Somebody ripped off my content!

[mpw45233]

Ok, somebody stole a 1200 word article from my homepage, and used it for their homepage.

I'm very P.O.'d about this. They posted it a couple days ago. All they did was copy and paste, and then added a few words here and there. Even the subtitles are the same with a couple words added, my personal insights are also included.

This happened with one of my sites that I was having duplicate content issues with. One odd thing is that it didn't show up in a copyscape search. I only found it while searching through my competitors pages.

Probably about the same time she was stealing my content, I did spin my content somewhat, just so Google would take a new look at it.

From the way it looks, I believe this was done manually, as opposed to scraper software.

I found her email info through a who is search. But I don't have any real recourse (I don't think) because I didn't copyright the material.

Anyone else had this happen?

Apart from the fact that she is gaining rankings from my material, will this stunt hurt my rankings, or even hers?

Why didn't this show up in copyscape? Both sites are indexed, and it's obviosly copied, I didn't spin my material that well, or did I? She could at least have spun it herself a little bit!!!!

I'm not e mailing her till I calm down a bit...

So am I being naive to think that my quality, well researched material will stay mine?

Sorry about the rant.

[Infinity]

Anything that you post, which you created online, is automatically copyrighted to you. Meaning that you have every right to tell her to remove it.

And it belongs to you entirely.

And if she doesn't you may contact her host...

[mpw45233]

Thanks for the advice Infinity, she blamed it on her article writer and then took it down.

[CotySchwabe]

It definitely happens, don't be surprised. It's happened to me, and just because it passes CopyScape doesn't make it legit.