Competitor Stealing Your Website Content

So I was wondering, what would you do if your competitor starts stealing all of your blog posts and content?

Would you report them to google?

Would you threaten them with a lawsuit?

This isn't happening to me, but I was wondering what I would do if it ever does happen to me.

 

Reporting them to Google probably wouldn't achieve much. Better off contacting their host I would think. As long as your site is the established one, they won't be able to rank with your content anyway, but a DMCA letter to their host would probably get them slapped pretty quickly.

 

First off, you have to OWN the content. If you are just licensing it, then it is not your copyright to enforce. Secondly, you would have to DMCA them first. Then if they refuse, you would take it to the next level.

 

I would first contact the site owner requesting them to take down the content if i had rights to it (if it was my work), if that is not enough to make them take it down i would contact DMCA, then the web host and take it from there to a higher level if required.

 

Don't threaten them with a lawsuit. Just write their url and publish on your blog. Tell you visitor that here is big list of stealer

 

I have experience this before.
What i do is email the blog owner about this issue.
If they did not take action.then i will email their hosting company to take down their site.

 

Awesome replies! Now I know - if they persist then I email their host. Thanks for answering my question!

 

Upon reading the response here, what is DMCA stands for?

 

yeah what exactly does DMCA stand for?

 

Google is your friend.... use it once and awhile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

 

If competitor is stealing your content then Google prefer you only because Google alogs consider the owner of the content who is old one ! If i used your content from today but you are with your content 5 days back then Google consider you the true owner of the content and me as a duplicate. But still you dont want that someone do not crawl data then you have to change your design html , class names, change the scheme of your web site design. So that crawlers cannot crawl your website data !
For further explanation please ask !
Regards

 

What to do if someone steals not only content, but also your layout? I have faced such situation with one site hosted on Russian free hosting ucoz, but couldn't force them to change their layout and hoster won't even react to my emails. So what would you do in my place?

 

I have working experience as a web developer in Microsoft technologies, In my career I have never found a solution that someone could not steal your layout ! Because it only required to press CTRL + U to see your html code.
Ya but obviously there is one solution which is Custom web designing, You actually have the copy rights for your web design and no one can follow your design! No doubt it costs more but gives you a @copy right

Regards

 

I would tell them that i noticed there stealing my content and that they better stop and remove the content or else i will report them to google.

 

I would agree with JamesParker100 entirely. Your best bet was to create a custom design to avoid such headaches in the future.

 

I combat thieves by creating my written content so that it would be a royal pain in the ass for them to use. How? I write it so that it is very specific to my site, and if a thief were to take it, it would basically be promoting my site.

 

I will contact them first, and if they don't take action, i will CALL their hosting, or ISP

 

Most hosts will only accept a DMCA Take-down notice via email or registered mail. If you were to call their ISP, they would simple tell you to email the Abuse Department.

 

I agree, send a DMCA take down notice to the web site, and if it doesn't work then to the web host.

 

I would directly threaten them with a law suit or ask them politely to remove their content and then send a notice after that. If you sent Google an email that they have copied your webpage, they can't do much other than just take down their site from being displayed on Google Search Pages. But even then its hard for them to determine who was in the wrong and who was in the right.