How to Report Copyright Violations on Blogger

Do you have any idea about the content you published on your blog? When it comes to blogging, you might find an interesting topic on your choice and share the information matters to you and your readers while being aligned to the objectives of your blog. Simply, with the relevance. It could be a niche topic or a broad topic. Whatever it is, when it comes to writing you may have to research, read online and offline content and dig more deep into the subject with your experiences before you publish them for public. Eventhough you may not expecting any commercial value out of it, the content you publish are really matters to you as you know how much your valuable time and skills were devoted for that informative and interesting article. So what if you find someone copying your content and publish them on their Blogger blog without any explicit permission of yours?

You can start a free blog with Blogger. But it doesn't mean you are free to publish whatever content you find on the web. When blogging and generating content online, there are more responsibilities you should be aware of as an author. If you are an ethical author, there are some rules you have to follow. Actually they are not rules, but ethics. You just need to write about what you know or what you have been through and use your own skills, research findings and experiences to generate your content. In case if you need to republish  content from another author, make sure to get appropriate permissions and attribute whenever you use them on your writings. If so, you don't need to worry about copyrights at all. However content scrappers find these as rules for them. I found this interesting quote about writing recently and I think authors who follow this rule are really effective in writing and inspire their readers.

"Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that."

Jackie Collins

Just copying ideas, research findings, creative works and experiences from someone else and filling your blog with bunch of posts doesn't means you are absolutely a good author or focus on your topic. Stealing on web is just a matter of few clicks and key presses. But stealing content from others means you are stealing. It doesn't make you perfect and people doesn't loyal to you as a person. Once after an author generate his original content, automatically it's protected with his authorship and subject to copyrights with the reservation of all rights eventhough there is no such copyright statement. The author aka the copyright owner is responsible for reserving or allowing rights for his work via copyright statement. Generally, if you see "All Rights Reserved" statement on blogs or websites, it means legally no one can reproduce, copy or distribute, perform, display publicly or build upon it without a permission of original copyright holder. But legally, if you wanna allow some rights of your content to be make use by others, you can go for solutions such as Creative Commons to refine your copyrights.

However as you are the copyright holder of your original work and if you see someone violating your copyrights, you are authorized to take action for it. Normally we say it's an copyright infringement. Blogger respects the rights of copyright holders and responsible to help out in copyright infringement situations as they depicts in their Copyright Policy.

"Blogger respects the rights of copyright holders and complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other applicable copyright laws. When we receive proper notice as required by the DMCA, we will work to promptly remove content that has been identified as copyright infringement. Repeat infringers' blogs are removed, and in appropriate instances Blogger accounts will be terminated."

As they state on their copyright policy, if someone infringing your copyright using Blogger service, Blogger will promptly remove such content from their service after they have been confirmed. Also if Blogger found future copyright complaints applicable for the same blog, they will remove that blog or further they will terminate related Blogger account too. Therefore, eventhough Blogger is a free service, original content providers are more concerned and safe with their policies.

Recently I had to deal with lot of copyright infringements and it's a pain to think about wasting time to remove unauthorized content. However as we generate content, we should be liable to protect our copyrights too. The best formal procedure is far more complex if you wish to hire an attorney and gonna deal with court. But with my recent experiences, Blogger was really helpful for me in removing copied content found on other blogs and they just take care of your infringement complaint right after you submit a copyright complaint with relevant details. If they found missing information with your request, they will contact you for further clarifications too. So if you found any content of yours on another Blogger blog which infringe your copyrights, it's time to take action.

Before You Go:

* Make sure the copied content you gonna claim were reproduced on a Blogger blog, Else Blogger won't be able to take further actions as they are able to access content only exist on their servers and you have to contact offending hosting provider for further assistance.

* You should login to your Google account before you submit your copyright complaint.


Steps:

Here you don't have to go through lot of steps with a step-by-step wizard. If you found someone violating your copyrights using Blogger service, just report them via Blogger Online DCMA form.

More Information:

* You should be the copyright owner of the content has been infringed or an authorized person to report copyright violations.

* If you knowingly misrepresent the material or activity infringing, you may be subject to liability for damages. So make sure you are referring to the original work of yours.

* When you submit Online DCMA form, you have to provide URLs of your original work and URLs of content which infringe your copyrights or needed to be removed.

* Once after processing your infringement complaint, Blogger will notify you via email.

Enjoy :-)