[dianegreenwood]

Hi all

Its come to my attention that a couple of other cleaning companies have copied content from my website and reproduced it on theirs.

I'm dealing with this and its not a major problem to me, however I thought it would be good to let everyone know that if you use other peoples written material or photographs without permission then you are breaching copyright laws regardless of whether there is a copyright notice on the website.

"Copyright applies to computing and the internet in the same way as material in other media. For example, any photographs you place on the internet will be protected in the same way as other artistic works; any original written work will be protected as a literary work, and so on."

"So long as you have created a work that qualifies for copyright protection, that is it falls into one of the categories of material protected by copyright, you will have copyright protection without having to do anything to establish this. It is a requirement of various international conventions on copyright that copyright should be automatic with no need to register."

See www.ipo.gov.uk for more info.

There are a lot on this forum, including myself, who give advice freely and willingly and misuse in this way is not appreciated.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[Nathanael Jones]

www.copyscape.com is great for finding text that has been robbed from your site too,...

[Daria Taylor]

I'm sorry to hear about that Diane,

I must say, when we first started I looked on other websites for ideas to see how they are layed out etc, but all the wording and everything else that we have on our websit is down to me and my blood and sweat, i spend hours on updating my website and would be very upset if it's been copied.

How did you fing out about it? As now you have mentioned this i would like to check that no one has copied ours, plus pictures i have noticed few times that people just take pictures of the internet, i paid for all of our pictures that we have on our website and made sure that those are as unique as possible so not many other people will have it.

Regards
Dash t

[davep]

I had it happen with 2 other firms in my city!  Some people are just a bit daft 

[scrubberz]

Hi Diane,
You give some great advice on this site so am sorry to hear that those with no imagination are doing this, just wanted to say that your posts and advice have helped me loads so thank you 

[dianegreenwood]

thanks guys, i found this forum great when I started and thats why i choose to share (and still learn) here and of course i looked at others websites for ideas before I created mine, but everything on my site is written and updated by me and the pictures are from a reputable subscription photo site.

I have contacted the relevant parties by email and will give them 14 days to change their sites, then I will take legal action.  I don't mind people using my website for ideas but when its lifted word for word I object a tad!  I came across the first one because they emailed me asking for advice!! and the second and third ones were following looking at the first site and discovering word for word stuff, I then did a search for specific phrases that I know I wrote and up popped another site with directly copied and pasted stuff. 

ho hum, as i said not a major issue but just laziness on others part i think.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[Alan McTernan]

www.copyscape.com is great for finding text that has been robbed from your site too,...

Just checked my website via this link and not only has someone used my text but also my photos!!! Have emailed him and hope i get a response!!

Cheers
Alan

[Daria Taylor]

thanks guys, i found this forum great when I started and thats why i choose to share (and still learn) here and of course i looked at others websites for ideas before I created mine, but everything on my site is written and updated by me and the pictures are from a reputable subscription photo site.

I have contacted the relevant parties by email and will give them 14 days to change their sites, then I will take legal action.  I don't mind people using my website for ideas but when its lifted word for word I object a tad!  I came across the first one because they emailed me asking for advice!! and the second and third ones were following looking at the first site and discovering word for word stuff, I then did a search for specific phrases that I know I wrote and up popped another site with directly copied and pasted stuff. 

ho hum, as i said not a major issue but just laziness on others part i think.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

I cannot believe that someone would copy someones website word for word, i'm surprises that google actually picked it up, because when i did my training for SEO it said that if words are identical google will not pick them up and block them as a copy because it thinks it's an error. Thats why i thought nobody could copy website word for word. So they used same text just added their name where required?

dash t

[cleaner-exteriors]

www.copyscape.com is great for finding text that has been robbed from your site too,...

Just checked my website via this link and not only has someone used my text but also my photos!!! Have emailed him and hope i get a response!!

Cheers


Alan

just had a look at that alan thats really bad

[derek west]

just checked mine, unbelievable. lazy bar studs.

