Article Theft...What To Do About It
I have read several articles, blogs, and message board postings concerning the rise of article theft. Specifically, this is where your article is lifted from your site without your permission or pulled from a third party site.
In many ways I consider the internet to be the "Wild West" in terms of lawlessness. Ignoring established and set rules is common, meaning that us law abiding folks have our work cut out for us.
It may surprise you, but I don't take action in many cases of known article theft. Why? Because, I just don't have the time to police everything. I know of authors who check every link to their site, but that work is both tedious and time consuming.
A golden rule: If someone takes my article without my permission and the content and links are still in place, I don't worry about it. If they take my article and change the content, paragraph headers, the title, or steal credit for themselves, then I will contact the offending party and demand that they make the appropriate corrections. Even for links that are broken, I generally let these types of mistakes slide.
When it comes to writing, time is money. I only respond to egregious violations while letting everything else slip by. I would rather spend my time making money instead of losing that time to chasing down violators. No, my policy or "golden rule" isn't perfect, but it saves me from being bogged down in what I find to be a wasteful pursuit.
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