I have a little bit of an issue with a competing website. They are selling advertisements around copyrighted content that they are copy/pasting from newspapers from around the world. This is easy enough to do, set yourself up some google alerts and as long as you know CTRL+C and CTRL+V, I suppose you can make a few hundred a month in advertising.<p>I've been working hard on my website for much longer than this competitor, and I'm honest about my content, I write it myself. Unfortunately, to the naked eye, it appears as though I don't do quite as good a job as the other guy who knows how to copy and paste.<p>Aside from emailing the editors of all these newspapers (we're talking 25-50 newspapers from at least 5 different countries), is there a way for me to gain the upper hand in this situation, without sacrificing my scruples?
>Aside from emailing the editors of all these newspapers (we're talking 25-50 newspapers from at least 5 different countries), is there a way for me to gain the upper hand in this situation, without sacrificing my scruples?<p>Where is your competitor based? Which jurisdictions are valid wrt copyright infringement? How do you know they haven't applied for rights (eg via a clearing house)?<p>Note that there are still some places in the world that are not signed up to Berne/TRIPS and the like international treaties. A person (or presumably a web server) based there who (on which) compiles such would be untouchable on copyright infringement. Moreover, many places allow excerpts/snippets to be used and the definition of "commercial use" varies around the world.<p>I suspect all you can really do is improve your content or put money before morality.<p>>I suppose you can make a few hundred a month in advertising<p>A few hundred what? US Dollars, GBP, Euro, ... why is this important to you?
If they copy any of <i>your</i> content, then you can send a DMCA notice to their ISP. And if they're doing what you say they are, then they'll do that soon enough. You may be able to figure out who their ISP is using tracert. You can also notify the sites they're plagiarizing from, and get them to do the same.<p>If they file a DMCA counter-notice, or pop back up on a different ISP, then you'll have to go to court to get rid of them. That might or might not be worth it, depending whether they have money to sue for, how difficult they are to track down, and how much your lawyer charges.