What if someone copies your website content?
Small businesses have been warned not to copy content from other company websites, as a leading web host reports a 89% rise in the number of content disputes over the past year.
Web hosting provider, Fasthosts, has released the results of a business owner survey which finds that more than one third (39 per cent) of those polled admit to currently feeling envious of a website belonging to a competitor. One in ten businesses surveyed had at least one item of their own website copied during the past year, suggesting that the challenging economy and increasingly competitive online marketplace is leading more small firms to cut corners and plagiarise online content.
According to company, there has been an 89 per cent increase in the number of content disputes reported to its in-house Abuse Department from April 2008 to April 2009. The company reports that in many cases, businesses did not realise that copying items of online material could land them in trouble.
Significantly, the survey also found that 10 per cent of participants had at least one item of their own company website copied by a third party between March 2008 and March 2009. Amongst the sample, the issue was twice as common as cyber-squatting or online security breaches.
Given the growth in website plagiarism problems for small business owners, we look at what you should do to protect yourself:
What if someone copies your website content?
At Bytestart, due to the high number of articles we have on the site, we've experienced hundreds of cases of website copying. We use a handy online tool called Copyscape, which can help you identify other websites which appear to be using the same content as you. You can either use the 'free' search, or sign up and run regular scans of your entire website for a few cents per URL.
On occasion, we have identified other sites which have lifted entire articles from Bytestart - we have found that a firm email asking the site contacts to remove such material usually does the trick. Explain that the content is owned by you, and ask them to remove any content you identify as being plagiarised within 48 hours.
If you find that your material has still not been removed after you have made reasonable efforts to contact the owners, you may need to contact the third party's registrar or web host. You can do this by performing a 'whois' enquiry at easily or another domain name firm. For UK domain problems, you can also do a look-up at Nominet.
Simply look up the domain name information, and you should find out which company is the 'registrar' for the offending domain name.
On the one occasion we have found it necessary to contact the registrar, the offending website was closed down immediately and permanently by the web host due to copyright infringement.
Posted June 26, 2009
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