Dealing with Copycats

[Dural]

Just picked up my first copycat. Someone is posting my articles on foreclosures to their site. On one hand, I'm honored, but on the other, I don't want to get hit with any sort of duplication penalties.

The site is hosted on typepad.com. Should I just contact them about it? The site doesn't list any contact information, of course.

[Chris]

contacting the host is usually the quickest way to a resolution.

[Masetek]

Watch this blogcast:

http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/03/14/...or-webmasters/

[Cutter]

Definately check out the link masetek posted; one note, that is more than just someone being a "copycat", its copyright infringement. If they removed your copyright notice or added their own name, then it moves into a whole other area.

[Doug]

On one hand, I'm honored,

It's low for someone to do that but at least you know that you are producing something of value. I would go after them, really scare the crap outta them. I bet they never thought they would get caught.

[Dural]

Thanks for the link. Yes, I'll go after them. The whole site looks like content copied from other sites, and they remove the copyright notice and even reformat it to match their own site design. Typepad should remove it for being a spam blog.

[john190]

If you don't want them to copy your work then I would suggest that you tell them as you will be the one loosing out and not them.

I had somebody copy the whole of my site about a month back and only change a few bits.

I told him to take it down as I didn't want him to ruin the whole of my sites work which has taken me 3 years to build up and has very good search engine rankings.

[Jon]

If you really want to scare the crap out of the copycat, contact them and ask them to please remove the content.. and then wait a day or two, even if they've removed the content, and send them a fake C&D letter. That just shows you mean business, and chances of them EVER using your content again goes from moderate down to slim to none.

[john190]

When it happened to me I asked them is they could take the copywritted content of ASAP as it is breaking the copywrite laws.

I also told them that it's nice to know that you like our site, but all we ask is that you don't copy it.

I then told them if they didn't take it down then we will have to take the situation further.

After that, I had a reply in about 3 hours and the person started to take it down.