Writing informational articles for the Web is a good way to establish oneself as an authority on any topic. Creating articles is also very effective in generating traffic for your website. However, deceitful authors can plagiarize your work (with very little effort). Read on for advice and tips to cope with copyright violations.

A few lazy individuals have plagiarized a number of my articles for their blogs and websites. These sloths deliberately copied my hard work, verbatim, without my biography and Internet links. So far, dishonest webmasters with Google adSense blogs or directories have committed all violations.

I decided to nose around until I pinpointed contact information for the violators. However, these troublemakers are usually adept at concealing e-mail addresses and configuring blogs so that nobody is able to post comments.

As a result, I contacted Google. Google has zero tolerance for copyright infringements. Such violations reflect poorly on their corporate image, and they respond rapidly to legitimate complaints. Performing a search for: 'digital millennium copyright act google.com' will locate a page with full instructions and company contact information. The page also displays links to appropriate websites with more particulars about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

My next step was to contact the hosting company for each of the violators. It is often difficult to unearth a valid e-mail address. You can try generic addresses like abuse@'hostingwebsite', info@'hostingwebsite', webmaster@'hostingwebsite', etc. You may have to visit the webhost online and complete a support request. Alternatively, you may need to spend some time on the telephone.

My final action was to type out a document similar to the one below. I then faxed it to Google and the hosting companies, while I continued to monitor the violating websites. In some cases, pirated content would disappear for a few days, and then the bootlegged articles would reappear.

--- BEGIN SAMPLE COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DOCUMENT ---

All of the articles on the following pages are a violation of my intellectual copyright and the copyright of the article directory from which they were copied:

(Link to first web page)

(Link to second web page)

(Link to third web page), etc.

The articles were copied from here:

(Link to author summary webpage at article directory from which articles were plagiarized)

The copied text blatantly violates the publisher's terms of service, clearly linked to on the above page:

(Link to the article directory's terms of service page)

Every article is a direct copy and paste of my work from the above article directory, without the applicable copyright notice and links to my site or to the article directory, as required in their terms of service.

I hereby avow, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner.

Type your name here.

Sign here.

--- END SAMPLE COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DOCUMENT ---

You may have to change the wording of the document to match whatever is appropriate for your situation. It is important to provide complete contact information: your postal/email addresses and fax/cell/telephone numbers.

Remember to include a copyright notice with each of your articles, similar to the one below. Let's all work together to transform the Net into an honest environment; let's clear out the vermin who prey on the intellectual property of others.

(c)Copyright Kathy Steinemann: This article is free to publish only if this copyright notice, the byline, and the author's note below (with active links) are included.