Protect website content… But how? You spend time on researching a topic, then you spend more time to put it in the nice article, you add some creative pictures or graphics… You proudly publish your blog. Few days pass and you find a copy of your article on a different website… You just became a victim of a virtual theft. Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects all online published content under copyright law. But how can you reinforce that act and make sure YOUR website content is REALLY protected?

Here are few basic tips that can help to protect website content:

1. Be sure to place Copyright symbol in the footer on all of your pages along with the year of your first published work and owner’s name. It may look like this:  You may have noticed that I have a range of years placed in my footer. Copyright Office requires that the year of first publication should be used. However, when it comes to websites, you most likely constantly add new content- blog, pictures, etc. Therefore, I like to sue the range just to protect all bases.
2. You can register your website with DMCA and place one of their badges to your website to warn any potential thieves that you are ready to protect your website content. Yes, you do have to pay for their services, but in the event of the theft, they will help you with getting your content back. However, it doesn’t cost anything to have the DMCA Protection Badge on your website. You simply need to register with them and they provide your with a code to place on your website.
3. If you are using WordPress, you can install WP-Copyprotect plugin to prevent others from being able just to copy and paste content from your site. That will work assuming that the thief will not sit there and just re-type the content themselves. There are few other similar plugins that you can use to protect your sight from right click and copy option.
4. If you suspect your blog or article has been copied or if you just want to be sure your website is safe, you can use a duplicate content checker and other monitoring tools to search for copies of your posts. Good tools are Plagium and Plagiarisma. They allow you to search certain text and they will let you know if it has been used elsewhere. Another great tool is Copyscape. You simply put your website url and they will search for copies of your page on the Internet.
5. Beside your text, you can also protect your pictures and graphics by placing Watermark on them. Watermark is a faint logo or text that is placed over the image. So if somebody copies that image, your mark will be right on top of it. There are different tools that can help you with placing watermark, such as: Photoshop, Watermark, PicMarkr, and many others.

So you took the steps above and you found your thief. What next?

1. First of all, gather as much information as you can on what you found- contact information for the plagiarist, website information that the content was copied on and any proof that you are the author and owner of the content. You can use WhoIs to find owner of the website, and also their contact information like e-mail and phone number.
2. Contact the site owner via e-mail or letter (so you have proof of the conversation) and politely advise them that they are using your content without your permission and that they remove it from their site.
3. If step #2 doesn’t work and the site owner doesn’t want to work with you, you should report the plagiarist. You can writer DMCA take down request. Here are the steps on how to write that request: “How to Write a DMCA Take Down Request”. You can also file a complaint with Google since they may remove or disable the content and also with a hosting company for the website (that information is also available on WhoIs website).

Dealing with a Plagiarism is a long fight and can be quite exhausting. The best way is to try to prevent before it happens. We would love to hear from you- how have you been protecting your website content? Have you had any experience with plagiarism? What did you do? Please share your stories.