Filing a Formal DMCA Complaint: The Step by Step Guide

Today on the internet there are thousands of people sharing their ideas, opinions, writing articles and so much more. Mixed in with all these people there are a nasty few that may or may not knowingly steal your articles right off your site and post it on theirs!

If you wrote the article yourself and they took it without your permission then they are breaking the law. You have rights and you should use them! Now before getting all legal, lets talk about what you should do first.

Don't jump to conclusion - it could be an accident. There are hundreds of reasons why this person may have their content on your site. The best thing to do is formally contact the person and nicely ask him or her to remove the content. You can get the person's information various ways -

1.) Use popular services like Whois to get contact information of the domain owner
2.) Contact the company hosting the website and explain your situation. You can usually get the web hosting company by again using popular services like Whois or Google the IP Address and see if you can pinpoint the company.
3.) Contact him on his site. See if you can post a blog comment, maybe they have a discussion forum - something!

So again, just nicely ask him or her to remove the content.

A good example would be

"Dear Sir/Madam,

I have noticed on your site some content which I have written and I have not given permission to be used by anyone else.

Please remove the following content:

Link 1
Link 2
Etc...

Thank You
-Name"

Now this is a rough outline. I'm no grammar expert but this should get the point across.

If this fails, then now you can use some scare tactics!

This is not a complaint yet, just a more formal and scary request to remove the content - Also known as a Cease & Desist.

This is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

This article is an unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted material originally found at:
[http://www.MyBlog.com/...]

Please remove this article immediately or we will take legal action and inform the proper authorities.

Thank you,
[My Name]

Now if this does not get them to take the content down, then file an official DMCA complaint. You can find the rough template for one below.

Date: [March 9, 2009]

[Google, Inc.
Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043]

To Whom It May Concern,

This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I wish to report an instance of Copyright Infringement. The infringing material appears on the Service for which you are the designated agent.

1. The copyrighted material, which I contend belongs to me and appears illegally on the Service, is the following:
Blog article titled "[My Original Article]" written by [My Name], posted on [January 11, 2008] at [http://www.myblog.com/...]

2. The unauthorized material appears at the website address:
[http://www.otherblog.com/...]

This site appears in Google search results for "[Search Terms]" as well as other search terms.

3. My contact information is as follows:

[My Name]
[My Address]
[My Phone]
[My Email]

4. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials as described above is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

5. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

[Your Signature]

[Your Name Printed]

Sending that complaint to Google and the web hosting company will force him to take it down and if you want to continue with legal action, then you can file a subpoena against the web host if they are not willing to give you his contact information. The subpoena will force the web host to give you any information they have.

Remember to always state on your site that your work is Copyrighted and frequently use search engines like Google to see if anyone is stealing your content!