I run a popular review site and I notice that there is a site that is copying the reviews that were written on my site. It isn’t just a couple of reviews, it looks like they took several hundred if not more.
What is the best way to go about shutting them down? If they keep them online I will take legal action, but I’m looking for some guidance on this.
Thanks
Your first step is to decide if you want legal counsel. It’s not something you have to do but it’s often a wise decision (and as you know, forum responses won’t equal out).
Assuming you go with the self-directed route for now my first step would be to notify the site owner that you are aware of their actions with a cease & desist letter. This gives them the chance to stop the issue without resorting to big measures. If they don’t follow it you can fill out a DCMA claim for their host which basically outlines that they took copyrighted works without consent and asks that they be shut down. Google and other search engines will also de-list a site through a similar process.
If that doesn’t work or if you feel you have been monetarily damaged then you have the option to sue. Here you start to really need to consider the benefits of legal assistance.
Thanks Ted. I’m also downloading a copy of their entire web site. I want to find out exactly how much of my web site was copied, so that I know if and when they remove the copied content. If anyone knows of a script that can compare ALL TEXT on two web sites please share.
UltraCompare and similar products can compare two documents but not entire sites. That I’ve never seen.
I know this sounds silly but I assume your terms of service forbid copying (or more importantly don’t grant the right)? And I also assume these reviews are from many users and not just one who could have reposted them?
These resources from Copyscape may also help you.
The reviews are from several hundred different users, at different dates, times, years, etc.
There is a copyright notice on the site stating that all reviews belong to us and it has been there since the site started.
Under copyright law, the author of the original article automatically retains all rights to the documented work without notification Ted S. Whether he has a terms of service with the forbidden copying attached is irrelevant. All written works and art are automatically attributed to the author upon publishing and can only be copied if the author explicitly expresses permission (it’s an opt-out process rather than opt-in), unlike trademarks there’s no process required to attribute license terms to your works. So under the circumstances unless expressed otherwise, terms of use or not, any copying (outside of usual accreditation and citation within reason terms) is an act of plagiarism and a violation of copyright.
I would first send them an email and give them a reasonable period of time to take notice (say 30 days), if this does not occur, then send a DCMA takedown notice with a note in point explaining that if the information is not removed, legal action may ensue. And if they still refuse to remove the breached material, then I would advise seeking legal counsel and having action taken against the author. The problem is that cloning websites is a well documented problem and the only real way to prevent it is to enforce your copyright and basically show you are willing to protect your stuff.
I don’t believe 30 days is a reasonable time when these scrapers copy and paste content within minutes. Moreover, it only takes minutes to change a site’s index page to “this site is undergoing redesign”. In several cases, I have given plagiarists 72 hours to remove work and after that have written their web host. Usually within 24 hours of writing a web host, the infringing site is down and no further action is necessary. However, you should check back in a week and then in a month to be sure they haven’t revamped the site with more stolen content.
@Alex-- please either add IANAL (I am not a lawyer) to your posts unless you are a lawyer or indicate that your advice is from your own experience.
No I am not a lawyer and I should have emphasised this when stating my opinion, however is it really necessary to put this on every post? Especially considering the fact that no-one should honestly take something they read in a forum as anything other than friendly advice, especially when I stated to seek legal counsel if asking them to remove the offending material did not resolve the issue in question. I was simply stating how I usually deal with infractions as a content author and software developer, to which I have had to learn enough about internet law to protect my gear from those naughty violators, lol
The thing is, in an International forum like this, copyright laws—in fact all laws can vary from country to country and unfortunately there are those who take friendly advice at face value even though they should get legal counsel and are recommended to do so by a sticky at the top of this forum. Yet, to be sure to keep yourself and other members safe, we recommend that when you give legal advice you either indicate that it’s from your own experience or that “IANAL”.
Maybe I should make that my signature… “I am not a lawyer… I am a code monkey”. 
I think you can try this ANTI copy paste tools here to secure your page from the duplications and stealing material and for all page that have been stolen from you,I think you can make call first to the site who accepting the stealing article from you
One of the sites that I help with has run into this problem as well - it seems as if scrapers are trying to jack their stuff. It’s hard getting into contact with the other site owner - or if he has received notification he has ignored it.
I’d be curious to see any updates to what has happened with you.
Sending a cease and desist is only a politeness IMO. Generally thieves know who they are and they don’t respond. However, many web hosts require that you notify the offending site before they will take action, so do that is just getting one step out of the way in advance. That’s why I only give a site 72 hours upon notification. The next step is to inform the web host, using the terms they express on their website. Although it doesn’t work for some self-hosted sites (yes they are out their) and in certain geographical locations, DMCA complaints do work for Google and Yahoo. They’ll usually respond by taking an offender out of their index.
There has been absolutely zero response from the owner of the site, and he was notified to remove the infringing content almost 3 weeks ago.
I submitted a DMCA to the host early last week. They contacted the owner of the site and apparently he told them that the reviews were not copied from my site and that they are his. Unbelievable. They are waiting for a DMCA counter notice from him. I asked them how long they will wait for this, and he would not give me a specific date. But he told me they would like to resolve this soon.
I’m not impressed by the way things are being handled by the host. (They are one of the bigger hosts too). It is such a blatant rip of my content, that anyone with 5 minutes of time can see that they were copied from my site. They were careless for some of the content too, copying other parts of my site. What a joke this has become.
Should a DMCA counter notice be filed, I will definitely be seeking legal counsel as there is no other option. If anyone knows of a good internet copyright lawyer, please let me know.
I’m also wondering what the penalties are for filing a FALSE DMCA Counter Notice. I hope they are bad. Because if he does in fact do this, it will be FALSE.
Update: They didn’t file the DMCA counter notice and removed the content that they copied from us.
I haven’t posted here in months, but…
It turns out that this person has recently re-uploaded the same content that he was forced to remove, and is still with the same hosting company.
This is now a repeat offense. What are my options?
Same as before, send a DMCA or sue them or both…
That seems a bit over the top to me.
Would a reader have a reasonable expectation that someone posting in here is an attorney unless they say otherwise?
Would an ordinary user assume that everyone in this forum is a an attorney unless they wrote some disclaimer?
And by the way, despite the fact that I am asking these questions, “I am not a journalist” 
sagewing, i totally agree, and IANARS (i am not a registered sycophant)