Some say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but if you’re like me, you probably find it downright irritating when someone copies your website. When your television, car, or purse is stolen, you can call the police and/or insurance companies to help you recover your property and get compensation. If your website’s content is stolen, who can you turn to?
For most people, the first reaction is to fire off a scathing email, loaded with all sorts of threats and insults. If that’s what you’re considering, wait until you cool off first. Chances are that they may not have known they were doing anything wrong, or an employee or freelancer did it without their knowledge. By putting them on the defensive, you’ll make it more difficult to come to a quick and satisfactory resolution. A better approach is to contact them in a friendly tone, letting them know that their website contains content that was taken from your website without permission and that you would like them to remove it. In most cases, they will quickly remove the content in question.
But what if they don’t? Fortunately, you still have several options before you have to file suit in court. The first and most effective is simply filing a DMCA complaint with their web host and the major search engines. It’s important to ensure your complaint is structured according to their requirements and contains just the facts. Leave emotions out. Upon receiving your complaint, the web host will usually suspend the website while they investigate the matter. They will then require that the site owner removes all illegally copied content before their website will become active again.
If a DMCA complaint does not resolve the issue, you may file a law suit in court, but this can quickly become expensive and time consuming, so you’ll need to carefully weigh your options to decide if it’s really worthwhile.
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