How to report a blog post thief using Google Ads to Google?

September 24, 2016 11:22 AM

I have a blog, and found another site which is duplicating multiple posts of mine in their entirety (text, photos, captions, formatting, the works), in violation of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License under which I publish. The blog in question is on Wordpress, but uses Google Ads. How do I report the site to Google? Is it likely that reporting the site to Google will result in the thief losing Google Ads revenue?

Previous posts on AskMe with this question have been told to file DMCA notices to the infringing blog's host as well, but I'm not clear how to do that either.

Is it worth trying to contact the people who run the site as well? (I'm assuming they're not going to give a shit, since if they were the sort of people who cared about this sort of thing, they wouldn't be stealing my content in the first place. ) Is there anything else I can or should do?

Also any suggestions for dealing with the blinding rage this situation is causing (not that this is the first time I've run into this problem, but it's somehow worse this time) would be appreciated.

posted by Spathe Cadet to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Correction(?): WordPress.com says the site in question isn't running on WordPress.com. I appear to have misread the site, which is using a WordPress theme.

The site in question is growing trees (as one word) [dot] info.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 11:58 AM on September 24, 2016

DMCA notice info & templates.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:08 PM on September 24, 2016

You are really over-complicating this. Follow the directions for the DMCA; that is the recourse provided to you by the system you are trying to address. Follow this letter, with your first paragraph being:

My name is Spathe Cadet and I am the author of the blog Blog Title at http://blogURL.com. A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by my company.

Email it to their hosts.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2016

Filled out the report for alpnames.com, as linked in episodic's comment. Heard back today:

Hi [Spathe Cadet],

Thank you for reporting COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT activity on:
growingtrees.info
Following your report the domain has been suspended.

Sincerely,
AlpNames Abuse Mitigation

The site is still there, including the posts I mentioned as specific examples of theft, and they posted a new one today. So now what?
posted by Spathe Cadet at 11:44 AM on September 26, 2016

They probably just found new host. You'll have to rinse and repeat with the new host, possibly multiple times. I'm not sure what happens if they get a non-US based host though.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:54 AM on September 27, 2016

(I imagine they will just move on to a new host or something, but for the moment, I appear to be victorious. Attempts to load the page return "Firefox can’t find the server" messages, and AlpNames insists that the domain has been placed on "clientHold;" they don't explain what that actually is, but it certainly sounds serious and disciplinary. Thank you to all who took the time to leave responses.)
posted by Spathe Cadet at 10:16 AM on September 27, 2016