Need HELP regarding DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google

anwebservices Level X⁵

November 17, 2017, 1:58 am

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Need HELP regarding DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google

Even after so many years of experience, we always bump into unknown situation when we just don't know what is right thing to do at the moment. So i am in that position right now, when i am not really sure what exactly to do.

Recently i received email from "Google Search Console Team" which state following:

Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of the material found on
your site allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others. Although
some of these URLs may not be available in our search results now, we
are retaining these notices and will act on them if at some point in the
future we do crawl these pages for inclusion in search results.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found on the website of Lumen, a third-party aggregator of legal complaint notices, at
http://lumendatabase.org/notices/15297136.

Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on the above page.

I jumped to the link where i see that submitter claim that i was copying his content without his permission, while it's not true, content on "Allegedly Infringing URL" is actually imported content from Seocheckout via Seocheckout API into my affiliate store, and it looks like this service is not available to purchase on Seocheckout any more. However, content of my page and his own URL doesn't really match, except it's in same niche...

Since someone want to put me out of business and attack my website by trying to remove it form Google search (maybe) i need to do something about it, but not sure what exactly is best thing to do right now.

Same submitter suing numerous websites with same acusations, including webarchive.org by stating:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160726222247/https://www.redditsecrets.com/buy-reddit-accounts/he is stealing my website content.

Guy don't even know what this link is about LOL, but seriously he is attacking everyone involved in selling any kind of reddit services, in order to kill competitors, but doing it very wrong way, desperately...

Please advice me if you were in similar situation! What to do?

Comments

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Everett

I just reviewed all the materials, and went to both pages, did some research with web archive myself. I do not find you being in non-compliance with DMCA laws. You are utilizing an Seocheckout affiliate store by Seocheckout API. Thus you are not claiming any content as yours, you're simply displaying service details.

I have once had this happen to me in the past. Someone claimed that I was copying their entire affiliate store, even though I had one way before they did. They sent me numerous DMCA take down requests and I just ignored them. Then they decided to do negative SEO to get me off of the google search. That did not happen either.

However, what you could do to protect yourself in the future if anyone claims you're stealing their content add some text at the footer of the website to ensure visitors that your website is an affiliate store and that you don't claim to own any images, services, etc. You can still copyright your website but just add that exclusion.

Now if they try and take you to court, which probably won't happen, nothing will happen because of Seocheckout terms of service. Their terms of service protects you. You should notify the staff of the DMCA notice so they can update their terms of service for affiliates.

7 years ago

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anwebservices

It's far from taking me to the court

because our contents doesn't match anyway (even when page was live) but people from Google doesn't probably research like you did, they automatically put red flag on my domain and i could be de-indexed which could kill my affiliate income from that website with solit traffic and authority, and that's what i was worry about, but hopefully it will be ok now after removal of that page.

7 years ago

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itommy

Very simple to fix this, you need to remove that content and wait for Google checks and update that.
You will be fine after updates from Google.

7 years ago

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anwebservices

Thank you. I thought it may work, so i did remove that page and i hope it was right decision.

7 years ago

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TimothyAlex

Whether the claim is valid or not, when buying content, It is always very important to run it through a plagiarism checking before publishing it. My personal advice would remove any content in which there is a claim made, unless you actually wrote it yourself.

7 years ago

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anwebservices

It can't be plagiarism, on that page was only Seocheckout service details imported from Seocheckout API which is allowed, and it's affiliate page, nothing to do with contents of his entire website

7 years ago

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Everett

If he (im assuming its a male, i do not know) submitted those details on seocheckout, then that is where Seocheckout terms of serivce comes into to play. He agreed to submit those details, and Seocheckout can use such details in any way they wish. It is outlined within the Terms of Service:

Excerpt from our lovely Terms of Service:

5. User Content

When you submit any User Content to us, you grant the Ionicware, its partners, affiliates, users, representatives and assigns a non-exclusive, fully-paid, royalty-free, irrevocable, world-wide, universal, transferable, assignable license to display, publicly perform, distribute, store, broadcast, transmit, reproduce, modify, prepare derivative works and otherwise use and reuse all or part of your User Content. It is important for you to grant us this license so that we may transmit your User Content to other users through our Platform. Additionally, although you own all User Content submitted by you, we own all layouts, arrangement, metadata and images that are used to render your User Content through our Platform.

7 years ago

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TimothyAlex

THat is a standard TOS for almost every website when it comes to UGC. But, I am getting the feeling it may be a former and disgruntled seocheckout user. It should be easy enough to survive the complaint as long as anwebservices responds and stays on top of it.

