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DMCA Takedown
Thought I would write this up to help those people whose website is being cloned. This information will not teach you how to stop someone cloning your website. Maybe not stop them but it will teach you how to take them down.
I know from my own experiences what it is like. Unfortunately, there are people out there that do not like creating their own content. Why would they when they can just copy yours. Luckily for people like you and me there is such thing as the digital millennium copyright act. For short we call it DMCA.
DMCA TAKEDOWN
A while back someone cloned about 20 pages of this website you are reading. Im sure you can imagine my anger, I have spent years building this site up so having someone clone it is unacceptable. I had no idea what to do or what steps I can take to have this content removed. Well now I do and I will help you with your DMCA take-down.
First Things First
Your frame of mind is important, just think of all this as a small challenge. Just another learning curve, don’t go emailing the offender calling them every name under the sun. There is no point if they have the nerve to clone your site a few names won’t hurt. Satisfaction will come to you eventually, you will have the last laugh.
DMCA PAYBACK
First, I want you to open something like MS word or notepad. The main thing is you open something that you can use to copy web links.
OKAY now we will make two lists the first list will be a list of the genuine work (your work) simply create a list with all the genuine weblinks you created. Then make a list of all the cloned links, the offenders links. Now save your list and put it somewhere safe i.e. your documents folder.
Now click on this link and you will see what an official DMCA LETTER looks like I want you to simply copy and paste everything so you have a copy of an official DMCA letter.
Once you have copied and pasted everything in the link I want you to go back to the document you saved earlier with the official and cloned weblinks. Now replace the weblinks in the DMCA letter with the ones you created. You will? also need to change the name in the DMCA letter to your name.
You have now got an official DMCA letter you can send to any web hosting company. Why do you need an official letter the answer is simple If you see that someone is cloning your content and send a simple message to a web hosting company saying please sir that man is copying my website. They will simply ignore you.
So you have your DMCA letter but where do you send it
Now that you have your letter you need to find out which web hosting company is hosting your content. That’s quite straight forward. We just need to do a quick search so click on this link Click Me and you will see where to type in the address of the website hosting your content. simply type the address in and click search. Once the search has finished you will see the name of the hosting company which is hosting your content.
Now we are getting somewhere, we have a DMCA letter and we know who is hosting our content. You need to do a search on the website company that is hosting your content. You’re going to do this so you can get an email address for them.
Once you have got there email address you can simply email them the DMCA letter you created. Most providers or at least good ones will respond within 72 hours. If for any reason you are struggling to get an email address then use there contact information on their company website. All hosting providers have contact information, how else would someone contact them.
You can perform a ‘whois’ search to try and get extra information on the person cloning or copying your website. Sometimes doing a ‘whois’ search will give us information like someone’s name, home address, email address and lots of information.
On the other hand, it's possible the person that is breaking your copyright has paid for his personal details to be made private. Now that’s what I call cheeky, how do we get information on someone who has paid to make his details private. Well this is what's so good about DMCA it's there to protect honest decent people.
(Remember just because we take them down from one server dont mean they wont put it up on another. To win you need dedication, you need to be hard faced and stick with it)
File a claim with Domains By Proxy It's free :)
So, file a claim with Domains by Proxy.
Why?
Who are they?
Well I don’t want to really get in to this to much as it starts to go off the beacon track as to what im trying to teach you. But briefly there are lots of people who do not want their private information made public knowledge. There is nothing wrong with that it is perfectly legit. But on the other hand, you get people who abuse this service as well. And don’t you know it or you would not be reading this article. Click this link it will open a new window you need to click on "File a Claim"
Now remember we are only filing a claim with Domains by Proxy because we want the personal information of the person that is infringing our copyright. Domains by Proxy will have you fill out a form asking you about the copyright that is being broken. Make sure you are precise, the information you give them must be exact. They will then perform their own investigation. If they decide you are right they will supply you with the private information of the person breaking your copyright. Thats right you will have his name, email, and phone number. (We will come back to this later)
File a claim with Google and Bing
You should file a claim with both search engines because you don’t want these links ranking higher than yours.
So, let's file a complaint with Bing letting them know we have a problem with someone breaking our copyright. Click on this link When Bing webpage opens look for the part that looks like this then click on the link which says, "this online form" Now just follow the instructions. (You will need a Microsoft account to file the claim)
Now you need to file a claim with Google (You will need a google account so create one if you have not. Then click on this link
Now follow their online instructions. It took about 4-5 days for both Bing and Google to get back in touch with me when I filed a complaint. So be patient they get thousands of these requests.
One thing to bear in mind is that some website hosts are also slow and ignorant. It is possible that when the person breaking your copyright gets the DMCA notice. They will simply move the content on to another hosting providers server. You need to be strong and go through the whole process of contacting that web hosting provider again. I know it's a pain but you need to persist and be as dedicated as what they are in hosting illegal content. I found one hosting provider called OVH to be very difficult in that they appeared to ignore my DMCA request.
So, I had to persist with them I emailed them every day I contacted them through as many different departments as I could. I complained in email spoke to their online rep. The point I am making is you need to be the biggest pain in the neck you can. Make them listen, make them act. Waste as much of there time as possible, make them listen.
Does the site that is cloning your website or breaking your copyright in another way have ads on the site. If the answer is yes click on them and complain to the people who own the ads. ie are the ads Google ads, Bing ads once again complain to the people who put the ads there.
By the time you have taken all these steps write an email in a very professional way. Make it stern and make it clear you will follow this person to the ends of the earth. There will be no escape if you get this person’s email and name research it tries and find out if they have social accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc, etc make it clear you will hound them. I found out that the person using my content was saying he had done work for this company and that company. Make a list of all theses company's and when you email him later make it clear you will get in touch with everyone so they know what kind of person he or she is.
The idea of being the biggest pain in the neck you can is so that they think it's not worth it. I was given the persons phone number that cloned mine. Send them a text so they know you have their phone number. They sure won’t want text messages off you every day. Write them a letter to their home address just so they know you have their home address. I personally made it clear it one email that I have all their information. I made it clear if they remove my content I would not contact them again. That threat was enough to stop them,
One last thing after you have won your battle you can setup something called a Google alert click this link to keep an eye on what’s happening with the domain.
Remember what I said earlier
Remember just because we take them down from one server dont mean they wont put it up on another. To win you need dedication, you need to be hard faced and stick with it. Whats your is yours if it takes you time to take it down it takes them time to put it up. Lets stand together and STOP these idle low life for stealing our content.
If this article has helped you please give my maths software a shout at http://mathswhizz.org