Kanak of tecfre.com alerted me to a possible plagiarism of my posts on his blog with this post. I checked the site in question and found that atleast 11 of my posts have been published as it is with out any credits and mention of the sources.
Few days back i discovered that someone copied my post without giving any credits, but after i came to know the author doesn’t know the fair use rules and apologized. This time the author knows everything because most of the posts from his blog (http://roboticdegree.blogspot.com) are from different sources, he didn’t took time to give source credits. There is no way contact him, the only way is to post a message through a widget, i posted a message 2 days back and it was deleted.
I just quickly searched on the net on what to do in such a situation, i found this post from QOT and immediately contacted Google Adsense. I got a reply from Google, see the transcript below.
Hello XXXXX,
It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website: http://lcWeb.loc.gov/copyright/ ) and other applicable intellectual property laws, which may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity.
To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail, not by email) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that pursuant to that Act, you may be liable to the alleged infringer for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that you own an item when you in fact do not. Indeed, in a recent case (please see http://www.onlinepolicy.org/action/legpolicy/opg_v_diebold/ for more information), a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.
To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following format (including section numbers):
1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. This must include identification of specific posts, as opposed to entire sites. Posts must be referenced by either the dates in which they appear or the permalink of the post. For example, http://example.blogspot.com/archives/2003_01_21_example_archive.html#2104575.
2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above.
YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH POST BY PERMALINK OR DATE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL. The permalink for a post is usually found by clicking on the timestamp of the post.
3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Blogger to contact you (email address is preferred).
4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”
5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”
6. Sign the paper.
7. Send the written communication to the following address:
Google, Inc.
Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043OR Fax to:
(650) 618-2680, Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
I would like to ask you have you encountered this at your blog, if so what you did. Any of you ever contacted google regarding this if so what is your experience, this is very helpful as i am preparing the complaint requested by Google.
If you find that your posts are also published on the blog in question please report it to google and also please flag this blog http://roboticdegree.blogspot.com so that blogger.com knows about this copyright infringement.
He also linked to my images, to prevent this i created a mod_rewrite rule in my .htaccess file. Now all my hotlinked images show a default image.
mod rewrite rule to protect images from hotlinking from a specific domain
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^(.+\.)?blogspot.com/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/hotlink.png
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|avi)$ http://www.teknobites.com/hotlink.png
See the screenshot below of my post with the hotlink.png
(click to enlarge image)
URL of this post: http://roboticdegree.blogspot.com/2007/07/scratch-programming-for-kids.html
Original post from my blog: http://www.teknobites.com/2007/05/15/scratch-programming-for-kids/
Update: The roboticdegree is using a freedomain robo.co.nr, you can see the whois information for this site and get the info about this blogger.
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August 4th, 2007 1:13 pm
Hey ram !! Thanks for this htaccess rule … I will also create a picture tomorrow. When i mailed blogger.com , i also got the same reply . No reply yet from google adsense. Moreover there seems to be so many posts from other blogs also. I hope all the blogging community join together . 100% word by word stealing, still not able to believe
.
August 4th, 2007 1:19 pm
@Kanak
You will not get reply from google adsense, this reply is from google and they want us to contact blogger. use the .htaccess rule and let me know if you want some help. Yes that blog is filled up with plagiarised posts.
August 4th, 2007 2:01 pm
Contacting Google is like putting yourself in danger even though you are the innocent. Because if you fail to prove even by 1% that the content is not yours then you may have to pay heavy fines.
here is a post I wrote long ago which tells you about how to track and recover copied blog content
August 4th, 2007 2:11 pm
@Dj Flush
Thanks for the info, i read your post quite informative.
Regarding Google i read the policies and i am sure that the content is mine including the images. I will give it a try
August 4th, 2007 2:37 pm
You seem determined to take the risk. I would suggest you to read this post before taking any serious action
August 4th, 2007 2:47 pm
@Dj Flush
Yes what annoys me is they didnt give any credit and when i posted about this they deleted my messages. my posts have been copied word to word that is why i am confident about this.
