Preface:

Surely, you don't need me to tell you that we live in a time when any Joe Schmoe (sorry Joe) can copy you hard work with just a few, simple keystrokes...

And as anyone can imagine, when you work many laborious hours developing your website's content, it is very upsetting when someone decides to plagiarize your hard work.

This is doubly important if you consider that Google and other search engines could potentially penalize your site for duplicate content.

Recently, we have been ramping up our efforts to develop a new, very detailed business model and corresponding business plan for our company, AB Web Design, LLC.

Of course, a rather large, and very important step in business plan development is taking a look at your competition and asking the following question: What does my company offer that is better than my competition? In other words, what is my competitive edge/advantage?

Conversely, it is also important to ask the question: What does my competition do better than me?

Any worthwhile business plan will need approach both aspects pragmatically, and answer the questions objectively.

The "Meat" of the Matter:

Anyway, while doing competitor research, so that we could objectively answer these essential questions, I found that one of our competitors had decided to blatantly copy-and-paste some of our website content -- with two minor changes; switching out AB Web Design, LLC for their company's name.

Can you imagine my unbelievable and despicable disdain? I nearly lost my mind for about 5 minutes.

After calming down, I called our attorney and asked him how to best approach the situation.

Below, you will find that I have posted an exact copy of the email we sent, minus names and other information that might lead to identifying the violating company.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not an official template by any means, but should you find yourself in a similar predicament, feel free to use it if you'd like.

ALSO NOTE: If you do not currently have any legal pages on your site, e.g. Terms or Conditions of Use/Service, or Privacy Policy, you really need to consider adding them. It is for this very situation that they are essential.

For more info on legal pages, see Legal Pages for Websites (About.com).

Dear FIRST/LAST NAME of COMPANY NAME,

EXAMPLE-DOMAIN.COM is in direct violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as well as AB Web Design, LLC's Terms and Conditions of Use, section 2, articles a and b.

This infringement has been documented, and checked against internet archives.

We are requesting that the plagiarized content, located at "EXAMPLE-DOMAIN.COM/PLAGIARIZED-CONTENT", be removed within the next 48 hours.

Failure to comply within the allotted time frame will result in any or all of the following actions:

1. Provide details of this infringement on our company website and/or blog.
2. Contact website hosting provider (e.g., GoDaddy) in order to shut down portions of the site which are in violation.
3. Report DMCA violations to Google, Bing, and Yahoo in order remove and/or ban said website from the indexes.
4. If required, legal action will be pursued.

Thank you for your compliance in this matter,

AB Web Design, LLC
abwebsitedesign.com

Eureka! A Happy Ending.

Conveniently, as I was typing up this post, I received a response to the email; included was an apology and a promise to remove the content ASAP.

Just checked: It was removed -- *Mission accomplished*

Thankfully, they were fully compliant with no more than an email. Thank you for being a good sport!

Are you facing a similar problem?

READER RESPONSE: Have you had a similar experience? Please leave a comment with your story. What happened, and how did you resolve the issue? If you didn't resolve it, what was the outcome? Was it quick and easy, or did they give you a hard time? We want to hear about it.


Some tools that could help you along the way

• Copyscape - a free plagiarism checker. The software lets you detect duplicate content and check if your articles are original.
• Internet Archive: Wayback Machine - makes an archive of almost every domain, as it existed, at certain intervals of time. Very useful if you need to prove that your site had the content first (eg. www.ab-wd.com archived data).

Other related resources you may find helpful:

• How to Fight Copyright Violations (About.com: Web Design/HTML)
• Copyright on the Web (About.com: Web Design/HTML)
  
• What to do when someone copies your website’s content (startups.com)
• This Web Business (A List Apart Business Articles)

DISCLAIMER: AB Web Design, LLC is not responsible for any actions or repercussions, by any party, due to use of the freely-supplied, example DMCA violation email template.

Copying Photo by Alexander Kalina
Sausage Photo by Piku

It has been a long-overdue update, but the debut of DMOZ (ODP) 2.0 is nearing. For those that have been so discouraged by DMOZ; let the hate go. Stay tuned for more info.

All updates will be posted below.

UPDATE: 2/9/2010 - DMOZ 2.0 public release slated for April 2010. (PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL DATE) :P

UPDATE: 8/19/2009 - DMOZ 2.0 is on schedule and the majority of bug-fixes have been addressed. Things are looking good! (Also, current DMOZ search database updated Aug, 18th 2009)

UPDATE: 8/6/2009 - It's still early yet, but it looks like DMOZ 2.0 may be launching in the early part of 2010.

UPDATE: 7/27/2009 - The reason it has taken so long for DMOZ 2.0 to launch is because the original team hired to work on the update was replaced mid-project. A minor setback, but now it's full steam ahead. :P

I have been informed from a very reliable source that DMOZ 2.0 (Open Directory Project: Part Deux) will be launching VERY soon. In fact, there are preparations being put in place at this very moment in order to facilitate the rollover from the antiquated directory to the shiny new one, which will be unveild to the world in the not-so-distant future.