I’ve just sent my first formal ‘cease and desist’ request to a company that appears to be ripping off my content and publishing it as if it were their own.
Maybe ‘cease and desist’ isn’t the right phrase (I’m not a lawyer) but the polite email I’ve sent (full text below) is designed to achieve the same thing – have the company remove my content forthwith from their site.
Like many bloggers, I encounter other sites that re-post some of my content. While most of those sites aren’t places I’m particularly keen on – posts are usually surrounded with ads – at least the sites I’ve seen include a link back to the originating site (ie, my blog) and it’s quite clear to anyone who the original owner of the content is. (See this story plus Constantin Basturea’s account from April 2005.)
There are currently only two organizations who are allowed to repost my content in a way that’s different to the terms of this site’s Creative Commons license – Web Pro News and Corante, both of whom syndicate my content under an agreement.
That’s most definitely not the case with a blog called The Web “Inside and Out†which is the property of a company called WSUN Technologies. They have posted two of my posts from yesterday on their blog in such a blatant manner – no attribution, no linking: they look like original content there – that I felt compelled to drop them a line and just say: please stop doing that.
Finding contact info on the blog is impossible – there isn’t any. So I wrote to an email address in the contact page on the WSUN site. In case that doesn’t get to the right person there, and thinking that if they continue apparently ripping off my content they will definitely see this post, here’s the text of my email:
From: Neville Hobson
Sent: 13 July 2006 11:43
To: ‘admin@wsuntech.com’
Subject: Copyright infringement on your weblogDear WSUN Technologies
I saw today that, on July 12 2006, you posted verbatim content from my weblog on your own weblog (The Web “Inside and Out”) in a manner that contravenes the Creative Commons copyright license governing third-party use of my content.
I have discovered these two posts on your site –
http://wsuntech.com/esh/?p=410
and
http://wsuntech.com/esh/?p=411Both contain the exact content from these respective posts on my site –
https://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/12/the-twisted-jupiter-tale/
and
https://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/12/give-dell-a-chance/While I am willing to consider requests for use of my content within the terms of the Creative Commons license, you have made no such request. Furthermore, you have used my content in a manner which gives the clear impression that you are the originator of that content. Neither of your posts provide attribution to the original content creator nor a link to my site.
See the terms of my Creative Commons license –
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/Therefore, I request you to cease this infringement and remove my content from your site immediately.
I’d appreciate hearing from you to confirm that you have honoured this request. Thank you.
I took some screenshots of the offending posts on the WSUN blog, so I have the evidence.
How did they get hold of my content? They could have visited the blog and just scraped it. More likely, I think, is from the RSS feed which includes full content. The feed also includes a link to the Creative Commons license at the end of each post entry, so there’s no way they didn’t see that.
Incidentally, here’s how I found out about this. The WSUN blog is based on WordPress. Their posts automatically sent trackbacks to my posts which were waiting in the comment moderation queue this morning as they were first-time commenters. Pretty cheeky really!
You might ask why I’m bothering with this. Isn’t it just not worth the time in writing such an email? And this post? What if they just ignore it? Is it really worth the headache?
Well, I think it is. If you ignore such apparent blatant theft of your intellectual property, you may as well accept that anything you create that’s made available for others under an honour system (Creative Commons) is really just up for grabs by anybody to do anything they like with it. Even make money from it.
That’s just not on.
17 responses to “WSUNTech: Don’t steal my content”
Have you noticed that they are offering copyright solutions? May be you could become a client of them?
;-)
Oh, that’s really rich, Armin. Adds insult to injury!
Thank you Neville. I have just added a CC licence to mine. Who knows, somebody might want to rip of some of mine :). I did add it to the netpr blog but not to each post which seemed to me to be overkill at the time – no more.
Good move, David. Just be clear on what you are happy with for people to do with your content. CC helps clarify your intention. It’s then the honour system at work. Or not, in this particular case.
And what possibly would you do if they just flip you off?
– Amanda
That’s a good question, Amanda. I’m hoping that any lawyer who might read this post might feel inclined to offer a suggestion or two.
What would your advice be?
* ATTENTION: Post Deleted! The post Give Dell a chance was written by its respective owner from http://nevillehobson.com and was originally posted on:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/12/give-dell-a-chance/
WSUN Technologies receives dozens of articles every day from semi-anonymous registered users of our blog. We received on July 13, 2003 a complaint message regarding the above posted contextual article stating “WSUNTech: Dont Steal My Content” as seen on:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/13/wsuntech-dont-steal-my-content/
We have been misinformed regarding the intellectual property status of this post. We allow open posting to all register users of our blog providing the post meets the requirements of our site. The requirements we have are fairly simple.
