How to Take Down Your Stolen Article From the Internet

What to do when someone steals your work

My first recommendation is that you don’t only read this article, but save it in your reading list, you don’t know when it might come in handy. I’m not wishing you to suffer what I did. But think it is more like an insurance policy you hope you’ll never need.

Last month, I found my work posted on a pirate site. After screaming at the computer screen and swearing in English, Spanish, Italian, and even some bad words in German (which sounds a bit angrier), I started the painful road to resolve the problem.

As I explained in, Someone Stole My Article, And It Went Viral. It Might Be Happening to You Too, I found out by accident.

But I’ve come across several sites that help you address the issue during that time. Some are easy, others a little more complex, but they are all worth trying, and if you think who cares, the damage is already done, and I won’t spend another moment chasing those thieves, think again because they are hurting you more than you realize.

Here is the reason you should do something about it, and five sites to help you denounce the plagiarized work, protect your future articles, and assure you are not plagiarizing someone else’s writing.

Plagiarism hurts you more than you think

Oh well, the truth hurts, doesn’t it? — Robin Roberts

If you think, what’s the big deal? If it’s posted online, then everyone can use it. Isn’t it fair game, anyway? After all, you want to share your work with the world. You are thinking the way thieves want you to.

Maybe you assume this is wrong because you wouldn’t do it, but the truth is that you, me, and everyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, or any other social network probably have shared a meme with your friends.

If you wonder, why is this relevant? Well, since, in most cases, a meme contains an image or a text, this adaptation could constitute a copyright infringement. But since the author won’t file a complaint, you’ll share it more than once.

Stolen content hurts you more than you think since the plagiarized work punishes your SEO. If the pirate site ranks higher than yours, they steal web traffic from you, converting your work into clicks and money into their webpage.

If your neighbor steals your stuff to have a garage sale, wouldn’t you tell him to give your things back, file a report to the police, or ask him for retribution? Then why should you treat plagiarism differently?

How and why you should find your plagiarized work

The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance. — Herodotus

We are the custodians of our work, and we must make sure our followers have the cleanest and most satisfying experience when they read us. That is why before posting an article, we spend time searching for the perfect publication where it might lie.

We must ensure that our readers spend their valuable time reading our work without distraction, a pop-up window with an advertisement, a link for gambling, or a porn site. Therefore, every writer is responsible for checking if their work hasn’t been plagiarized and posted on a fraudulent site.

You wouldn’t like someone to stop reading you because insurance ads pop in the middle and the page freezes while loading a video when they try to read your work.

How to check manually

If they re-type it or paste and copy it, you can search for your stolen work. Select a significant paragraph, put quotation marks, and Google it. This process can take you some time, but if you find it is on a site you didn’t approve, then someone plagiarized your work.

Using Google Alerts

Another way to check automatically is to set Google alarms, and don’t worry if you don’t know how to do it; most people never use it. The process is simple; you open Google Alerts, choose the text you want the program to check and set the alarm. Later, Google will email you if your text appears somewhere else if someone steals your work. The only downside is that you have to put the text in quotes, and you need a Google account, but the service is free.

With Plagiarism checker

Your next option is plagiarism checker, a program that scans your text through the web. Instead of looking for a single paragraph, you can search for a complete document. You add your content to the site, and after a couple of moments, the program returns the results for each section, either marking it as “Unique” or “Plagiarized” with a button in the shape of an arrow to open a Google-search page listing the sites containing your work. They limit the free version to 1,000 words that would work for your Short Stories or the new Short format.

Ok, someone stole your work. Now, what to do?

“As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed”. — Vincent Van Gogh

Grab your hiking gear, and let’s get started on an intricate journey.

Remember your neighbor’s garage sale? What do you plan to do? Let him get away or file a police report? The same logic applies here, but instead of your flat-screen TV, it is something way more valuable; your work.

Assuming you’ve already tried to contact the website’s owner and got no answer, then it’s time for another approach. The first thing you do is gather all the information you found in your plagiarized article, such as the name, URL, contact, etc., together with your data (name, email, phone number, your original article’s URL), and file a report.

