Web content theft [Archive] - Real Estate Forum

Douglas Rasor

02-10-2005, 06:23 PM

I have had a few pictures I took and comments I made on bands that I saw, copied onto their web sites. The pictures were non-professional quality and the comments were clumbsy at best. So I was just happy to see that somebody had been to my site and liked some of the content! :D

As I get better at both I will be more concerned about it. Thanks for the links to resource tools to help in this matter.

VegasMack

02-11-2005, 06:46 AM

If it hasn't happened to you yet, its only due to your site not being ranked high enough in the serps. Ours has had content taken several times. The easiest way to check is using www.copyscape.com If anyone else has any similar tools, please post them!Really neat tool jade456.

Interesting results.

Thanks for sharing,

~VegasMack

sward

02-11-2005, 07:52 AM

yeah I use that tool also very helpful! Can't you block your pics from getting stolen at least by the syders by adding your folder to the Robot.txt?
sward :)

VegasMack

02-11-2005, 10:25 AM

It helps.

~VegasMack

Las Vegas Homes

02-11-2005, 03:52 PM

yeah I use that tool also very helpful! Can't you block your pics from getting stolen at least by the syders by adding your folder to the Robot.txt?
sward :)

You can also just login to a website and right click on the photo and copy and paste or if the webmaster has the no right click enabled then all you have to do is left click hold it down and scan across the photo and go copy it to a folder. My point being if someone wants to steal your real estate photos there isnt much that can be done unless you catch them. IMHO

jimj

02-14-2005, 08:23 PM

Funny you guys are on this topic. There is a real bad case of copying a webmasters sites playing itself out on another forum right now.
:eek:

Las Vegas Homes

02-16-2005, 07:50 PM

In real estate this is a big problem. It takes a lot of time out of your day to deal with people that want to copy your content and design. I persoanlly suggest that one other route you can take if it is a real estate agent is to contact their broker. Some brokers will do something if they know what can happen once you file a complaint with their host and also with their Realtor association if that person is a Realtor and bound by the code of ethics.

Jade456

02-17-2005, 05:26 PM

It has happened to all of us, several times at least. The last time it was an indian company that a local realtor hired that basically stole half of my home and one entire page. In that case, they had no idea and had the content removed immediately. You can't understand how infuriating it can be until it happens to you----especially when the perpetrator thinks its no big deal. All of the top sites listed in our market have had this happen, and if you surveyed other areas I'm sure it would be the same there as well.

Real Estate Forum

02-19-2005, 09:06 PM

WOW .. and I thought there was no need for this category :rolleyes:

Jade456

02-22-2005, 08:20 PM

You could put up the wall of shame. Those that have resorted to stealing others hard work and feel no remorse. It would be a big list. :(

jimj

02-22-2005, 08:21 PM

Yes the list would be about half the Internet!

Las Vegas Homes

02-26-2005, 05:31 PM

We all if we have any presence what so ever on the internet for our real estate sites will deal with this thieft issue several times a year. Until the NAr or something steps in to regulate or pass regulations for violations of those that call themselves Realtor, this will be something we have to deal with all the time.

We can however help eachother stop it, if you see someones content on someone esles site that is in your market notify them. This will cause a snowball effect and even though we are competitors, there is plenty of business out there for all of us.

Jade456

03-02-2005, 01:35 PM

Well put Wayne. I think its important to conduct ourselves in a professional manner in everything we do. The internet gives a great sense of security and anominity---which leads some to severe bad judgement. Nothing is worth your integrity.

VegasMack

03-15-2005, 09:08 AM

I think its important to conduct ourselves in a professional manner in everything we do. The internet gives a great sense of security and anominity---which leads some to severe bad judgement. Nothing is worth your integrity.You are absolutely correct IMHO Jade456.

Wouldn’t content theft come under the heading of an ethics violation, and has anyone tried reporting it to a local board?

~VegasMack

Las Vegas Real Estate

03-15-2005, 12:04 PM

If it hasn't happened to you yet, its only due to your site not being ranked high enough in the serps. Ours has had content taken several times. The easiest way to check is using www.copyscape.com If anyone else has any similar tools, please post them!
Will copyscape also identify photos copied? Great tool I haven't seen before - thanks, Jade!

HHI Golf Guy

03-15-2005, 03:37 PM

Wouldn’t content theft come under the heading of an ethics violation, and has anyone tried reporting it to a local board?

