To Catch A [Website] Thief - or are you a thief and don't know it?

To Catch A [Website] Thief - or are you a thief and don't know it?
by Jacqueline Capps of Personality Creations
A family place for holidays, crafts, friends, music and fun. & All Letters.com
All original personalized letters for all domestic occasions - including Santa.
http://www.linkleads.com/copyright.html

At both of our web sites recently we have had a daily rash of theft. The worst case was discovered just a few days ago and has been dealt with promptly. This person(s) took off with our entire (yes, graphics and all) Christmas area which is over 300 pages in size! He/she did not just take text and graphics; it was the whole HTML code of the page. He/she then placed them online as their own - stating so by removing "Personality Creations" from the page header and adding their own in it's place. He/she also removed the site navigation table and my Human Click http://www.humanclick.com icon with my face on it. We caught this person(s) immediately due to several mistakes made on his/her part.

On the All Letters http://www.allletters.com site the story is more serious to a business owner. How can it be more serious than taking 300 pages? Because they are taking your money when they copy the content from a business site. The business owner will chase that thief to the ends of the Earth and back, and rightfully so.

What are we talking about here? Copyright infringement! I have found that a vast amount of you do not know the answers to these questions. Neither did I for quite some time. Copyright laws are like the IRS (Internal Revenue Service,) ignorance is no excuse. So read on...

What is copyrighted?
"Your" content the moment it is written or created. This is the words you write, images and any other item that you create yourself including how you display them. What you did not create yourself, you cannot claim copyright to.

BTW, as I write this article I am watching someone copying many of our Christmas stories. Correction; they took our Christmas stories and of those who gave us permission to post their copyrighted stories on our site. This person left the site with 13 stories in less than nine (9) minutes - this includes load time for each page! I know I can't read that fast - can you?

Many websites now have programs in place as I do that help them not only help their visitors when needed but also help us watch what's happening with our content. Others also rely on other means of finding what belongs to them. I cannot stress this enough, ALWAYS ASK and NEVER TAKE without first getting PERMISSION!

OK, so how do I protect my site?
I didn't know the answer to this question myself until a short while ago. For a quick free response I went to All Experts.com http://www.allexperts.com and contacted one of their excellent legal volunteers Laura Moran.

I told her my story and this is what she said: "As a first step, please take the time to register your copyright with the library of congress. It's really not that time consuming, only costs $30 and its the only way you could ever sue (not that this will come down to a suit, but its required to make one, and it takes a while). Read about registering your copyright here: http://www.redpatent.com/copyrightRegistration.htm and then follow the links to the LOC where you can download the forms to do the registration.

If you don't know that much about copyright law, you can read this too, so you feel more comfortable about what your rights are: http://www.redpatent.com/copyrightLaw.htm And if you find someone infringing on your copyright she also says: "Generally what one does is write them a demand letter telling them they are infringing on your rights and telling them to cease and desist of the infringing activities. If they stop, you should just let it drop from there."

OK, so you want to know how I caught the Christmas thief? It was very simple! But first I have to state that I am in no way affiliated with this service - it's just a great product! It has its limitations and kinks but doesn't everything? As I said in the first paragraph; I have "Human Click" in place on my pages.

If they had ASKED to mirror my site I would have said yes, provided they left my copyright info and a link to my main page intact. My web host and I contacted theirs and the pages are now gone to make that story short.

The Internet is growing in massive numbers also with it are the number of new webmasters who want to create their own pages. Unless informed, much of that content could be yours! Will you be competing with your own content?

On the other end, If you are taking content without permission, you are risking your reputation, web site, ISP(internet Service Provider), being fined and or imprisoned.

I am not jumping on the individual who is merely surfing and enjoying what they come across. Saving backgrounds for wallpaper ect. I myself download entire pages. However, I could tell that this person was stealing. They have certain characteristics that place them apart from everyone else.

Human Click allows me to see where a person comes from, where they are going on my pages, how long they stay and *wherever they access my page* Oh, and if and when they have visited before, what pages and how long spent. This is only a part of how I figure out what's happening. The other part is to open my raw access log and match up what they were accessing by their IP address, which is also nice of HC to include. The other thing to do is to place several queries in SEs for those filenames of the downloaded material, certain sentences that you know would be left in tact and so on. However, SE information is usually quite late at times. The damage has been done but at least you can find your files and the person who took them and go from there. Some people are so new that they will just link to your file on your server and the log file will tell you from where. The person I referenced was indeed a frequent visitor as well as sticky fingers. What he/she did not know was that my husband wrote one of the stories. And that what he/she took was not a common story. If she posts any part of it he/she will be caught with "real" evidence. I doubt I will sue her (*her* is a gut feeling - I've been correct so far) but definitely put a scare into her. Then show her the right way is the best way by allowing her the material if she places proper credit and or link.

There are many aspects to be able to tell what they are doing but you need to be watching all the time... Be careful, this can give you an ulcer. I log suspicious visitors and watch for their return or unusual happenings, such as a visitor's site showing on my HC screen that is not of my URL. Now there is a dead give away. That's how I caught the person who took 300 pages. He couldn't read English well enough to see that he did not remove all of the HC codes from the pages! He took the one with the graphic in it off and left the other at the bottom of the pages. When he accessed the pages I saw him! I then clicked on that page and was brought to my own page on *his* server.

On my other site my letters are being taken. One instance was a Christmas letter my friend/co-writer and I wrote last year. This letter was placed on their pages to be given freely to who ever wanted it. I asked to have it removed several times via email and never received a reply, then I went to that community leader of Geocities and he lit a fire that got it removed... but 3 weeks later they placed it back online! I emailed once more and it was removed. I guess they wanted to see if I was still watching - who knows. This is my business site and it's the bread and butter for my kids so I am very serious about theft here. To the point that I order letters from all over the world from sites that don't show the text of the letter that they're selling. I have caught several with mine needless to say.

I only chase down those I have proof of theft.

One last thing I would like to add.
I don't claim to be innocent of this either. When I began learning HTML and building my site at Personality Creations, I did much of the same things that I'm complaining of... but- again, I was new to it, didn't know any better and that was the problem. I may even today, still have a few of those items posted on some old pages. I have however removed as much of it as I knew of and when I do find more I track down the owner for permission. If I can't get it I remove it. My whole point to the matter is that we all need to know more especially new web designers, we also need better ways of protecting our content on this seemingly "free for all" Internet of ours.

About the author

Jacqueline Capps
http://www.personality-creations.com
http://www.allletters.com
Copyright 2000 by the author