Who gets credit for content

[johnshearer]

Does it really matter if somebody takes your content changes it slightly and republishes it?

This is my original article on history of house paints which was also published on ezine in Feb.

and from google alerts I discovered this page  http://www.franklinpainting.com/blog/home/a-brief-history-of-house-painting/ a minimally modified version. It is not easy to create content so these folks just copied and made a blog post.

Their are now many versions of this on the web..who wins?

[seoug_2005]

Thanks Ryan.

[RyanKent]

Let me first clarify copyright laws vary by country.

For the US, a copyright is in place whether or not a page offers a copyright notice. On the other hand, the more steps you take to protect your rights, the more able you will be to defend those rights when the need arises.

"It is not necessary to have a notice of copyright (i.e.: 1997 Jane Doe) for material to be copyright protected in the U.S.  Once something tangible is produced, text, graphics, music, video, etc., it is automatically copyrighted."

http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/copyright-internet.htm

[seoug_2005]

Ryan, i  need clarification regarding your first point.

"Without any copyright notice at all on the page, you are really leaving yourself wide open for theft. "

What if the content is still stolen with copyright notice in place ?

[RyanKent]

John, I understand your pain. Unfortunately most producers of quality content will have some work stolen at some point. In some cases, the content is taken exactly word-for-word. In other cases, the content is altered a bit. Either way, it is a form of theft.

There are various steps you can take to increase your protection against such theft.

1. You can add a Copyright to your page. I noticed your original page does not display any copyright at all. Without any copyright notice at all on the page, you are really leaving yourself wide open for theft.

2. You can improve upon a basic copyright notice by displaying a Creative Commons copyright notice: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/. A Creative Commons notice allows you to easily inform readers what level of copyright permissions you wish to grant.

3. You can pay to formally register your web page as copyrighted material. The cost is around $35.

4. At the highest levels, you can pay other companies to handle your copyright affairs. This process gets quite a bit more expensive. The company will register your copyright, ensure the proper license is in place, add various tags to your content, and perform monthly searches and scans of web content looking for any sites which may have violated your copyright. If any violations are found, the company will pursue the violators.

In most cases, you can successfully have the content removed. In some cases, it is very difficult as the site may be hosted in another country with lax copyright laws. In these cases you can contact Google or Bing directly and report the violation.