Unauthorized copying of our blog/website content including pictures - Copyright infringement: What to do to prevent it and the actions to be taken if it occurs

Just the other day I found some of the pictures from my blog copied without my permission on two websites. I am quite sure some of you might have had the same bitter experience. When we see our unique content posted after long hours of internet use and research used by rogues for their commercial interests on their websites, we feel bad. The images are our own intellectual property with unique links connected to our blog. These websites almost always have no contact details, even if they have one, those emails will be undeliverable, and most of these sites are non-indexed. And when we look deeper we will find content from others also depicted haphazardly with so many links and pictures. Their intention may be for making some money online in a dubious way. But when we see our content on such websites, we feel bad.

Some months ago I noticed the content of my blog copied by a site and I promptly filed a copyright notice using the Google DMCA dashboard. Prompt action was taken and all those URL's were taken down. So do not hesitate to file a notice if you happen to come across copyright infringement!

So, I researched about how to prevent content stealing, what to do if copyright infringement occurs, and thought about sharing what I have gathered by writing this post.

• How to find our content copied on other web pages without our knowledge?                   

Do our own image search using Google - Reverse image search.                                            Type the blog name, the name of the post or the label and hit search. Use Copyscape to find the duplicate content. www.copyscape.com

• First, let us discuss what we can do to prevent content scraping by thieves. 

• Copyright symbol, copyright statement, and copyright attribution. Always add these on the blog. © Also put this on the pictures as a watermark with the name of the blog or website. 

Please add a copyright statement somewhere on the blog. Search google for free samples of copyright statement and policy. Add copyright to all your content including the RSS feeds and pictures.

The attribution widget will be present at the very bottom of the Home page. Open it, add the copyright symbol, year and the name. Please update it every year manually. There are some automatic ways to update the year, but I won’t recommend them. This is very important, and it is always better to update it manually every year.

• Add a disclaimer

We can include the copyright policy in the disclaimer. There are so many free sample disclaimers available on Google search. We can customize it and add it on the blog or website.

• What to do with the pictures?

What I have observed is that our pictures get copied when we provide RSS feed. Even if only partial feed is allowed, pictures get copied. Looks like there are malicious programs that can copy content including photos from our RSS feed. I have stopped providing RSS feed. So, if someone wants to copy pictures, they will have to open the page and spend some time to right click and copy pictures and edit it. Usually scraping is made by programs that blindly capture content according to the keywords used by the thief.

Always add a watermark with the copyright symbol and the blog name on all the pictures. Even if the picture doesn’t look very attractive it is something much better than viewing them on some unknown person’s website. If some large-scale content theft occurs, we can easily spot our pictures with our copyright symbols. It would be very evident then that they were copied from our site because people will find our blog’s URL on them. I am now putting all these things on the pictures. Also, I decided to re-upload most of my pictures from my old posts with a logo of my blogs, URL, and copyright symbol. It was a tedious task, though!

Always name the pictures with the blog post title and the URL of the blog before uploading them on to the post. So, when we search for our pictures they will easily get identified by Google.

Periodically do an image and duplicate content search.

• Internal Linking

This means linking some words in the post internally with our previous posts. So, when the text gets copied the linked words will direct the user to our website/blog. This is a clever way to identify our unique content and a valid proof that our text has been copied without our permission.

• DMCA badge

Digital Millennium Copyright Act website provides different types of badges we can use for free on our blogs. This will create the impression that we are monitoring our content and are vigilant about its unauthorized copying. Their paid services will provide more protection. Similarly, Copyscape is also providing badges. Use these widgets.

• Can a Photoshop expert remove the identification we made on our pictures?

Yes and No. It is illegal to use copyrighted content without permission. No doubt about it! It is common knowledge that there are programs available to erase watermarks and texts. Unless some expert blogger/website owner had instilled the watermark into the deeper layers of the picture it is not a major task to remove it. But large-scale content theft occurs without such complicated editing works. So, we can continue doing all the precautionary measures mentioned above.

Also, do not upload very high-resolution images. First of all, it will take away our valuable free blog storage space. Even a very low-resolution image will look good on a blog, no problems at all! Moreover, editing such a low-resolution image will be of no use for somebody who is planning to use it for their own benefit. Always remember, viewers nowadays use their hand-held devices like mobiles and tablets to browse so there is no need for high-pixels!

• Disable right-clicks

This is also suggested as a method to deter unauthorized copying. But on mobiles and tablets, this might not be of any use.

• Be vigilant!

• Finally, what to do when copyright infringement is detected?

Complain asap!

Write an email to the owner of the website/blog about the concern pointing out the objection from our part. If no response within a reasonable timeframe:
Sign into Gmail, search Google for the DMCA dashboard and file a copyright notice.
Also, browse the DMCA website for more details. DMCA website has a lot of information about the Takedown notice.

Note: Please read the DISCLAIMER attached to this blog.

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