Content Theft - 4 Simple Steps For Protecting Your Copyright by Adrian Jock

Since we're not living in a perfect world, unfair and unpleasant things happen every day. If you're an ezine articles author, content theft is one of these unpleasant happenings. How to fight against it and how to protect your copyright?

Once you posted your article in a public place, like an website for example, someone may visit that website at any time, copy your article and post it somewhere else without respecting your copyright and reprint policy. In plain words, your article may be copied & posted under another author's name and using another resource box than yours.

Since the Internet is a huge place, can you detect when such theft happens? Did you protect yourself and do you know what actions to take in case such theft happens?

Here is a short guide to help you protect your work.

Step 1 - Post Your Article on Your Website and Register Your Copyright

Once you finished your article, post it on your website and register your copyright with a third party so that it is easier to prove later that you're the copyright owner.

A simple method of registering your copyright is to get a free account with My Free Copyright. Once you setup the account, you'll be able to record the title & text of your article, the page where the article was originally posted and the time of registering. You can also get a "Registered & Protected" badge to display on your article's page. That badge will be linked to the page from "My Free Copyright" where the details you registered are publicly visible.

Step 2 - Submit Your Article to Top Article Directories

Once you registered your copyright, submit your article to top article directories.

These submissions have three goals:

i. your work is known by the public;
ii. your website gets traffic when a reader of your article clicks on the links from your resource box;
iii. prevent a content thief to copy your article and post it himself on these article directories.

Step 3 - Setup Google Alerts

Now it's time for you to prepare for detecting a potential theft. Go to "Google Alerts" and setup 2 or 3 alerts: one for the title and the rest for key phrases from your article. In order to get relevant results, when you setup the alerts use inverted commas like this: "Here Comes the Title of Your Article".

From now on Google will take care and will alert you by email when it discovers a place on the web where the title of your article or your key phrases are posted. All you have to do is to check whether your copyright is respected or not.

Step 4 - Prepare a template for a Copyright Infringement Notice

Now prepare yourself for the case when a content theft happens. Search on Google for "Copyright Infringement Notice sample", look at some models and then write your own template, ready to be filled in if the case may be. Such notice will have to be sent to the owner of the website where your article is posted without respecting your copyright.

That's it!

To Your Success!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adrian Jock is an ezine articles author and the publisher of Ezine Advertising Info Newsletter. To get more interesting tips on ezine marketing, follow Adrian on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adrianjock