That's a very interesting question.

Jade456

03-23-2005, 11:13 PM

Tried that. The board could care less. Said to talk to the other person's broker. They gave the impression of not wanting to get involved. Although, personally, I think its a huge violation. For crying out loud, its THEFT! How is that not an ethics question? IF the person will steal from someone else,.....

VegasMack

03-24-2005, 08:39 AM

I would still file an ethics violation complaint. If we all start doing that, the Local Boards will have to address the problem as will NAR eventually.

After all as you stated Jade456 it is theft.

~VegasMack

Las Vegas Homes

03-25-2005, 12:26 AM

Our Las vegas board is a good example, they dont care about anything that goes on with internet sites pertaining to other real estate agents violating trademarks or stealing copyrighted content. The only way to stop these real estate agents and their webmasters is to take them to court. IMHO

VegasMack

03-26-2005, 10:35 PM

“The wheel that squeaks the loudest gets greased first”. The local boards won’t do anything until enough REALTORS® file ethics violation complaints.

They will not address a situation until forced to do so.

I for one am going to start making my presence known to the local board.

~VegasMack

Las Vegas Homes

03-26-2005, 10:45 PM

It has been tried in the past and with little luck. Most of the board directors have their own agenda. The internet is still very very very new to the board in relation to real estate sites, content theft, copyrighted material and even the use of the MLS. In time this will change but until then we are at the mercy of our Realtor boards.

VegasMack

03-26-2005, 11:10 PM

When it happens I will post the results to this forum.

~VegasMack

Jade456

04-13-2005, 11:01 AM

San Diego Real Estate

05-05-2005, 07:03 PM

Jade456 what a story! LOL that is a great one!

Jade456

05-09-2005, 10:17 PM

No kidding. Still getting them too. Serves them right.

VegasMack

05-10-2005, 09:17 PM

I hope he doesn’t expect a referral when he finds out. :D

~VegasMack

Jade456

05-13-2005, 09:38 PM

LOL. Being a theif idiot, he probably would. I got a referral for him alright.

darren

07-03-2005, 11:07 PM

Someone mentioned about protecting your images - you can do that by inserting javascript script into your HTML and it'll block them from right clicking, but if they have any common sense they can get around this a number of ways..

There is a meta tag you can also use.. if you hover over an image you'll see a little toolbar appears, which lets them save, email etc the image. To stop this appearing on your images use this;

<meta http-equiv="ImageToolbar" content="No">

You can also disable the browser so that they can't view the source code but I can't remember how to do that right now (its 7am here and I havent been to bed yet!)

Hope this helps

Darren

Phoenix Realtor

07-04-2005, 01:29 PM

More good ideas from Darren! Glad to have you here buddy.

I feel that theives spend more time and energy figuring out how to steal and screw everybody than it would take to simply do it themselves. So almost no matter what protection you put in place they'll still steal from you. Even if they have to print out the page and hand type the content into their site. That sucks!

Jade456

08-03-2005, 07:32 PM

Matt is right. Pretty much doesn't matter what you do, someone will figure out a way around it and rip you off. Great tip on the toolbar. Is it specifically for IE or does it work across the board?

Las Vegas Homes

08-03-2005, 11:57 PM

If someone wants to steal your real estate content or images , you cant stop them. You can disable the right click function on your site but all someone has to do is go to view and view source...Also if someone wants to steal all your content anyone who has frontpage can do this with a click of a button.

There has been talk lately of using watermarks on your pages, this could be an answer but quite a pain to do. Until the NAr steps in and places regulations on this subject for Realtors, it will be a while before it ends.

MaxSinclair

08-05-2005, 09:51 PM

I read a book called Networds. The author talks about having a particular style in net marketing that sets you apart from others. I'm beginning to craft some of my writing on the site (and particularly in all my email communications) in a more casual style rather than the typical corporate talk. The immediate response from my clients is overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps having a unique way of writing can deter some people from copying the contents because it's too personal. Just a thought.

justicewhite

08-06-2005, 03:21 AM

I definitely agree with the email style. Emailing contacts with some "not so serious" style has been our approach for a while and it is amazing how well people respond.

