Wizzle Copied and Mutilated - What do I do?

So I face the unpleasant task of dealing with someone who has lifted an entire Wizzle and pasted on his website without any credit or attribution to me or Wizzley. Actually he has a copyright notice at the end of the page where he claims all copyright to hiself.

Here is the offending page <link removed to not give the due any traffic>. If you visit the website, scroll about 20% way down and you will see my Wizzle, Leader vs Manager, copied in its entirety. It's not even a good copy job, the elements are all over the place and the whole copy is repeated - meaning that content is copied twice on the page.

May be I should be pleased that someone likes my stuff so much that he/she copies it twice. But somehow I feel creeped out, to say the least.

Does anyone have a standard step-by-step process I can use to go after this guy "Richard" - if that's in fact his name? I was thinking the following course of action:

1. Write him an email telling him to remove the content within 24 (?) hours. (Even call him if the phone number is in fact his.) Or else...

2. I file a DCMA complain with google.

3. Contact his host (which seems hard to do - I can't figure out who is hosting it.)

4. What else?

I have a feeling that he will ignore my letter and/or voice mail and will have to have solid course of action in case he does not comply.

Will appreciate any pointers, advise, help.

Thanks in advance.

Note: Edited to remove the link.

I would call him and congratulate him on his outstanding blog design. Then I would mention that you'd like to know more about his "wave of opportunities". Specifically, who wrote this amazing piece of content about "Leader vs Manager"?

Then I would also mention that an author on wizzley.com has obviously stolen his article, and what he's going to do about it. And that you were a lawyer and could help him suing wizzley.com.

Hehe...what a sweet fantasy...but it might be fun.

You could see how it goes and switch roles anytime: "Listen, a**hole! I AM the author of this piece. Take it down or I'll kick your a** from Atlanta to L.A. and back!"

Or, you could simply ignore it. His sorry piece of a blogging attempt gets hardly any visitors.

LOL. I really like your option of just ignoring him. The only concern would be if the search engines see the content as duplicate. I suppose the DCMA complaint should take care of that.

I like the option of pretending to be a lawyer helping to sue Wizzley even more! May be I will tape the conversation and post it here for all to hear!

Hi, I know this must be very upsetting. I would also be upset if someone took my article and copied it elsewhere.

By all means, do what you legally can do, to get him to take it down.

I just wanted to mention a couple of things, in case you are unaware:

a) this forum is visible to the public, and perhaps he has analytics showing him where visits are coming from, in which case he could land back here and see what is written. There is nothing wrong with what you wrote here, however, he might be prepared for your phone calls and actions. Meaning, the phone call might not go as planned, but you can still call him.

b) It is illegal to tape someone's conversation without their knowledge, and such evidence would probably be inadmissible in court. although he should not have done what he did, and you could go after him for that, it is possible that he could counter-sue or go after you if you tape his conversation without his knowledge (and misrepresent yourself while doing so). If you post such a recording here, it would be evidence that you taped him without his knowledge (unless you get a warrant to tape record him for an investigation).

Wishing you the best of luck with sorting this out.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Do not take this as legal advice.

You should also check out if the Amazon links are yours or Wizzley's. Those links actually work!

Anyway, I think that you should file DMCA. The copy is obvious.

Bhavesh, I agree with Chefkeem.  Just ignore it.  As long as Wizzley has authority your copy would always outrank the duplicate.  

Though you can email the webmaster and ask him to remove the copy down.  If that does not work, contact the host or file DMCA.

Bhavesh and everyone else, if you need help figuring out who is hosting the site, just run the domain name through this: http://www.whoishostingthis.com

It will give you the required information.

Hi bhthanks and DrDarko,

Thanks for the suggestions. Just had the aforementioned conversation! Can't say much more than that at this time. As bhthanks mentioned, I don't want them to find out what I am going to do next.

bhthanks, I hear the state of Vermont has some of the most lenient phone taping laws. (I am quite familiar with the phone taping laws.)

DrDarko, I will definitely be filing the DCMA complaint. The amazon links were unadulterated - or is it adulterated? - copies.

Anyhow, this quite a learning experience for me.Thanks for the support, suggestions and the listening ears.

This is so very helpful, Natasha. You are such an awesome resource!

Natasha: 23. Mar 2012, 14:37

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Bhavesh and everyone else, if you need help figuring out who is hosting the site, just run the domain name through this: http://www.whoishostingthis.com

It will give you the required information.

Bhavesh: 23. Mar 2012, 14:50

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This is so very helpful, Natasha. You are such an awesome resource!

Natasha: 23. Mar 2012, 14:37

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Bhavesh and everyone else, if you need help figuring out who is hosting the site, just run the domain name through this: http://www.whoishostingthis.com

It will give you the required information.

 

If you need further help tracking him down just pm me the url of the article where your stolen content is displayed, I am quite good at finding out stuff like that ;-)

Sam: 23. Mar 2012, 16:19

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Bhavesh: 23. Mar 2012, 14:50

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This is so very helpful, Natasha. You are such an awesome resource!

Natasha: 23. Mar 2012, 14:37

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Bhavesh and everyone else, if you need help figuring out who is hosting the site, just run the domain name through this: http://www.whoishostingthis.com

It will give you the required information.

 

If you need further help tracking him down just pm me the url of the article where your stolen content is displayed, I am quite good at finding out stuff like that ;-)

Will do. Thanks!

This is why its a very good idea to have a link back to another page of yours in any article - when the idiots copy them - and they will  if you are any good (and you are) - you get the free backlink! 

In the unlikely event that they out rank you - then take them down - if they are stupid enough to run Adsense - the are in breach of that TOS too - so report them to Adsense, and their hosting. 

But don't bother unless they acutally out-rank you 

Heya Bhavesh,

We can also contact some friends and create a Denial Of Service ambush on the page, that way they have to shut down the page, then we switch it over to computer bot program repeating the ddos every hour on the hour

Only issue is, Im a writer and not a hacker!