7 years ago

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anwebservices

That's exactly true and i know the same, but who would explain it to Google, it would take ages to send emails, explaining, etc... I removed that affiliate link because it was discontinued servie anyway, so i hope it will fix the problem faster then trying to explain to Google staff what's going on.

As i said, he blaimed archive.org for same copyright, so he / she is completely insane, while we all know what is archive.org, showing the history, how was your website looking times ago

7 years ago

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cdrocks

Maybe make a complaint back and try to remove him off of the internet if that is what he is trying to do to you. Seriously you really have to hit these people back hard or they will walk all over you. I really have a dislike for people that do that kind of stuff . Of course i realize easier said than done when dealing with google and trying to prove things. Musicians do this kind of stuff to each other to steal songs that are potential hits. That is the reason I react the way i do when i hear about this kind of stuff happening to people.

7 years ago

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DarthHazard

I agree. I hate these people and unfortunately, they seem to just get away with these type of things most of the time which is disgusting. I'm not sure what he can do, to be honest. I don't understand the issue here 100% because I can't figure out what the author actually copied from the complainer's site.

7 years ago

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Everett

I would just probably drop it there. People are always trying to sue, and get money any way they can. I would simply ignore any future requests, and if there is a lawyer you can just have them send emails to the accuser or Google themselves.

Nothing will probably come out of this, because there are numerous Seocheckout affiliate stores, and I own one myself. I would laugh really hard if anyone tries to say that I am copying their content.

They should be happy that their service was even featured in the store to begin with. Affiliate stores are to help sellers gain sales. So for this person to actually submit a DMCA take down request is just plain stupidity. This could also prevent google indexing any page related to the copyrighted content. Have you ever searched something and saw a notice that a search was removed due to copyright complaints? Yeah, this person will have that for every affiliate they are linked on. This would also probably crush their online earnings too if they are not careful.

I can not even believe the nerve of some people these days, they take matters to the extremes when it is not even condoned.

7 years ago

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peachpurple

To be honest, I had 12 of my hubs at Hubpages stolen by a writer at expertscolumn, Imagine 12 of them ! I reported to DMCA and the admin of both sites. Expertscolumn ignored me, the writer turned into a ghost. DMCA requested for my personal ID, photne numbers and address to verify whether I am the author of the articles. However, I never put my real personal details online, not even Hubpages. So, DMCA couldn't process it.

7 years ago

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jeiss

This is sad to hear. I can't imagine someone coming toreceive the reward for my labour. Isn't there a way to use publishing date as proof to show who wrote something first?

That should serve as evidence that you are the original author and that you couldn't have stolen something that didn't exist online in the first place.

7 years ago

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Everett

That is really weird that they needed those details from you. Usually there is proof that you created said article, product, etc and they would not need such private information. I would happen to agree with you and not send over those details because of the risk that someone malicious could get those private details and potentially steal your identity and cause mass havoc with your credit scores, and other stuff. Unfortunately, you had to let it slide which is a real bummer, but at least you know that you are the real creator of the content that got stolen.

7 years ago

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DarthHazard

It's annoying, isn't it? I hate it when this happens. I actually had two different people copying my content from my gaming blog and trying to pass it off as something they wrote. Luckily for me, all I had to do was contact them and ask them to remove it which they complied with.

7 years ago

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kgord

It sounds like you have found some logical ways to proceed with this case. These are just some of the ways that you might get the help that you need. It is just bad that you have to deal with this stuff though.

7 years ago

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overcast

I think this is something really serious. You may want to find out if you can find his location and the host. You can then apply the same method to get him out of the hosting content. I guess he is making money doing this sort of stuff. And if done properly this type of the resolution can be done as well. I know many who file legal cases on others despite not owning any form of DMCA value. It's kind of hard to fight such type of attacks.

7 years ago

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Soulwatcher

My advice is to take the DMC serious and remove all content in question. Because google is not going to play around, if they tell you to remove content and you don't. Then they are going to deindex you and your website is going to be dead in the water. I have seen this happen to another website before. They ignored the google warning and their website fell off the face of the earth and so did their traffic!

7 years ago

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Corzhens

I didn’t know that there is this thing called DMCA for copyright issues. That is nice to know because plagiarism is getting to be a big issue with the proliferation of article spinning tools. But infringement of copyright is painful when your content is original and you had experienced painstaking labor in writing it. Here comes a copycat with just a click and would run away with your article. At least there is now a venue for such issues as plagiarism and copyright infringements.

5 years ago

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