Late last night, I finally sent my first ever official DMCA takedown notice to the host of a website who felt the need to copy, in whole, one of my entries from this site. I had to send this because there was never any way I could contact the website owner. They have no information on their site, not even a form to fill out, and the domain is protected with the information of the host instead. Heck, even though my entry appears in category “search engines,” their “about” page is still the default WordPress filler text. Commenting on a stolen entry gives the error that you must be logged in to comment. So a DMCA was the only route to go.

The host told me what information they needed, but I couldn’t have done it without Jonathan of Plagiarism Today or Bes. Jonathan was so kind as to send me a template for the notice back when all that Bitacle stuff was at its height. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I never got around to sending one to Google regarding Bitacle’s use of their ads on stolen content. I guess I was a little overwhelmed that I was going to have to list several hundred URLs where they had copied my content (is that right?). Of course, others did have their acts together and Google soon killed Bitacle’s Adsense account, and now, following the URLs to the stolen content of mine on their site, I am unable to find it. So I’m happy there. But I kept the template and was finally able to use it to help me organize my thoughts and the legal mumbo-jumbo that the DMCA requires. Bes, as usual, was my proof-reader and all-around think tank. ;-)

Anyway, I emailed the DMCA to their support area and planned to go ahead and fax it today, too. I don’t have a fax, so I was going to email the document to my mom and ask her to print it for me then fax it from her machine. However, this morning when checking my email, I already had a response:

Thank you for the email DMCA complaint. We have notified the customer to remove the content by 1pm central time or face suspension. Let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.

So… wow… okay. We’ll wait and see what happens, they have two hours left. I’m curious to see how strict the deadline is… Guess what? Gone. I’m a happy camper today. :)