I made & presented this when i was asked to help fashion designers in various institutes, whose designs are frequently stolen & copied. However, this is applicable to everyone who shares any of their original work online through their websites, social networks, blogs and content sharing websites.

1. FIGHTING ONLINE
PLAGIARISM
- By RAHUL KRISHAN AHUJA

2.  If you discover your content published illegally on another
website without permission or attribution, the first step is
to send a polite email to the owner of the website.
DMCA Notice of Copyright
Infringement – Overview &
Sample Template

3.  Content plagiarism is a serious concern on the Internet.
 You spent an entire day to get that perfect picture from your
Nikon D80 DSLR camera only to realize that hour later, some
lesser-known websites , blogs, pages have reprinted your pictures
without giving you any credit.
 To get your content removed from the another website, the first
step (that works in 99% of the cases) is to send a friendly
email to the owner of that site/page.
 But sometimes finding the email address of the person, who
ripped off your content, may be the toughest part.
 Following are some indirect tricks to help you locate email
addresses of offenders.
How to Find Email Addresses of
People Who Plagiarize Content

4.  Step 1. If the offending site is self hosted, you are very likely to find the email
address of the website owner through the public whois database. I
prefer who.is for quick retrieval of website registry information.
 Step 1(a). If the website is self hosted but the whois information is private, try
the following query on Google (replace abc with the actual site address)
 abc.com -inurl:abc.com - This might show up some real email addresses for
that domain.
 Step 2. If the site is hosted on Blogger, WordPress or other blogging
platforms, leave a comment in any of the blog posts. Most bloggers generally
read and respond to user comments.
 Step 3. Now the trickiest part - there's no "Contact Us" form on the website
and there's place for you to write comments. Well, don't give up yet because
you still have good options:

5.  3(a). Use Technorati or Google Blog search to find other sites / blogs linking to that
offending site. It's quite possible that the offender may be maintaining multiple
websites that are cross-linked for maximum Google Juice. There are chances that contact
information is available on one of his/her legit sites.
 3(b). If the person is blogging under an alias (say “coolstranger4u") - search for that
term on Google. It's very likely that he has used the same alias when registering on
other web forums and social networking websites.
 When you get hold of his public profile on some site like Digg, MyBlogLog or say facebook
forums, look for the IM aliases. If his YIM! is abc, you know that an email addressed to
abc@yahoo.com will, very likely, land in his inbox.
 Alternatively, most web forums allow Private Messaging. Sign up for that forum yourself
and send a private message / email. That may be the last resort.
 You can flood his facebook page, he will hide/ban you again and again, but that really
won’t make a difference.
 Keep doing it and message the most frequent users of the page and ask them to help.

6.  Never quit - I know it takes some effort to track down the
plagiarists but that should not deter you from actively
pursuing your case.
 Remember that search engines, including Google, still have
issues figuring out the original source of web documents.

7.  If the website owner fails to respond to your email requesting
removal of plagiarized content, it may be time for you to send a
formal DMCA letter to his web hosting company and also to his
advertising partner(s) (like Google Adsense / facebook ads
manager) that are helping him monetize content which is actually
owned by you.
 While web hosting firms and online advertising companies will
immediately comply to your requests, they will also ask you to
send them DMCA notices in a proper format with all the
necessary details and proof.
 Let's take a fictional case - Mr. Karan Seth of www.myphoto.com
finds his content on another website called www.
photosteal.com. Following is a Sample DMCA Notice that Karan
can submit to the web host of photocopy.com and also to Google.

8. Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement
The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on www.
myphoto.com/page1.html and www. myphoto.com/page2.html
The URLs where our copyrighted material is located include
www.photocopy.com/abc.html and www.photocopy.com/xyz.com
You can reach me at myemail@myphoto.com for further information or
clarification. My phone number is +91-9324612905 and my mailing address
is Karan Seth, 16/729 Sion East, Mumbai : 400 037.
The email address of the website owner, who has reprinted our content illegally, is
vishal@photocopy.com.
I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above
as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or
the law.
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is
accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf
of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Karan Seth
September 11, 2010 [14:50]
FORMAL DMCA Notice of Copyright
Infringement

9.  If your DMCA Notification letter meets all the
requirements, the web host will expeditiously delete
(or ask the customer to remove) that material.
 While most web hosting companies will accept your
DMCA notices via email, Google (for Blogger and
Adsense) requires you to snail mail or fax the DMCA
document with your signatures.
 As a workaround, you can take a picture of your
signature and paste that as in image in the Word
Processor. Then you fax the document to Google
DMCA department via Skype,Email or online.

10.  Please review the websites DMCA procedures which follow the OCILLA.
 Also note, the sworn statements and all other information listed on their
DMCA page are not only required but mandatory for any DMCA report.
 This will allow you to specifically identify the intellectual property that you
own and is being infringed upon, which is required by law.
 There are many verified third party DMCA/COPYRIGHT agencies who act
on behalf of the intellectual property holders who can verify and submit
these claims on behalf of the intellectual property owners.
 This will insure that legally, the intellectual property owner and the ISP is
protected in the event of an account termination.
Please Note

11.  In most circumstances, the thief will be planning to
monetize your content using advertising from Google
Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network or some other
service.
 Once he sets up advertising on his site, your job get even
easier - just complain to them and immediately, the ads
will be pulled off from the offending site.
Everything else fails - Complain to
the Site Advertisers

12.  The Best Online Tools To Help You Know Everything About Web
Sites :::: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/best-online-
tools-for-webmasters-know-everything-about-websites/2744/
 How to Find the name of Web Hosting Company from the Site
URL::: http://labnol.blogspot.in/2007/07/how-to-find-name-of-
web-hosting-company.html
 SoftLayer DMCA information http://www.softlayer.com/dmca.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCILLA see section 2 - 2.1 take-
down example.
 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html see section 512 -
3 Elements of notification
IMPORTANT Bibliography

13. Rahul Krishan Ahuja
IPR and Internet consultant
Cyber Forensics Analyst
Cyber Crime Investigator
CEO
AdEventureZ
022-24093351
09324612905
rahul@adeventurez.com
www.adeventurez.com
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