Hi, this might be the best forum but since my site is using XOOPS I figure I'd give it a shot here.

I just found some content on my site was pretty much copied verbatim by a competitor. They copied contents from a few of my pages and consolidated them into one page. This page also includes an original diagram from my site (and the only thing they changed on this diagram was my company's name to the word "we").

I'm definitely going to make a complaint to the organization regulating the business this plagiariser and I are both in, but I have two questions:
1) Is this kind of problem preventable? I really don't see how to provent that technically given the content has been served to the browser. Worst case the guy takes a screen shot and retype everything.

2) How do I prove that I have the copyright of the content? First of all, how do I prove that my site had the content before theirs did?

Thanks,
Ray

You can give a try to this site, right?
http://www.archive.org/

In addition most articles have publish dates included in them.

This is a common problem, and actually there is no true way to prevent it.

It's not preventable - if people want to break the rules, they will. However, many people are either ignorant of copyright or genuinely see 'borrowing' a bit of content as a fairly harmless crime.

If you let them know that you *do* mind with a polite email, a lot of people will apologise and take the stuff down. If that doesn't work, you could try making a complaint to their hosting company, who in many cases will be able to address such things through the terms of the hosting contract.

Doesn't always work though. Someone once sucked a lot of the publications off one of our work sites (which were available free for personal use), set up their own 'library' site with stuff (presumably) ripped off from many others as well, and then started trying to sell it. When we complained they barred our IP number !

Worst part - it was a supposedly reputable publishing house.

Making a direct copy of your diagram may be considered a breach of mechanical copyright law by an IT law firm on which they could take action. As for the question of who owns the artwork for the diagram, being able to provide source material, for example, the Corel Draw! file from which it was exported as a GIF, would be important.

I think asking your industry's regulating authority to intervene is a good idea. If the offenders won't remove the diagram voluntarily, I would spend some time with Google to find out your chances of bringing legal action successfully compared to similar cases.

To be honest, you might gain better retribution by saving the legal costs and spending the money on a Yellow Pages ad or a mailshot to draw attention to your own site.

Nothing is safe from a screenshot!