How To File Copyright Complaint?

How To File Copyright Complaint?

Imagine a scenario that you have done all the research and hard work to collect data, filtering it and drafting it in an effective manner. You published it online as a research article to help others. After a few days, you find the same article on any other site without any credit passed to you. The frustration and anger are normal as you see someone stolen your work. But what next? Neah, no need to curse him and no need to feel lost. There is a legislation which allows you to file the complaint against a scrapper (who copied your content).

How to get Copyright on your content?
You might be wondering you can't claim copyright because you didn't applly for copyright or you didn't pay any fees to get copyright. You even don't have any legal document which may prove that it is your content. (By content we mean any kind of content including text, video, image, etc.) Even if you don't have any exclusive evidence of ownership of the content, you can still claim the copyright on it. According to the legislation, whatever content you compose on your own is by default copyrighted by you. To get a copyright on a word, you have to get trademark on it by legal procedure, but for simple text, image, video kind of content you get the copyright on its own.

What can you do after finding your content on other's website /blog?
Below are the steps which you may follow to get your content removed/replaced from the other websites. I know you must be in a mood of wrestling, but in professional world it is better to keep calm.

• Drop a polite email to the owner of the website regarding the issue and ask him to get the content down. Give some time to him, if possible.
• If the website owner responds abruptly or doesn't reply at all then I suggest to keep calm and send a reminder with certain time period to act upon the issue.
• If he still not in mood of reply (people do this) then this is the time to take some strict action.

What to do if a webmaster doesn't remove the copied content?
You can take the following actions:

• Complaint in search engines regarding the issue.
• Use who.is and find details of his web hosting company and email regarding the issue to web hosting company.

How to file the copyright complaint in search engines?

• To file a copyright complaint in Bing,
  Follow the URL https://www.microsoft.com/info/FormForSearch.aspx & fill up the form with required details.
• To file a copyright complaint in Google,
  Follow the URL https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?product=blogger&rd=2, follow the steps and file a complaint.
• If you want to file a complaint in Google regarding a webpage plagiarism (I have to do frequently :P )
  Then directly goes to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?hl=en&pid=0 and give the required information.

Sometimes it takes time when you fill up the complain in Google. So be patience and don't refresh page repeatedly. It is better to contact website owner first because he can take quick action as search engines & web host take sometime to verify the complaint and then taking the action. It is also good to be good instead of being evil with evil by getting someone's site out of search engines and/or web.

Ash Vyas is working as an internet Marketing manager handling digital marketing activities like SEO, SMO, Content Marketing etc.
Likes : Blogging, net surfing, networking, travelling, photography
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Posted in: copyright complaint filing step,fight with scrappers,steps to complaint plagiarism in Google