Blog Theft Part 2: A Learning Experience

Thank you so much for the help and support you gave me about my blog theft. I started to name everyone who has commented on this blog, plurk, twitter, and facebook but there were so many, it took up half the page so I decided against it. So many of you have given me great suggestions and even went so far as to help investigate the perpetrators. Please read on to see the suggestions from Richard, the response from Hostgator, and at the end, my own response.

Here are some details that Richard was so kind to share with me. I also want to thank some others who had sent some of the same information also but his added comments also helped me and I think others would benefit from this information too.

“1. Try to determine if the person is doing it maliciously or innocently. This is important because it influences how I take my next steps. Determining this can be tricky, but generally if the blog reusing your content doesn't allow comments, uses a lot of inappropriate advertising, or uses a proxy server to register their domain they are intentionally stealing your content. In some of my cases I've had teachers/ principals reuse my content innocently because they didn't understand fair use.”
2. Run a WHOIS search using Go Daddy (or other sites according to another email from Richard)) to see who has registered the domain. In your case the person used a proxy to hide their contact information. Legitimate bloggers don't use a proxy for registering domains. When there isn't a proxy in place it's easy to locate the contact information for the person who registered the domain.”
3. If you can't get a

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- Source : http://successfulteaching.blogspot.com