A useful and well-written article takes some time to finish. The time and effort spent will be all worth it especially if your blog contents are unique. The more unique your blog content is, the higher is your chance to get more organic Google rank. But not every blogger is like you. Some bloggers hate to spend time writing unique articles so they end up stealing articles. Many serious bloggers have been victims of these lazy people. Don’t wait to be a victim (or a victim again) before you make your move. Copyright your blog now.
Copyrighting a blog will not really stop people from stealing your content. But at least, doing so will give a proof that this content belongs to you. You’ll never know when you’ll have to make legal actions against a content stealer. It’s better that you are prepared now or regret later.
Here are some ways to copyright your blog:
* Do not copyright the blog content. Every content is already copyrighted the day and time you posted it. Therefore, there is no need to copyright it anymore. For better protection, you can add a note at the bottom of each article, RSS feeds, or your About Me page that every content in your blogsite is yours.
* Do it with the Creative Commons. This is a free service that lets online users copyright their works online. You’ll have to link the page of your blog for copyrighting and that will be used for any legal proceedings. However, take note that the Creative Commons can only license your blog and will not be capable of registering it. A registered blog content has more protection than the licensed one. At least, you can get a license badge for your content, which can be displayed at the site’s sidebar.
* File a copyright for your blog content. This can be a real hassle and will cost some money, too. Most bloggers do this only if they are planning to get a movie of book deal based on their blogs. For most states, blog contents are considered as literary texts. If you are regularly adding new content to your blog site, then you should register them every quarter.
Copyrighting your blog content is just the first step for protecting your works. You should be vigilant and find stolen contents by doing the following:
* Use Google Alerts. Copy a phrase from your blog article and Google will regularly look for websites that are using the same phrase. In case Google found the phrase, you will be notified through email.
* Search in Google. This is a manual way of searching for similar content as your blog article. To do this, copy a phrase, preferably at least two succeeding sentences, from your blog article. Enclose the phrase in double quotation marks when searching in Google. Hit the “Search” button and websites with contents having the enclosed phrase will be shown, including your own blog content.
* Use Copyscape. You simply have to enter your blog URL and Copyscape will look for articles similar to the sentences you used. ArticleChecker can also check your article for duplicate contents but instead of entering the URL, you have to copy the entire article.
What if you found another blogger using your content? You can send him a message reminding him that the content is yours and that it is copyrighted. Express your willingness to file legal actions. Usually, blog content stealers just remove the content. If not, you can report the content to Google. It will check your complaint and might ban the website or the owner from using Google Adsense.
No comments:
Post a Comment