What to Do When Someone Steals Your Online Content

Any information published over the web is the sole property of its creator. People mostly believe that the information that includes the word copyrighted shouldn’t be used, and all the other data can be copied without permission. This whole concept is entirely wrong. The writer doesn’t need to mention that the content contains copyrights, as there is existing international law. This law states that the information or content created by an individual will be considered his/her property, and no person can use the data without any proper acknowledgment.

However, the ease of accessing various digital sources makes it easy for an individual to copy any information from the web and utilize it in his work without any hassle. Therefore, as a content creator, it sometimes becomes unavoidable for you to monitor your work load. It is essential to perform free grammar checks to make your writing free from any mistakes.

How to Find If Someone Has Stolen Your Content?

Tracing out the source that is using your content is the most crucial aspect and requires the utmost attention from you. There are numerous ways that can be adopted to find out if others are using your content. The traditional ways like exploring various online platforms yourself are the most used method to search for your duplicated content. However, an ample amount of time is required to get the best results from this technique.

But, we will not suggest this approach, as it needs extensive effort. It is important and beneficial to get assistance from technology and modern tools to detect plagiarism. There are a number of online plagiarism checker tools that enable you to catch duplication in writing within a few instances. The best part of using these online facilities is that they don’t require any manual effort from you and perform all the processing themselves.

What to Do If You Detect the Source?

Well, there are plenty of options that you may have after tracing down the source. You can opt for any option shared below.

Decide Whether It’s a Fair Use or Not

The first thing you need to check after finding the source is the nature of duplication. If your name is written as an author to the content on that site, or your website name is mentioned with the content, then it’s fine. Otherwise, you have the right to take any legal action against that site.

Contact the Owner

It is suggested to contact the webmaster or manager of the site where you have seen your content. You can find the email address of the site’s owner from the Contact Us page on that site. Write down all your queries and explain the rights you have to protect your content in your email comprehensively. You can ask them to remove the content immediately or even to pay you for your hard work. Getting backlinks to your site is also a useful approach that can be utilized in this scenario.

Take Legal Action

The copyright act allows you to take legal action against any such person or platform that is using your work without your consent. However, this approach is a bit costly, but if you believe that your content is worthy and you can afford the expenses of all the legal procedures, then you must take legal action if the site is not removing your content even after getting a warning from you.

Final Words

Plagiarism is a serious crime that is committed on a large scale these days. The copyright act enables a writer to take legal action against all copycats and sites using his/her content without having permission. The information discussed in this blog will help you get familiar with the simple ways of catching these copycats and the options you have to take action against them