Today I did a Google search for a couple of my articles at Suite101.com. I found this article:
also posted verbatim at this link:
MarketMentalist theft of my article
The owner of the site has given no contact information, and the domain registration is hidden.
I’m posting this here so that Google–and hence the world–will soon know that Market Mentalist is a bunch of thieves. Or maybe just one thief.
ETA on Wednesday Dec 1, 2010: I changed the title of this post to better describe what the site did. I also want to report in-post, not just in the comments, that the site owner took down my article immediately upon my request. Good for him. However, today I looked for more articles, and found another one of mine stolen at Market Mentalist. He included my name as the author, but he never asked my permission to post it and I obviously never granted permission. Hence, I have sent a DCMA violation notice to the legal department of his web hosting site.
ETA on Friday Dec 3, 2010: I sent that DMCA violation notice to the legal department of the host. Yesterday I received a return e-mail from the legal department, saying they had contacted the owner of the web page and he had taken down the offending material. Again, good on him. It is all resolved without a major fuss. I can now go about looking for other instances of my copyright being infringed and go after them.
Did you try running a WhoIs? search? I've had some success with them when I've had an article pinched. Also, if they're running google ads you can report them for violating terms of service. Just a couple of ideas. I hope it helps. And definitely point them out to the masses like you're doing. Maybe they'll scurry back into the dark and quit stealing work that isn't theirs.
Hi Beverly:
I did the whois search, which turned up no useful information. But Kelly Smith of Suite101 did find the info I needed. He must have access to a whois service I don't know about. I fired off an e-mail to the perp this morning. We'll see what happens.
DAT
Looks like they may have taken down the link.
Gary: Yes, he took the article down very quickly after I sent him an e-mail. He said he often "harvests articles based on key words", that mine was one of them in a larger batch, and he had no intent to harm or steam from anyone. I wrote him back to thank him for removing the article, and reminded him that harvesting copyrighted articles IS stealing.