Content Theft: Is Nothing Sacred?

Would you be mad if after you wrote and published your book you found entire sections of it copied and published on the Internet without your knowledge or permission?

That's what happened to fellow blogger and writing expert Jurgen Wolff of London. Here's what he emailed us the other day:

"Speaking of theft...I found two sites that had the entire contents of my new book, YOUR WRITING COACH! What was mysterious was that it originated from a Quark file, not a scan, which suggests that it may have come from the printing house or somewhere along the production line.

"I complained to the hosting site, which promptly removed the file, but of course other copies may well be sitting around somewhere on the Internet.

"I notified two other publishers whose books were on the same site. One said thanks, we'll investigate, but the other, to my surprise, didn't bother to reply.

"By the way, one of the other books on that site was published by Writers Digest Press and they said they'd look into it, and I'm hoping their legal department will take action.

Best regards, Jurgen

Jurgen's blog can be found at www.yourwritingcoach.com.

The stories we're hearing about web and blog content theft are pretty horrific. And people are hesitant to sue because of tying up valuable time, money and energy with legal issues.

Find out what you can do to prevent theft and protect your creative assets.

On Tuesday October 30 at 6 p.m. ET, we'll interview Jay Hollander, Esq. to find out 6 key legal issues you need to know if you're doing business online. If you a blog or create any content that gets distributed online you need to know this.

For more information and to register, click this link: www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/JH/

When you register you also get a CD with the audio program so even if you cannot make it, you won't miss out on this valuable information.

In the meantime, if you've had a similar experience, hit the comment link below and tell us about it.

Related Posts
4 Steps Against Content Theft
How to Protect Your Creative Assets

Is your content vulnerable?

Comments

[Jonathan Bailey]

I've had a lot of experience in this area, perhaps more than I'd like to admit. However, I haven't had a book of mine put on the Web, at least not in that fashion.

It seems to be a growing problem though. Record labels are seeing a rash of audio files hitting the file sharing sites before they are released to stores, Movies are the same way.

It would appear that the production chain is leaky in all of these fields. I predict that there is going to have to be some kind of fingerprinting technology used to detect at what phase the leak happens so it can be better tracked.

Might not be able to stop the leak, but can at least track and prove who did it.

Still, that's a future wish though. The good news is that handing these types of infringements is little different than handling splogging, scraping and other kinds of purely online content theft.

But it is frustrating and alarming nonetheless.

[Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad]

I hadn't thought about the similarities of content theft to music theft. Of course the music thefts get Big Businesses involved, hence legislation and law suits. But for those of us writing content there's usually not a lot of big bucks involved and not many people have the money to sue. Or they don't have the emotional energy to tie up that way.

[Jonathan Bailey]

The two have their differences, for example, music theft deals more with mere copying while content theft centers more around plagiarism, but the two issues are also remarkably similar in place.

The biggest difference, as you pointed out, is that music theft has deep pockets behind it. Most Webmasters do not. Thus, content theft usually ends with a mere takedown, music theft often with a lawsuit and legislation.

Seems a bit unfair to me...