Date First Published: 26th April 2023
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: Web Development
Article Type: Computer Questions & Answers
Difficulty: EasyDifficulty Level: 3/10
Learn about what to do if someone has copied your website content without permission in this article.
If someone has copied your website or parts of your content without your permission, like whole pages and images, and taken credit for work that isn't theirs, it can be frustrating. Intentional copying of your content can be harmful to your SEO and is a form of plagiarism. Below are 5 things that you should do if someone has copied your website content without your permission.
Before you take any actions against the website that has copied your content, you need to collect all the evidence that you need to prove that the website has copied your content. Take screenshots of the copied content and use sites, like the Wayback Machine to view the crawled pages and prove that the content first appeared on your website. You can show this evidence to the website owner and the hosting provider.
The first action that you should take is to contact the website owner about the copied content and ask them to take it down. Try looking for a contact page on theweb site. Nearly all sites have a contact page which contains details to contact the website owner or a form to fill out. The link to the contact page can usually be found in the footer or the top navigation bar.
If you can't find a contact page listed anywhere on the site, you can try carrying out a WHOIS search. WHOIS is a protocol that shows you the registration details of someone that owns a domain name. You might find details, like an email address, which you can use to contact the website owner. However, most registered domain names hide their public WHOIS data to keep their personal information safe, so it is unlikely that you will find contact details when performing a WHOIS search.
Domain names with WHOIS privacy protection often have a masked email address, which will be forwarded to the email address used to register the domain name. However, they might also be forwarded to a dead-end if the email address used to register the domain name does not exist or is invalid.
If you have tried to contact the website owner and they won't reply to your email or take the copied content down, you can try contacting their hosting provider. You can usually find details of the hosting provider when performing a WHOIS lookup and looking at the DNS records. That can show you where the website is hosted.
Some hosting providers have abuse forms that you can fill out to report any abusive material that is hosted with them. If you find one, make sure to fully fill it out with all details of the copied content. If the hosting provider doesn't have an abuse form, you can try contacting them by using the contact page.
Reputable hosting providers have policies in regard to copyright and will take down any content that violates someone else's copyright or refuse to provide hosting services to users that persistently violate other people's copyright. When making your copyright claim, make sure to include as many details as possible, including the infringing URLs and the original content. Screenshots would be useful in your report.
However, not all hosting providers reply to every email they receive, especially if they receive hundreds of emails per day. Unreputable hosting providers might ignore your email or not bother to check their junk email folders.
If the content is showing up in search engines, you can send copyright removal requests to them. Sending copyright removal requests to Google and Bing will not take down the website as search engines do not control what goes on the internet. It will only remove it from the search results. You will need to provide URL examples of content that violates your copyright. If your copyright claim is successful, the links will be removed from the search results. Both Google and Bing take steps to protect the copyrighted material and intellectual property rights of website owners. In Google, you can submit a Google DMCA request. In Bing, you can submit a copyright removal request.
If you have tried contacting the website owner and the hosting provider and still can't get the content taken down, then this may be the best thing to do if there is only a small amount of content. But, if someone has copied large amounts of your copyrighted content, like hundreds of your images, and hundreds of pages of text without your permission and the options above are unsuccessful, you may consider the last resort below.
If you have tried everything above and still can't get your copyrighted content taken down after contacting the website owner and hosting provider, you can take legal action, but it should only be a last resort when all the other options are unsuccessful as this is an expensive and time-consuming process.
If so, it is important that you tell me as soon as possible on this page.
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