It was a fine evening when I was checking my email and I got an email from a reader (by now I have couple of readers), directing me to a blog owner by W. James Canty Jr., a food photographer from Washington DC, saying that his blog was copying posts from this food photography blog and these posts were being used on Mr. Canty’s blog.
Update 2: The blog owner contacted me more than once and it seems his webmaster messed up.
How to Deal With Content Theft
Several readers mentioned couple of options and ways to deal with content theft. These include:
- Contacting Google and filling out DMCA form
- Contact their Host and file a complaint with them
- IF the site is using Adsense or any ads, contact the ad agencies
For more details read the comments below.
I visited the blog and indeed, articles were copied from headline to the last sentence (including some typos that I had in the original post). No permission taken, no proper credit given. This person is not only using the posts, but is also earning money using Adsense and other revenues streams.
I was very shocked to see that a food photographer had copied the post without permission, not given credits the right way (credit was given in a very ambiguous way) and was earning money on his blog. I say shocked because as photographers, we understand the amount of work that goes into creating just one photograph. We as a photographer would not like anyone to steal our images and use them without our permission.
See the image below from his sidebar and notice how many titles (and the content) are exactly the same as on this blog. As I said, this blogger has copied every word in these articles without permission, has not given any appropriate credit and is earning money from this content. 
Click the above screenshot to enlarge and see how almost all recent articles have been copied without permission and credit.
Thank You for Your Support
Friends and readers, thank you for your emails and support. Many of you contacted and notified about this, thank you for emails and tweets. Special thanks to lva from Lucullian Delights.
Images and Content on This Blog
Content on this blog is original and lot of time is spent developing the content, building relationships and chatting with other food photographers. Once the content is published on the blog, it is a copyright property of LearnFoodPhotography.com and its owner.
I often use images and food photos in posts that are taken by other food photographers, as an example of a great photo. The copyright and usage rights for these photos belong to the photographers and I use the photos only after getting permission from the photographer. An appropriate credit and link back is given to copyright holder/owner.
What Would You Do
While I am thinking of pursuing several options on how to deal with this theft. Has this happened to you? Do you know someone who has gone through the same incident? What have they done? Will very much appreciate any suggestion or advice from you. Please leave a comment below.
Update 1: James sent me an email. It seems from his email that he did not know the content was being used on his blog.
Good Morning Neel,
Thank you for informing me of the use of illegal content from your site. All content has been removed.
Thanks,
James
All, Thank you for your emails and comments and tweets. I appreciate the support.
Picture Courtesy: NO NO NO by rakan rakan rakan
Hi Neel, same thing happened to me last month.
I accidentally came across this site – http://www.dinhduong.com.vn/story/banh-trung-thu-rau-cau-vi-sau-rieng?t=1289133854#comment-3370 and saw that the author plagirised my post. The author literally downloaded my recipe and pictures and passed off as her own works without linking back to my blog and they even removed my watermark.
(my post – http://anncoojournal.blogspot.com/2010/09/durian-agar-agar-mooncake.html) I have already demanded them to remove the post but seems like they just ignore my request. What can I do?
Anncoo, See the comments from Sasha. That was my next step, to report it to DMCA, Google and Hosting company. You can try that. In most cases, the hosting company would remove the blog/website for violation of ToS.
Hi Neel, I experience this issue all the time as well on my photography educational blog – <LearnMySHot.com. What I do is I set up goggle alerts with some text that is unique to a post and when I find my content elsewhere I contact the source and tell them to remove stollen content in three days or I will report them to search engines and they will never see a single organic hit ever again. Works every time. If they do not commply you can in fact report it, here is the link for google: http://www.google.com/dmca.html#notification and google will ban them from search
Content theft happens all the time and it’s often a lucky break when someone spots your work being copied by someone else. If that blog is hosted on Blogspot, you can file a DMCA complaint with Google to get the content removed. If they are using Adsense, you can file a complaint with them and they will ban the site from using Adsense (thus taking away their revenue).
Good luck and keep up the fight!
Nate, you are right. most times you don’t even know that someone stole your content. Setting up alerts as mentioned by Sasha helps to catch if the obvious keywords are used. Other times you don’t even have a clue.
As the world embraces Internet, this is only going to go up.
I can’t stand people stealing my content. As was suggested, you can file a complaint with Google adsense. They are pretty quick on reacting.
Also go where it’s really going to hurt him – find out who his web hosting service is (whois.com will give you an idea). Look at their terms of services. Chances are that they aren’t allowing plagiarism. Contact them and lodge a complaint with them.
Good luck
I’ve had the same issue. It seems so many people don’t consider this stealing. There’s the common misconception that once content is on the web it is public domain.
Thanks to Sasha and everyone else about the AdSense tip. That’s new to me so happy I have one more tool in my box when dealing with theft.
Now I can spend less time chasing people stealing my content and spend more time photographing!
Hello Neel,
Once again I just want to apologize for what happened. Please trust and believe that stealing content is not something that I’m into. (I hate when I see my pictures on other pages and sites without my permission) I have all so followed up and made some changes in house to make sure that something like this NEVER happens again!!!
And for any other food photographers I’ve offended or if your content ended up on my blog….. Sorry, all content has been removed; it’s back to the drawing board for me.
Have a Foodtastic Day!