1.) No Sexual Oriented Content
2.) No Advertisements unless Approved
3.) No Reposting of Articles unless Approved to do so by Creative Commons or Respective Owner.
4.) All Posted Articles Must Be Technology Oriented.
As a result of our registered user’s ignorance we have received a message from the owner of the article and we have had an article written concerning this matter on the owner’s blog at:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/13/wsuntech-dont-steal-my-content/
WSUN Technologies does not tolerate copyright infringement of any kind. The violating user has been banned and their rss.xml has been deleted from our list of feeds to be syndicated by us. We sincerely apologize for any aggravation this may have caused. We will gladly delete any posted article if the respective owner wishes for us to do so. Please email us at copyright@we-serv-u.net to report copyright infringement and to have any posts deleted. We will gladly delete any posts and ban any users from our system for these types of issues.
* ATTENTION: Post Deleted! The post The Twisted Jupiter Tale was written by its respective owner from http://nevillehobson.com and was originally posted on:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/12/the-twisted-jupiter-tale/
WSUN Technologies receives dozens of articles every day from semi-anonymous registered users of our blog. We received on July 13, 2003 a complaint message regarding the above posted contextual article stating “WSUNTech: Dont Steal My Content” as seen on:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/13/wsuntech-dont-steal-my-content/
We have been misinformed regarding the intellectual property status of this post. We allow open posting to all register users of our blog providing the post meets the requirements of our site. The requirements we have are fairly simple.
1.) No Sexual Oriented Content
2.) No Advertisements unless Approved
3.) No Reposting of Articles unless Approved to do so by Creative Commons or Respective Owner.
4.) All Posted Articles Must Be Technology Oriented.
As a result of our registered user’s ignorance we have received a message from the owner of the article and we have had an article written concerning this matter on the owner’s blog at:
http://nevillehobson.com/2006/07/13/wsuntech-dont-steal-my-content/
WSUN Technologies does not tolerate copyright infringement of any kind. The violating user has been banned and their rss.xml has been deleted from our list of feeds to be syndicated by us. We sincerely apologize for any aggravation this may have caused. We will gladly delete any posted article if the respective owner wishes for us to do so. Please email us at copyright@we-serv-u.net to report copyright infringement and to have any posts deleted. We will gladly delete any posts and ban any users from our system for these types of issues.
Thank you, WSUN Technologies. Your action has restored my faith in human nature.
Neville,
I was able to record an audio comment just fine. Take a listen!
Of course, it would have had helped had I attached the audio file :) It should be here this time.
Well done Neville! Keep the blogosphere honest!
Thanks Sherrilynne. The full kudos go to WSUNTech for the swift and honourable way in whichn they addressed this matter.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work, Bryan. Your audio comment disappeared into the ether somewhere. So I’ve disabled the audio comment feature until I can figure out what the problem is and fix it.
(Note to readers: This is to do with the latest version 6.6 of Podpress and the new capability of integrating Mobatalk audio commenting. Very cool indeed but it doesn’t work here at the moment.)
[…] 3. Plagarists better not even think of messing around with Neville’s content. Here is a case study of what to do, if it happens to you. […]
[…] A positive conclusion re my ‘cease and desist’ post yesterday. […]
Great concern has been in the focus of my attention today. How can we offer copyright protection as a service if we are not honoring copyrights?
The excuse of our clients posting infringed articles does not fly with me.
I had a meeting today with the entire executive board regarding this matter and as a result of the meeting we have decided to dump all posts on the entire blog The Web “Inside and Out”.
The blog will be converted to a staff and executive blog only. We will now prohibit any posting from and registered users. However, we will allow comments as long as they meet the requirements during moderation.
I personally sincerely apologize to any domain owners who have suffered from their content works being infringed upon. I also apologize to any registered users who may have legitimately posted their own content works.
We can not verify that every blog post is legitimate unless we post them ourselves. We are now regrouping ideas regarding the blog to rectify any issues resulting from the infringement of content and refocusing our efforts on providing unique content articles for our current users and subscribers.
If you have any questions regarding this matter, please feel free to contact me directly.
Kind regards,
Jason Jersey, CEO CNOA
WSUN Technologies
admin@wsuntech.com
1-(209) 885-4211