Our content has been stolen

[LeahHutcheon]

We've a new intern who spent a good few hours writing this article http://appointedd.com/blog/nominees-for-the-british-hairdresser-of-the-year-2013-announced/ - quite a good we one feel.

Our main competitor has taken almost the entire thing word for word and put in up on their blog http://www.inaa.com/apiblog/?p=821

While this is a foolish move on their part, we're still quite offended over the incident as this was the intern's forst article and she'll be looking to add it to her portfolio.

I was wondering what the best practice is in this situation? Is simply writing to them enough if they've demonstrated they're underhanded? Should we call them out on it? I'm simply unsure as I want to protect no only the business but the intern also.

thanks!

[Novos_Jay]

As someone who worked as a professional journalist for almost fifteen years, I can attest to what an enormously widespread problem this is. I've heard of cases where individuals have had remarkable success simply by sending a cease and desist order to the offending company. I.e. the scare tactics work. There are some really great suggestions above, too, on how to accomplish this. Hope it works out!

[rhondahurwitz]

Looks like you are in the UK ...

1. Copyright/ DMCA Takedown Process

Copyright laws differ country to country, but in the USA the minute she wrote the article  (not posted it ... actually wrote it and gave her ideas a tangible form) she owned the copyrights.

Showing proof of that -- and the timeframe -- should not be too hard. (email, draft doc. etc.)

In the US, we have something called a DMCA takedown letter.  You write a letter to the infringing site's ISP documenting the proof, and the content gets taken down.

( In the UK, is there the equivalent to the US DMCA take down procedure)?

This is how we do it in the US:

http://info.icopyright.com/discovery-copyright-infringement-detection/how-to-use-a-dmca-takedown-notice-to-protect-your-online-brand

2. Social Media Peer Pressure:

If you are active in social media ... don't underestimate the impact of peer pressure.  We wrote about this recently ... might be a good approach , it certainly is used to good effect here.

You publicly out them and have your social community apply some peer pressure to the infringer.  Here is an example:

http://info.icopyright.com/internet-piracy/fighting-online-content-theft-peer-pressure-can-work

Hope these links help.

[LeahHutcheon]

Thanks for all the feedback guys - really appreciated!

[PaddyDisplays]

you might want to  remove (or break) that url to you competitor stolen article as this forum is crawled too...

[AdamNajak]

Get some back links to that post as quickly as you can, even if it is bookmarking or social sharing.

As a rule you want to always get the content indexed on your site first prior to it released via syndication or worse (in this situation) scrapped by another site.

[KevinBudzynski]

I would ask them to remove it. If they won't, fill this out once indexed: Report alleged copyright infringement: Web Search.

Any other tips for Philip?

.

[LeahHutcheon]

Yeah, blog is going through a restructure today and new sitemap submitted tomorrow. Went up on G+ yesterday when it was posted I believe.

Thanks though.

[Bondara]

The article is not even indexed yet on either site.

Get it indexed on your blog first, share it on Google+ might help this happen.