[Alan McTernan]

www.copyscape.com is great for finding text that has been robbed from your site too,...

just had a look at that alan thats really bad

That page is now blank!! Could have at least done the decent thing and replied to my email, i would have!!!

[dianegreenwood]

I haven't had a response from any of the 3 I've emailed yet and the text is still on their websites.  I'll follow it up with a formal letter next week if necessary and then contact their hosting providers who are obliged to remove sites that breach copyright apparently.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[garry22]

Diane,

I site I'm involved with (but do not own) has copyscape banners about every three paragraphs or so.

An employee left and set up on his own. He basically, got as close to cut 'n' pasting the original copy (I wrote it including some unique terms!) as he could. He has not, however copied it word for word.

He has even included the original site's company name in his keywords tag (thick or what?).

The copy took about two weeks to write and refine and works well.

This scumbag has pretty much copied the site and is ranking well as a result.

I'll be watching your progress (particularly with the hosting company and especially the webmaster) with interest.

Best of luck on this one,

Garry

[garry22]

Diane,

Did you get any joy with this?

[Darranvps]

Very Interesting Topic I just checked my site and found companies - some cleaning and some management who had copied my environmental policy etc
Cheeky or what?

[garry22]

Darran,

A couple of years ago I trained under a professional copywriter. I mentioned it to him and apparently, it happens all the time.

If people know he has written something, people literally copy it and just change the relevant words!

Not a pleasant world sometimes.

Garry

[dianegreenwood]

Hi garry

Yeah, I contacted 3 companies and 2 apologised immediately and have changed their websites straight away.  It seems it was the web design companies who had just copied and pasted but all sorted now.

One has not changed the website yet, but have promised that the site will be closed down soon.  I am keeping an eye on it to check that happens.  They did try to deny it at first saying that their site was there first but as I know I personally wrote every word on my site (most of it in January 2008) then that's difficult for them to justify!

Interesting exercise though and I will continue to check periodically to make sure nobody else is doing it.  I suppose though that imitation is flattery and all that.

As an aside, I think the strongest course of action is to contact the web hosting provider as they are obliged to do something about it, so if you don't have any joy with the website owner then that's definitely the way to go.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

[Nathanael Jones]

Hi garry

Yeah, I contacted 3 companies and 2 apologised immediately and have changed their websites straight away.  It seems it was the web design companies who had just copied and pasted but all sorted now.

One has not changed the website yet, but have promised that the site will be closed down soon.  I am keeping an eye on it to check that happens.  They did try to deny it at first saying that their site was there first but as I know I personally wrote every word on my site (most of it in January 2008) then that's difficult for them to justify!

Interesting exercise though and I will continue to check periodically to make sure nobody else is doing it.  I suppose though that imitation is flattery and all that.

As an aside, I think the strongest course of action is to contact the web hosting provider as they are obliged to do something about it, so if you don't have any joy with the website owner then that's definitely the way to go.

Cheers

Diane

www.freshlymaid.co.uk

To check on who did what first, the wayback machine internet archive is very useful. Just type in a web address & see what that website used to look like & when it was changed.
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

[Nick W]

Yes you are right - plagiarism is rife on the internet - copyscape.com seems like a good site to check if there is duplicate content. It is pointless putting up duplicate content anyway since google will penalise you.

Nick
http://www.kentcleaningsolutions.co.uk

[garry22]

Google only penalises duplicate content within the same site.

This is why you have to watch out for canonicalization (having one page with the www. prefix and one without). I've seen many home pages dissappear from the rankings (mine included) whilst every other page has remained because Google interpreted it as two identical pages.

If you have the same content as someone else, then you go into competition with them (even if it's your stuff!).

If that site has better page rank, better on site SEO and better incoming links, then you might well be in trouble. This is why some identical afilliate sites get better ranking than others.

It may be grossly unfair but that is the way it is. That is why it's important to stop it at source if you can.