded, the accusers couldn't present anything laudable and the claims were cancelled right away.

Sometimes, someone who stole your content may contact you and accuse you of stealing content from his own blog. So, one must prepare for challenges ahead just like we read about how Wealthy Affiliate was sued some years ago and how the owners stood up and won the case.

Thanks for the engagement!

Israel Olatunji
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Defiant6 Premium
You're quite welcome :)
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ashdew Premium
Thanks for your insightful post
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Israel17 Premium
Much appreciated, ashdew! Thanks for the reading! You need to ask anyone who tries to steal content from your blog for a take-down lest you get implicated in search engines. In as much as the higher page rank blog will be justified by Google, it's not safe keeping quiet. The Digital Millennium Copyight Acts will also vindicate the real thief being the one with the higher ranking.

Israel Olatunji
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lesabre Premium
Thanks for the share
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Israel17 Premium
You are much welcome, friend. Thanks for the reading! The risk behind the stealing of your blog content is that you may be punished as the content thief if it's found that the real thief has ranked more than you in search engines. This is the basic measure that will be used against the defaulter.

You may go through any of the following resources at your leisure. Thanks! Israel Olatunji
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Marley2016 Premium
Israel
Would not Google know who put the content out there
first just saying :)
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Israel17 Premium
Thanks for the comment, Marley! Much appreciated! You can issue a DMCA report whenever you're very sure that someone has stolen your blog content. You'll need to be 100% sure because details of evidence will be required before any action can be taken on the issue.

You may go through any of the following resources at your leisure. Thanks! Israel Olatunji
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CheDau Premium
Great training!
Very useful.
Thank you very much.

Goe bless,
Che
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Israel17 Premium
Thanks for stopping by, CheDau! Much grateful! In as much as you know the right thing to do when you see someone duplicate or steal your blog content, there's no cause for alarm.

You may go through any of the following resources at your leisure. Thanks! Israel Olatunji
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