Today I’m posting a guest post by my son.
Desichef.com recently stole 141 recipes with photos off my blog, and shamelessly posted them on his website as well as Facebook page. It was very frustrating and disturbing that hundreds of hours of my work had been shamelessly stolen by someone without my permission, and that this person had a huge following on the internet. Fast forward two weeks, and today none of my recipes are on his website or Facebook page anymore. How I did it, is what I’m going to discuss in some detail today.
To summarize, all it took were two emails. That’s it. Two emails.
But before I talk about these emails, here are some things that you need to know.
1. You cannot represent somebody else’s work. So if the content stolen was not made by you, you cannot report it. Only the creator/owner can report violation of her Intellectual Property (IP) rights.
2. Anything deleted off Facebook, is still there on the original website. Facebook just deletes things off a Facebook page, not on external websites.
3. A Web hosting provider is to a website, what a landlord is to a tenant. All websites (tenants) live on different servers (houses) across the world. Each of these servers are owned by web hosting providers (landlords). Each web hosting provider typically hosts thousands of websites, and is responsible to take action on websites that are hosted by them if an IP violation is reported.
4. The methods given below are only applicable if the thief runs his own website and facebook page. If the copied content is part of a blogger/blogspot/wordpress website, the method is slightly different. Refer to the last part of this post.
EMAIL ONE: TO FACEBOOK
All content hosted by a page on facebook, can be challenged for Intellectual Property violations. Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/208282075858952?rdrhc
Once you select the relevant options, Facebook will ask you to “describe” the copied material. If these are images, you directly post the URL of the image (when you’re viewing the image, this is what appears in your browser in the area where you usually type facebook.com). You can put in multiple links at the same time, just make sure they’re separated by a space. It’s highlighted with a red box red below:
However, this is not possible if you’re reporting a “link”. To describe a link, you have to note down the details of the post by taking the pointer to area highlighted with the green box in the screenshot below. This will show the Date and Time the link was shared (highlighted with the red box in the screenshot below).
So essentially, if someone has posted multiple links, your description will look like this:
“The following links were posted:
Friday, 17th May 2013 at 07:04
Xday, Y date at Z …..”
After this, you’ll have to provide corresponding links to the original content i.e. YOUR content. This will just be a bunch of URLs from your blog/website/facebook page.
That’s it. Click on submit, and you’ll get a confirmation email from Facebook saying they’re reviewing your request. They usually delete the content within 2 days of you submitting a request.
EMAIL TWO: TO THE WEB HOSTING PROVIDER
I’d like to thank two people for this. Niv Mani, a Facebook friend, who pulled up the details of the web host for me, and WordPresshacks, from where I got hold of the DMCA complaint template. So here goes.
This is a three step process. You’ll first have to find who the web host is for the website that’s stealing your stuff. And then you have to find the contact id for the host. And then you have to fill out a form.
Step 1: Finding out the web host
1a. Go to www.whoishostingthis.com
1b. Key in the address of the website in the address field in the center of the page (highlighted with the green box in the screenshot below), and click on submit.
1c. This will give you the name of the company hosting the website.
1d. Click on link which says “WHOIS: Click here” (highlighted by green box in the screenshot below).
1e. This will give you names and addresses of the people who’re running the site which is stealing your content.
Step 2: Getting the contact id
2a. Go to the website that you got in step 1c.
2b. It should have a section which would say “Contact Us” or something similar. Find the email ID for the abuse/IPR/IP violations/DMCA group. If such groups are not listed, just email whatever email ID is provided and ask them for the email id for the group which handles abuse.
Step 3: Filling out the form
3a. Copyright infringement requests (Called DMCA complaints) need to be submitted in a specific format. I got the template from wordpresshacks (Thank you!). Here’s the link to the template: http://wordpresshacks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/dmca-complaint-template1.docx
3b. Fill it up, its pretty self explanatory. You have to give the website links for each instance of copying. So if the person has stolen 5 posts from you, and posted it on five different pages on his website, you have to give all five links in the form. I gave 282 links. 🙂
3c. Save the file and email it to the ID that you got in 3b.
