SEO Tycoon

**Learning Newbie** · 06-22-2007, 01:55 PM

Try a Google search for "modern great library" - or just click the link that goes to the SERPs. Look at the #1 result:

Quote:

A Modern Great Library

A Modern Great Library. Dedicated to knowledge for its own sake, with a hunger for new ideas. Welcome to the new Great Library. ...

I disabled the link here because my lawyer won't let me break the guy's legs.

Actually the URL ( unblocksurf dot com ) doesn't seem to go anywhere. But still, that's text lifted verbatim from my site. This brings up a few questions:

WTF is going on?
Can I sue them for copyright violation? I'm almost sure it's MFA, and I never gave them permission to use my work for any reason, let alone to profit from.
If this can happen to such an untraveled site as mine, do you have the same problem?

**ADAM Web Design** · 06-22-2007, 05:06 PM

My guess is they're not using it at all...directly. It looks like it's a web proxy service.

http://www.google.com/search?q=www.u...e7&rlz=1I7GGLF

All that happened is that one of the user sessions got indexed by big G.

If you want to stop any future recurrences, you'd have to figure out which users are the UnblockSurf users and either disallow proxy server browsing on your site (never a bad thing, IMHO...there's almost no good reason for proxy surfing, tinfoil hat theories aside) or have them redirected to a page that doesn't allow the UnblockSurf proxy to be used.

Mind you, I'm not exactly an expert on proxies.

Good question, though.

**Learning Newbie** · 06-22-2007, 05:55 PM

Ah, okay, I guess I don't feel quite as bad knowing this was more of a bumbling mistake than someone lining up their cross-hairs on me.

The more experience I get, the more I realize I really should have used WordPress and got my own server. Oh well, live and learn.

**ADAM Web Design** · 06-22-2007, 07:57 PM

You still can do that. WordPress is a relatively easy install, and you can copy/paste your posts from Blogspot into WP. You can even customize the timestamp in order to match the dates/times of the old posts with the new ones.

**willcode4beer** · 06-25-2007, 10:28 AM

Good to see this turned out to not be an issue.

But if it comes up again,

Here is copyscape's guide to responding to plagiarism.
http://copyscape.com/respond.php

They are pretty good at finding when your pages have been plagiarized. Its also pretty good for finding the original source for many of the forum postings that are little more than copy/paste
;-)

For good or bad, in the current state of the world, web hosts are very responsive to DMCA notices (many would say too responsive). I would recommend starting with the polite approach, an move toward a stronger stance only as needed. Its not good to be overly aggressive if someone just made an honest mistake. Besides, you might be able to recruit them to help build content.

Something else to keep in mind. When you publish RSS feeds, you are basically giving anybody permission to publish your content on their site. Just make sure you find the balance that is right for you.