In simple terms, content theft refers to the stealing or unauthorized usage of web content (both graphics and text) by another website. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? Certainly not in the case of content theft. Most content thieves steal content simply to fill space on their websites and attract traffic (think Google AdSense).

Content theft also damages your standings in search engines. Search engine consider duplicate content on multiple web sites spamming, which can result in a drop in placement on search listings or elimination from the search engine altogether.

To catch the thief

There are many tools available on the Internet that you can use to catch a content thief:

1. Google Alerts – Google Alerts are email reports of the latest relevant Google search results (including news, web, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. You can setup an alert for your blog name or a unique phrase from your website.

2. Copyscape – Copyscape is a search engine to locate duplicated materials on the Internet. All you need to do is provide your URL and Copyscape will check whether text content found on the provided URL appears anywhere else on the Internet.

3. Technorati Watchlist – The Technorati Watchlist is similar to Google Alerts. Simply provide Technorati a website URLs or keywords you are interested in and Technorati will notify you whenever they are mentioned on another blog.

4. Digital Fingerprint Plugin (for Wordpress users) – The plugin places a digital fingerprint, which is customizable, into your blog posts. This allows you to easily search the blogosphere for your digital fingerprint using Google Blogsearch, BlogPulse and Sphere, as well as Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engines.

Another thing you can try is to place a transparent image as a spacer between words. While you don’t need a search engine for this method, you will need to have access to your website log files (Doteasy Ultra Hosting and Unlimited Hosting plans). Many content thieves are lazy – they simply copy and paste your source code on to their page. By placing a transparent image in the middle of your content, you are encouraging the content thief to copy the image to their website as well. Make sure you use the full URL to the image so that the thief is calling the image from your server each time their website is viewed. You can then easily check your website log file to see where the transparent image is being used.

If you find a thief:

Once you have found a content thief, your next step is to preserve the evidence you have found. Often infringing sites are either altered or taken down once you attempt to contact the site owner, host or search engines, having a copy of the site for your records and to verify the infringing content will come in handy in case a dispute arises later.

As there are tools to help you catch the thief, there are tools to help you preserve evidence:

1. WebCite – WebCite is a service that archives web pages on demand and stores them in simple URL that you can easily access later without worrying whether the original web page is revised or removed.

2. Furl – Furl is a free social bookmarking website that allows members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others.

3. The Internet Archive – The Internet Archive preserve websites by taking regular “snapshots”.

Cease and Desist Letter:

Once you have caught the thief and preserved the evidence, your next step is to try and resolve the situation – contact the thief with a Cease and Desist Order.

A Cease and Desist Order is simply a “stop, or else face legal action” order. While a cease and desist letter can be sent by anyone, they are best written by lawyers.

Resources:

• Sample Cease and Desist Letter
• Copyright Infringement and Cease and Desist letter Examples
• How to Write a Cease and Desist Letter

You can use Whois to find the site owner contact information.

Contact Host, Advertisers and Search Engine

A domain’s Whois data will also include the website’s nameserver, which you can use to look up the site’s web host.

You can send a copy of the Cease and Desist Letter to the site’s web host and advertisers. But to make a stronger case, you may also want to advise them of your attempts to resolve the situation with the site owner, including copies of the ignored Cease and Desist Letter. You may also wish to send a formal DMCA letter. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires hosts to remove infringing content once they have been properly notified.

DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement – Sample Template

Contacting search engines:

• Google’s DMCA Statement and Policy
• Yahoo’s Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy
• MSN’s Guidelines for Making Claims
• AOL’s online Copyright Infringement Notification form

Before you contact Google to report the infringing website, you have to make sure that it is indexed by Google. You can use Google Site Status tool to see if the site is already indexed.

Additional guidelines from Google:

• My content, your content, other people’s content
• How do I report a copyright infringement by an AdSense publisher?

author: Kathy

What would you do if you received the following email?

Dear user,
We received a third party complaint of invalid domain contact information in the Whois database for this domain…We sent a notice to you at the admin/tech contact email address and the account email address informing you of invalid data in breach of the domain registration agreement and advising you to update the information or risk cancellation of the domain. The contact information was not updated within the specified period of time and we canceled the domain. The domain has subsequently been purchased by another party. You will need to contact them for any further inquiries regarding the domain. PLEASE VERIFY YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION - http://www.enom.com.com92.biz

Recently, domain owners who have registered their domain names through Enom and Network Solutions were targeted in a phishing scam. Emails were sent to domain owners, asking them to login to renew or update their domain registration. The emails contain a link to a login page that is designed to look like that of Enom.com and NetworkSolutions.com. Unaware of the ill-intentions o the fraudster, many customers have fallen for the scam.

By the way, the above message is one of the phishing emails sent. You can read more about these phishing emails here:

• Enom Phishing Scam
• Network Solutions Phishing Scam

So, what can you do to protect yourself from these phishing scams?

1. Keep Information to Yourself

Fraudsters often mine the domain registry WHOIS database for your domain registration information, including your domain expiry date and contact information. This is how they know when to send you fraudulent domain renewal “reminders”. While you cannot hide your domain expiry date on your Whois records, you do have the option to hide you contact information – Private Domain Registration.