August 4th, 2007 3:53 pm
Heya, I have never commented on your site before but I am a regular reader and subscriber. This post particularly caught my eye as I hate Copyright infringement, why can’t people make their own content?! And luckily enough, my site hasn’t launched yet so he won’t be taking anything from me!! Just an idea, I had a look at the freedomain.co.nr whois lookup which you supplied the link for, and noticed that at the bottom of the lookup page (after you’ve entered the domain) there is a ‘Report abuse or spam’ button. Have you tried that? I don’t really know what they’ll do but surely getting more companies onto it equals a better result, right? Anyways mate, keep up the good work!
August 4th, 2007 10:49 pm
@ram I have also changed my .htaccess . Your information was very very useful . Thanks for sharing this
@Aron : just now used the report spam option. Let me see what action they take.
August 4th, 2007 11:13 pm
@Aron,
Thanx for commenting, yes i reported using that button.
August 5th, 2007 11:54 am
@ram - Good good. Do anything you can mate. Good luck.
@kanak - Great. Glad to be of help.
Keep up the good work with the site, mate.
Aron.
August 5th, 2007 2:56 pm
Man oh man.
August 5th, 2007 10:10 pm
Oh. boy! I would agree with DJ on with. You have to be very cautious about this. recently, I had the same issue. I tried contacting author couple of times and finally reported to google. But before getting a reply from Google , the spblogger turned the post off from his site. So I didn’t have to file the complaint with Google.
But till now I don’t know what to with people posting the information on forums with full content and hot linked images.
August 6th, 2007 3:31 am
This is on an increase now. the default image created was beautiful.
BTW how did you discover this? I too would like to do a check for my blog.
August 6th, 2007 3:59 am
@Benedict
yaah i will see all the options
Forums thing we can’t help atleast, best would be to contact hosting providers. usually they will take action but this blogger blogs are a big headache.
August 6th, 2007 4:03 am
@Nirmal
It was Kanak who discovered this, not me.
it is difficult to discover these type of practices becoz in this case he has removed all the back links to my old posts.
August 6th, 2007 5:03 am
This guy is little intelligent than others… But wonder why didn’t he take off the image links though
Ram ~ may be I need to try contacting the host… let me see if that helps!
August 6th, 2007 6:49 am
@Benedict
He is removing the images now.
if you are going to contact host look at this page http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stock-letters/
you will find DMCA draft notices, just fill it up with your info and send.
August 6th, 2007 10:23 am
Thanks for the link buddy.. it would make my job easier
August 6th, 2007 11:07 am
Good to see you got it all sorted out buddy.
August 6th, 2007 11:10 am
@Brown
not yet but hopefully soon
August 7th, 2007 1:11 pm
@ram something wrong, just now when i checked , my hotlinked pictures are showing the actual picture rather than the other default hotlinked picture. I wonder whts wrong, as before it was working.
August 7th, 2007 3:08 pm
@Kanak
I am not sure what might have happened, did u changed anything. My pics are showing hotlink image, for some posts he removed images.
August 7th, 2007 10:21 pm
@ram just now checked my .htaccess file. The code was not there. I think the code got deleted somehow , after i added 301 redirect to my .htaccess. I have changed it back, and i hope it will work properly now.
September 25th, 2007 4:52 am
Great tip, would be even better if you could provide a “tutorial” of sorts for us that have no clue where our .htmaccess file is;)
September 25th, 2007 1:25 pm
@Lori
.htaccess file is usually located at the root of your site
tutorial may be a good idea i will see if i have some time
October 3rd, 2007 1:54 am
Hi,
I had a similar post like this. But there is a problem using this
If you access those mages from anywhere else like google, feedreader it will show the other image.
HTH
Ashish
October 3rd, 2007 4:02 am
@Ashish,
I tested this code, it won’t block any other site except blogspot blogs.
I still have this code in htaccess file and it still serves the hotlink image in blogspot blogs and it doesn’t effect any other site or feedreader.