(Note: To find out how to protect yourself and your business, you'll want to attend our teleseminar next Tuesday October 30th; for more info go here: www.blogsquadteleseminars.com/JH/ )
A Realtor friend tells me a competitor stole the photos she took of a condo and posted on the Web. The competitor's listing was for a similar condo in the same location. Evidently, it saved him some time and effort by lifting her photos and using them for his listing!
So she called him up and firmly demanded he take the photos off his listing. He complied. But what do you do when a lazy and unethical scoundrel doesn't correct the infringement?
I recently came across an article, "4 Steps to Combat Website Plagiarism" by Kelly Sims, published in Entire Web Newsletter. Here's a summary of things you can do.
- Check the Web. A great tool to use in the protection of your website content is www.copyscape.com. Simply enter your website URL and it will scan the web for you. This is a free service, but if you have been a frequent victim of copyright infringement, you might want to consider their paid service, which automatically scans the web regularly for any duplicates of your content.
- Contact the offender. Keep your first contact civil. The owner of the site may not be the writer.
- Send a cease and desist order. You do not need to hire a lawyer to create one for you. Search for "cease and desist order templates" on the Web.