With Doteasy Private Domain Registration service, your contact information will be masked with our information. Doteasy Private Domain Registration is currently offered as a bundled package with the Domain Locking service (a invaluable services that protects your domain from unauthorized transfers or thefts). You can order this Domain Protection Package in your Member Zone.

2. Know Your Registrar

We have already received several inquiries from Doteasy domain owners. It appears that the fraudsters are not just targeting Enom or Network Solutions customers. If your domain is registered with Doteasy and you have received a Enom-titled warning email, that should set off alarm bells.

You can easily find out who your domain registrar is by using the Whois tool in your Member Zone.

3. Start Typing

The scam emails contain a link to a login page that is designed to look like that of another legitimate company (ie. Enom.com and NetworkSolutions.com). The safest way to login to your domain account to renew or edit your registration is by typing in the address directly in your web browser.

4. Notify Us

If you believe you have been a target or a victim of a phishing scam, contact us immediately so that we can further assist you.

Author: Kathy

Back in September we wrote an article on how to get your site listed on the search engines, and we advised that you submit your website URL to the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Live Search. So now that's done, you might be wonder what else can you do to make sure your website URL rank well, ie. make it more 'searchable'.

It is only logical to assume that to be 'searchable', you need:

• people searching for it
• a website that matches the search inquiries

Well, since we can't control what people search for, that means the only thing that's left to do is make sure your site matches as best as possible to potential search inquiries:

1. What is your website about? What is the purpose of your website?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. If people are to search for your website, what search words would they most likely use?
4. Is your website content relevent to the purpose, target audience and keywords you've identified?

And who determines the relevancy of website content? Well, the search engines - Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Live Search, etc. After all, their goal should be to keep their users happy by giving them the information they are looking for.

You've probably heard of the term SEO, Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of improving traffic to a website from search engines via search results. Search engines uses complex algorithms to determine what information is fed to the search user and in what order. So, it's safe to say that as long as you satisfy these complex algorithms, your website URL will appear higher on that search result list. Unfortunately, Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft's Live Search do not disclose the algorithms they use.

But they do offer tips, hints, suggestions and guidelines that you can follow.

From Google Webmaster Help Center:

• Webmaster Guidelines
• Creating a Google-Friendly Site?

From Yahoo! Search:

• Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
• Improve Ranking
• Indexing

Author: Jonathan

What should you do if someone is using your trademark in a domain name?

Domain name owners should know their rights under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Under the UDRP, a trademark owner can initiate a dispute to challenge the registration of an existing domain name. This is exactly what we did when we found out about doteasyserver.com.

Our administrators were doing their routine industry updates when we stumbled upon a familiar, yet unknown domain name - doteasyserver.com. Curious, we began our investigation. And as we expected, someone had registered that domain name without our authorization.

So, we filed a dispute for that domain name through one of the ICANN-approved dispute resolution service providers, the World Intellectual Property Organization. After the administrative proceedings, it was decided that the doteasyserver.com domain name was to be transferred to us.

How do I file a dispute?

First of all, you will need to familiarize yourself with the UDRP. This is so that you know what you need to prove in order to claim rights to the domain name you are challenging.

Second, you will need to choose a dispute resolution service provider and familiarize yourself with their procedures and supplemental rules. Each provider will have slight differences in their supplemental rules, and the fees that each one charges are also different.

A list of the ICANN-approved dispute resolution service providers is listed on ICANN's web site.

What can be done?

We wanted to share this story because we do not wish to see any of our members go through the same process. It is both cost and time consuming. Regardless of the outcome, the damage has already been done and our “Doteasy” mark has been used in bad faith.

There is really no absolute way to prevent someone from registering a domain name that infringes the trademark of a third party. Although the UDRP does specify that any domain registration should not infringe on the trademark rights of a third party, people ignore that and register for the infringing domain names anyway.

The only real preventative measure is to register for those domain names first before anyone else does. By registering for variants of your company or trademarked name, you give less opportunity for other people to take those domain names. This is definitely more time and cost efficient than going through a domain dispute with the UDRP.

Author: Jonathan

Want to earn some easy money? Sure you do! Who doesn't, right?

So, have you heard about the Doteasy Affiliate Program?

The Doteasy Affiliate Program is probably one of the easiest, high payout referral programs that are on the internet nowadays.

How does it work?

Each Affiliate Member is given an URL marked with their Affiliate ID. Whenever a visitor signs up for a hosting account with Doteasy by going through your Affiliate URL, your Affiliate Account will be credited with the referral. It's just that simple.

You can place your Affiliate URL on your website as a link, or a banner. This is one of the most common ways to give your Affiliate URL exposure to the public.

If you don't have a website, you can email your Affiliate URL to your friends and spread the word that way.

How do I get paid?

The Affiliate Program has an easy to understand payment scheme. The payout amounts are as follows.

$0 hosting - $5.00
Ultra Hosting - $50.00
Unlimited Hosting - $70.00

So, if you make 3 successful referrals for Unlimited Hosting, you will get $210.00!

Affiliate Members are paid once they have at least 3 referrals that are pending payout. To ensure that we get your commission out to you as soon as possible, the referrals are tallied and the cheques for the payouts are mailed out at the beginning of every month to minimize the waiting time.

You can sign up for the Affiliate Program for free and is open to everyone, regardless if you have a website hosted at Doteasy!

So, be sure to check out this awesome way to make money by visiting our website.

https://www.doteasy.com/Services/Affiliate