These are some sites where you can do it:

The first place you have to go is to our home publication’s help center to file the report.

If the bogus site is registered and administered in the United States, they will help you take your article down. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my case, so they informed me:

Hi Jlontanon,

Sorry you are experiencing that.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything Medium can do to prevent people from copy and pasting, and in essence, “stealing”, the text from the Medium post page. We are actively working to identify and stop these sites right now.

As good citizens of the internet, Medium completely honors the DMCA and all takedowns we receive. So when we are alerted to copyright infringement that occurs on Medium, we remove it until the matter can be resolved legally. We offer a public form to initiate this process.

This site that has taken your work does not appear to have that in place, nor any contact information even, and embrace anonymity above all else. That’s troubling.

So what can you do?

As the copyright owner, you need to make a claim against them for copying your work. As there is no contact information on the site, you can do a Whois lookup to find any other information on the site: https://www.whois.com

You may need to start higher up the food chain, possibly by contacting their DNS registrar, as copyright violation should be against their terms. — Arthur Trust & Safety at Medium.com

So, I took their advice and followed the road to take my article down

Using WHOIS

You can find the person or company who owns the domain name and ask them to remove your content on this page. Unfortunately, sometimes you won’t find the information because they paid WHOIS to make it private, or if they registered it somewhere else like Russia.

Even if the information appears redacted, you can still find where they registered the site. Go to that site and Submit an Abuse Report (in this case, to Cloudflare.com)

If the infringing site is in Russia, then WHOIS might not find it:

In that case, you can use the Russian version nic.ru and look for the admin-contact to file your Abuse Report.

Nic.ru, WHOIS Russian version

Later file an Abuse report.

I know it sounds complicated, but remember you are fighting for your rights and to recover your stolen property.

You are not the first one, and sadly, you won’t be the last one either

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk

Protect your work against plagiarism by adding some copyright message in all your work, as I explain in my Someone Stole My Article, And It Went Viral. It Might Be Happening to You Too article.

According to the Office of the General Counsel at Harvard University, since 1989, copyright law protects your work, and no one can copy or reproduce it without your permission. Hence, you are not required to display the copyright symbol or register your copyright. Nevertheless, it provides extra benefits, as acting as a deterrent to copyright infringement, makes it easier for the author to profit from his work, and helps you in court in case of a lawsuit.

Doing so will protect your work for the rest of your life plus 70 years, and if you do it anonymously, under a pseudonym, or for hire, then for 95 years after it is published or 125 years from its creation, whichever comes first

Also, consider doing this:

• Prepare a template you can use to address copyright violations and learn about copyright law
• Schedule time each month to run plagiarism searches or use Google alert
• Credit your work by including a copyright notice at the end of every article. You can get the “© symbol” by keying [Alt+0169]
• Someone recommends creating a WordPress site and using plugins that would prevent copy and pasting content from posts
• Also, if you use your images, add your name and your site in a 10% transparency over the photo somewhere. Remember, the great artists used to sign their work even before they were famous.

Take away

Don’t give up. Remember, you are fighting to get your work back. Think what you would do if someone tried to take your stuff, your pet, or your child. What would you do to stop this from happening?

Don’t settle thinking about what’s the use. You worked long hours researching, writing, editing, and publishing your article, for someone else to take the credit, the clicks, or the money from your pocket.

Instead, fight for your rights, protect yourself against plagiarism, and don’t plagiarize other writers. Wilson Mizner, the American playwright, once said, “If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.” This is true, but only if you credit the author. Otherwise, it is like stealing someone else’s stuff.

We are a writer’s community, and we owe all of us and our readers to stand against plagiarism. The more of us who file complaints and force infringing sites to download our unauthorized work, the stronger our community becomes. After all, wasn’t this how the “BLM,” “Human rights,” “Me too,” and PETA movements started?

If you ask me if all this work is worth it? You bet it is, and here is the proof:

Thanks to Yael Wolfe, Burk, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, dick, Antonio Westley, Heather S. Wargo, Trevin Shirey, Neil Patel, and the rest of the readers who commented on my previous article.

© Copyright Jose Luis Ontanon, 2022