That’s it. The abuse team of the web hosting provider handles the rest. Best of luck!
Exception: If the site is hosted on a Blogger or WordPress platform
If the site is hosted on a blogger/blogspot platform, you can skip Email two given above. Instead, you’ll have to click on this link and fill up the form:
If this site is hosted on a wordpress platform, you can skip Email Two given above. Instead you’ll have to click on this link and fill up the form:
Thank you for such a detailed post Anjana ji. It is shameful that there are people who don’t hesitate to take credit for others’ hard work. Just reading about these incidents makes me angry, can imagine how you must have felt. Glad you took care of it.
Dear Maayeka
I am glad I found this post. I am totally frustrated to know that this website recipes.lamptechnologies.in
has copied half of my blog. I dropped a comment asking them to remove the content. If I need any help,Kindly guide me as to what I should do further. I might need your help.
Thank you
Padhu
Thanks for the information. Someone copied a post from my blog. I used the information provided here to report about it.
Thanks again.
Very well done and an extremely informative post for all bloggers.
FOODELICIOUS
Join Me This Month MayEvent – 'ONLY' Chilled & Frozen Desserts+ Cookbook Giveaway
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Its really very sad and disgusting to know about this. Thanks for the information too…
Thank you
this is such a helpful post, anjanaji… glad that things have gone well for you and it's sorted out…
Awesome job!!
great post…very very useful info….thanks for sharing it in detail…
Sorry to know abt this anjana ji!! Gud post for us by ur son 🙂 Since I also used a pic previously from a fb page created a havoc I dont know if u saw my post on that, but pls do water marking on ur post, I was just wondering how come u post up ur pics just like that, then i tot may be u dont bother if anyone copy paste it! But gud that u came across Its lesson for all of us 🙂 Cheer up now that things have got sought out
nice post, many blogger facing plagiarism issues. Atleast they should ask to post or use material with original work links. Nice homework, very helpful for bloggers.
Great information…thanx for sharing…
thats an informative post.. appreciate ur efforts.. 🙂
Anjanaji, you have done a splendid job. Great and very helpful post.
wonderful info anjana
and so glad u got the content removed
still have to safeguard all our hard work
thanks for sharing would save this link for future
Useful post.. It is always sad to see people stealing other's work
Thanks for sharing the info. A very useful one.
I saw the title of your post and was really intrigued to read further. Its rampant, the copying, not only the pictures but also the words.
My words are mostly re-used by some but I don't really care much about it. Those who used my pictures wrote to me and provided a link, which again was acceptable. Blogger also monitors and if there's complain, you can be banned on blogger for more than 1 month until the investigate.
Thank you Anjanaji. The blog post contains very useful information that should be known to every blogger. Feels sad at the thought that you had to undergo such a bad experience of the recipes being copied in the blogging world. Hope it doesnt ever happen again and thank you for helping us understand the detailed steps that you took to get the content removed.
This is in deed a pretty too lesson for al, of us mayeka appreciate ur work in sharing ur experiences thanks a lot
thx u..v useful info!!
Anjana ji,
Thanks for this detailed post.Am a newbie on blogging scene and your post gives me great hope.Kudos for taking this up with the concerned people and showing us the way!
extremely good post. thanks for sharing this.
That's a really useful info you've shared…I'm glad you could get all the stuff removed from the FB page and the other website…
thats a detailed post which will help many of us facing these issues. thanks for the post anjana ji.
Anjanaji, you have done a splendid job and compiling all the details in a single post will be useful for many who gets their content stolen. BTW, this Desichef has got a fan following by having to advertise their fan page in FB and they are such idiots not to realize that they are paying to advertise by copying other people's hard work. Such big losers they are.
Wow very nice info to track the stealers…. Also happy to know ur contents wre deleted from that website…
Great post. Thanks for doing the homework and sharing.