Jade456

09-11-2005, 10:13 PM

%$$%)* I've been hit again. One guy's whole site aside from navigation is all my stuff. He was so stupid he left all the links back to my site live. Same thing for another guy. The woman I got a hold of actually had the balls to say she wrote it all herself. What she failed to realize is that one of the pictures she took I left a picture of a mouse cursor in it on purpose. The lazy @#$@#$ are driving me nuts. :mad:

kthor

09-12-2005, 08:55 PM

I won't hold my breath. I found another site by accident that took about half of one of my pages. I found it through my logs because I've been getting hits from it. Apparently, the thief wasn't bright enough to not copy one of my page urls....so he has been sending me clients. :D

and you complaining because you are not getting enought clients from them ? :eek:
LOL - I would send them a thank you note..LOL

Shimmer

04-25-2006, 10:25 AM

nice tool thanks

HomeSurfer

04-25-2006, 09:06 PM

Realtors are members of the country's largest trade organization, the National Association of Realtors - and it is running a series of ads on television promoting Realtors and their adherence to a "strict" code of ethics.

Copying is unethical, whether the copying is from other Realtors or anyone else.

Since the web has become such an important part of marketing, you would think the NAR would have an official policy on copying, plagiarism, and so on -- just like major colleges - and as strict as major colleges.

Does it? I would like to see an official policy that prevents members from copying from other members AND non-members.

Jade456

05-25-2006, 11:33 PM

Terry, that would be nice but they are still stuck in the stone age. I think that they don't see it as a problem....but lord help you if you get a url with a city name and the term realtor in it......

cutreal

06-04-2006, 03:14 PM

do you guy's know MSN is the best in filtering the duplicate contents
They alway's pic the pages with original contnets. But in the case of google or yahoo they check takes pages from the website with high PR.

Shimmer

07-05-2006, 01:12 PM

www.copyscape.com this is the best helpfull sites for web site owners, thanks again and if you know anything else like that please tell us ... :)

BajaGeoff

08-01-2006, 11:16 AM

Sometimes the easiest thing to do is contact the company that hosts their website and file a complaint. Web hosts do not want to deal with this so they will usually just investigate your situation and tell the fraudulent site to take all of the content down or the site will be shut off. The only problem you may have is that the fraudulent site can get another web hosting company.

MaxSinclair

08-01-2006, 11:29 AM

You're right. They'll just move to another site. There's really no good solution to content theft. I'm trying to move content now to video form where I can embed watermark on the clips. The down side is that this strategy is not as search engine friendly.

HHI Golf Guy

08-01-2006, 11:43 AM

I recently came across a web designer/SEO chump that plagiarized the ad copy from one of my client sites. All they did was change the name of the location. They used it on 2 web sites, 2 blogs, and 4 Googlebase entries.

I contacted the broker that owned the sites, and she had her web person call me. He was pretty much an a$$, and basically told me to prove he had copied the info. Well, if you read through any of our sites you know that we develop ad copy that targets a specific buyer demographic, not just informational text.

My agent is ticked off enough to get her attorney involved. We are filing DMCA complaints, and she is planning to sue both the broker that had the plagiarized material and her web designer. My agent has deep, deep, deep pockets and plans to make an example of these folks.

What I still don't understand is why the NAR refuses to take action on web content theft - it's a clear ethics violation. Now some may say that's not fair to the agent if they hired someone to develop their web site. But it's not much different than an agent having their assistantor someone else develop a print ad and then be slapped with a Fair Housing Act violation. The agent is ultimately responsible.

BTW - please excuse any typos. I just bought a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and it's very hard to adapt. I felt the same way about my trackball when I bought it, but now I can't live without it.

BajaGeoff

08-01-2006, 11:49 AM

HHI Golf Guy

08-01-2006, 11:55 AM

I would like to think that the search engines could implement a system that could validate unique content when it goes live, and then any other site that copies it would get penalized for copying it. I know that is what has been said but it doesn't really seem to be happening as such.

Last year Google ran into 302 redirect issues that seemed to trigger duplicate content penalties. How did they determine which site was the duplicare site? By age of domain name. The older site was determined to have the original content.

This happened to one of our client sites last year, and G began de-indexing their pages. Luckily, we caught it and G made the corrections.

The best way to manually see which site is original is to use the Wayback Machine.

BajaGeoff

08-01-2006, 12:04 PM

We did have a problem with another site that copied all of our content but the site was so new that wayback machine had not yet indexed it in their archive. a year and a half later and it still is not indexed. i guess that can also prove to be helpful since our site has archives dating back to 1999 for our business.....

