Anyone have experience handling plagiarism?

I have several business websites...

I just received this odd email from some guy using an anonymous yahoo email address. This guy pointed me to a photography service website in Atlanta (I am in Seattle) that has used several of my my descriptive paragraphs to describe his services. There is no doubt about the plagiarism: there are sections that are word for word ripoffs of my wording.

I am sort of stunned by this. I do plan on calling this guy tomorrow.

Anyone here encounter this kind of thing?

Wow!

Max

Edit: I am dying to know how this "informer" made this connection? This is totally bizarre!

1st off, get proof BEFORE you call him that this stuff is yours and was up before he had his up. Anything that will hold up in court should work - the idea here is to make sure the guy doesn’t rip right back and tell you to stop using his stuff! But without proof that it is yours it is difficult to stop his claim, especially if he has tried to use things to prove that it is his.

2nd, once you have that, either you (or if you have any lawyer friends - much scarier when the letterhead is a bunch of lawyers) write a Cease & Desist letter. Sample: http://www.free-legal-document.com/copyright-cease-and-desist.html Basically you are telling him to take it down, and NOW or you may pursue further legal action.

Just found this: you can try and get him kicked off google: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905

Also, I’m reading through this right now: http://astuteo.com/blog/article/stolen_website_design/

Hope all this helps. I have to get to bed!

OH! Almost forgot . I am not a lawyer, and what I wrote above should not be taken as legal advice. That is my general understanding of your best options. This is a disclaimer of ALL liability and everything that that implies. If you want legal advice, consult an attorney.

How did you get on with that crook? Unfortunately some people seem to think that ’anything goes’ out there on the internet.

I don’t think this applies to you unfortunately, but I found this great solution for when you find someone hotlinking your images

How to deter image and bandwidth theft

I still have to make contact. I have been battling with both of my dogs having a tummy bug. And then my 4-month-old puppy broke its leg yesterday...

Ayyy nooo... is that mendable?

I received another message from my "informant". I emailed her back asking how she learned of this situation. Turns out this guy created a Facebook business page using paragraphs she knew could not have been created by this new photographer. She googled the paragraphs and found three professional websites that had content that was copied.

I did the same thing and found another photography business site in South Carolina with text that was the same as this bozo’s. I called this business owner and it turns out he is also on the trail to get to the bottom of this. It gets worse: this photographer suspects that some of the portfolio images this guy is using are not his! He thinks he can trace down the real owner of these images. He is working on it now.

I filled out a copyright violation report on the Facebook system. They take this stuff seriously I think. Facebook has a thorough Intellectual Property Theft report system. I also used this guy’s online form to ask him to remove the plagiarized content from his website. No action as yet.

Hopefully between three violated photographers and Facebook we can shame this guy into dropping content that is not his...

From experience Facebook do take this kind of thing seriously, but they can be damn frustrating to deal with. I tried to set up a Facebook page on behalf of a client, and we were dismayed to find out that a competitor was using his business name for his own page url.

We complained to Facebook who took down his page... but then wouldn’t let us have it either as ’two parties had claimed rights to the name’! Of course, they won’t respond to any of our appeals.

In your case - I thought most web hosts have policies against hosting content that violates copyright, etc. Why don’t you band together with the other photographers and send a complaint to that guy’s web host? A simple whois search will get you all the details you need.

It gets worse: this photographer suspects that some of the portfolio images this guy is using are not his! He thinks he can trace down the real owner of these images. He is working on it now.

try this: http://www.tineye.com/

Facebook was pretty swift here. They have taken down his entire page and I received a nice message from the investigator...