We are all being copied. The moment any new article gets published, it is being republished on some crappy blog (more often than not, without any credit). There’s not much we can do about that.
This post is about those content stealing that is done through direct copy-pasting from the page. This is just one way to steal your content but it is used pretty often.
So how do we go about people copying our content?
1. Force a link back to your page
Tracer is a free tool that forces a potential content thief to link back to your page. If any part of your page is copied, it adds a link back to your site to the copied content. Of course, the link might be manually removed but most thieves never care to.
The installation is really quick:
- Register
- Get the script and put it sitewide before </body>
- You are done!
It also offers some nice statistics on which content is copied off your pages and how often.
2. Allow to embed your content (instead of re-publishing it)
EmbedArticle is an interesting service that invites anyone attempting to copy your content to use the generated code to embed the article (with the link back to the original). You can even configure the widget to show your ads in the embed article (to earn from that re-used content).
Just insert the generated code (or use the WordPress plugin) to get it working. The Embed Article widget window will pop open whenever more than 10 words (or whatever number you set) are highlighted and there is a copy command.
If you want, you can even encourage embedding your content to other sites by using a handy interactive button:
The site also offers basic stats on who embeds your content and how many clicks you get.
Warning: please test thoroughly before running. For me, the plugin won’t work for some of my blogs. Not sure if that was the theme issue.
3. Forbid copying text
This method seems to be both extreme and low-effective (since it only forbids right-click but not CTRL+C copying) but it is still often used.
WP-PreventCopyBlogs (by Johnu George) is a handy plugin that has quite a few options:
- Track those who copy your content (you’ll need to grant the addon your data base access);
- Disable right-click in the selected text (you can create your own message for those who attempt to copy anything from your blog using Right-click option);
- Disable selecting text all over.
Using the plugin, you can probably request a link back from those who attempt to copy your content:
