Greetings and Salutations -

Lori Phillips, our Dreams editor, has graciously allowed me to share her recent experiences with you all, to help you learn more about dealing with duplicate content issues.

Some of Lori's content was on DivineCaroline.com and Lori wanted it removed, so she could use it elsewhere. The DivineCaroline people were not answering email messages. So here would be the next steps to take.

1) Figure out the hosting company's name. You do this with a WHOIS search. There are many free search tools out there. I happen to use this one:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

So you type in DivineCaroline.com and click on search. Now you know that the DivineCaroline people are hosting their website with the Tucows hosting company.

2) Go to the hosting company's website. Every hosting company should provide contact information for dispute issues. So on the Tucows contact page -

http://tucowsinc.com/contact/?hp=A

it has a contact link for anybody with Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) / Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) issues. So now you know who to write.

3) Create a proper complaint letter. Your letter needs to have:

a) your contact info, and an electronic signature at the end
b) a clear description of what was stolen.
c) a link or links to where this stolen material is on their site.
d) a sentence saying that the use of the material is NOT authorized by you.
e) a sentence saying you are the copyright holder and that this information is true under penalty of perjury

The last part feels pretty silly to me, to have to say "really, this is true!", but there you have it. It's at least acknowledging that you understand the risks of lying to get content taken off of someone's site.

The hosting company faces serious penalties if they don't respond to these letters, so writing them is your best bet for success!

It's a good idea to make up a standard complaint letter and keep it on your hard drive. That way when you hit content thieves, it is less stressful. You just pull out your letter, fill in the description of the content stolen, and send it off to the hosting company. Quick, easy, done.

Let me know if you have any questions!


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We need a few more ebook reviewers to join our ebook review team. It's mostly just checking each other's ebooks for typos and other common issues. We'd love to have you join us! The more eyeballs the better, to help our fellow editors thrive!

Have a great Monday :).

Sincerely,



Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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