Realest

08-29-2006, 02:34 PM

i searched my website (michelledenomme.com) and i recieved a couple hits.. but none of the websites even looked similar and the highlighted portions were only text

Chief Tutor

08-29-2006, 05:35 PM

I did the search on your website, and found a few websites with some aspects that were the same, but what you are looking for is websites where more than 80% of the content has been copied word for word. In this case, there is content theft. If less than 80% of the content is copied, then by copyright standards, it is not copied content.

From, a legal standard, I am not 100% sure the above is the standard, but I beleive it is around that percentage.

Nickie

09-02-2006, 04:09 PM

You know, I read this thread earlier today and it reminded me when someone copied my entire site earlier this year. After we contacted her, she did take it down.

But I'm so upset, I just stumbled across someone else who copied two of my key pages word for word. And she is here in the same city! Grrrr!!!

jennsellsfast

09-12-2006, 05:11 PM

I dont trust copy scape. It is not as good as adverised.

vegas-kid

11-03-2006, 08:38 AM

there are scripts you can put in a site to diable right click and highlight. It's a little extreme but i do it. The highlight section only works in IE not FF.

Of course they can still view the source if they are that persistant. But some of these yahoo's are so green they dont know about that.

abrahamchaffin

12-16-2006, 04:06 PM

I really don't think there as any way to avoid people snagging your content/design. Anything can be duplicated by those who know how, and those who have reason to generally know how.
The tools to find who has copied your stuff are useful though in the world of Real Estatet as you could contact the MLS board the Realtor is a member of.

Traume

05-17-2007, 11:04 AM

The legal issues (when dealing with websites) that I've always run into is much like it is in the music industry. You run into "public domain" rules and laws.

You change the lyrics and you have a new song...

If anyone has a right to complain about copying, it would be the AP.

HHI Golf Guy

05-17-2007, 11:53 AM

The legal issues (when dealing with websites) that I've always run into is much like it is in the music industry. You run into "public domain" rules and laws.

I don't like that analogy. Books in libraries are within the public domain the same way that web pages are on the internet. You can't copy a book and then have it published under your own name.

The same goes for web sites. You can nail someone to the wall for copying your content. All it takes is time and sometimes money.

tarheit

05-17-2007, 12:26 PM

Herein lies the problem with copyright law. If someone has copied your work (and remember, everything is copyright automatically, you need not even say it is copyright), then you can sue for actual damages. Before you may sue, you must register your copyright. However, if you have registered your copyright before the infringement takes place, you can sue for actual damages, punative damages, and legal costs.

Most don't register their copyright, so they are limited to actual damages (lost visitors generating ad revenue, etc.). In most cases it's not worth pursuing.

So, the moral is, if you have something you really want to protect and you're are willing put put out the resources for a lawsuit, register the copyright before publishing your site. Then you stand a change of recouping your costs plus some if you prevail (assumming you can track down the violator, they are some place you can touch them, and they have pockets deep enough. A big IF anymore on the internet).

-Tim

HHI Golf Guy

05-17-2007, 12:36 PM

You do not have to register your copyright to protect it or enforce it.

Here is some good info on copyright law as it pertains to the web:

http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/cheese.htm

http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/copyrightlaw.htm

tarheit

05-17-2007, 12:52 PM

You are correct, you don't need to register it. However, before filing suit for damages you must register it. Plus to get statuatory damages and attorney fees it needs to be registered either within 3 months of publishing or before the infringement takes place.

http://www.keytlaw.com/Copyrights/benefits.htm

So given the cost of legal fees, and the minimal 'actual damages' most of our websites would have, If you intend on sueing for more than just forcing the other party to take down the information, it is a good idea to register it. The cost is minimal ($30 as of the date of the article), but the benefits of registering are huge (and would have to be done anyways in case of filing a suit). The statutory damages allowed with a registered copyright is also huge leverage you even just need to send out a cease and desist demand.

-Tim

HHI Golf Guy

05-17-2007, 12:58 PM

We have had a number of content theft issues from our client web sites. When this happens, we usually have our Realtor's attorney draft a letter asking them to remove the content.

In one case the attorney also threatened to go to the NAR and local board with an ethics violation charge. The content was immediately removed.

I also had someone copy almost all of my SEO site. Again, a well written letter from an attorney cleared up the issue immediately.