Hey, Those Are My Posts and My Photographs!!

 I had a serious problem with someone taking my posts from Texas RV Travel blog and copying them to their blog, word-for-word, including the title and photographs. At the end of the post there would be a small link back to Texas RV Travel blog.

This webmaster did not contact me and ask permission and s/he even hot-linked the photographs, using my bandwidth, not to mention violating copyright.  There was NO contact information on the blog. When I did a WHOIS, I was given servers by proxy, which is just a way to hide who owns the site.

Luckily, I happened to send an email to GoDaddy copyright infringement department and my questions were answered by a helpful man named Brian.

He explained:

Although a domain name is registered through a specific company, the website (which is separate from the domain name registration) may be hosted elsewhere.

To determine who the web hosting provider is, you can use a publicly-available tool like   http://www.selfseo.com/find ip_address_of_a_website.php. This tool will give you the resolving IP address and tell you where the website is based.

Then you may compare this information on ARIN.net. ARIN handles the IP allocation database. This may give you the relevant information for the true hosting provider.

 With this information, I was able to contact the hosting provider.  Good email addresses to use are abuse@hosting company.com, copyright infringement@hosting company.com, support@hosting company.com.

Normally, I would start by trying to contact the website owner.  However, there was NO contact information and no history on this blog  To leave a comment you had to register for this blog. This blog was locked up tight.

All Voices.com

Once I studied the blog, I realized this person had been stealing my posts since early last year. The name of this blog is similar to an environmental blog about Texas. When I saw the name under uncommon uses of my blog feed, I just thought that my friend was linking back or tracking back and I just forgot it.

Well, I wanted to share with you how I was able to find out who actually hosts a blog. Through a hosting provider, you usually get immediate response as to who is the owner of the blog or website.

I have asked for the posts, all of them, to be deleted and an apology posted on the blog and a link to my blog. If the owner of the blog takes no action, I have asked the hosting company to take the blog down.  The offending blog has been taken down, so I guess the problem is solved--for now.

What I Learned

• Look carefully at your Feedburner or other RSS stats.
• Check all uncommon uses of your feed.
• Post copyright statement on your blog
• Make image that will inform and not humiliate 
• Check out all trackbacks.

 Still to Do

• Learn how to add unobtrusive watermark to all pictures.
• Discover how to change permission on photograph folder.
• Disable right-click and view source on my blog.
• Am I forgetting anything?

This is upsetting to me.  I am a blogger, not an investigator or a policeman.  Whenever someone asks, I almost always allow excerpts from my articles to be posted.

During my treatment, I let things go.  I am paying  for it now.  Learn from my mistake and protect your website. If you have had a similar experience, please share.