A few days ago I got a note from a reader that they’d found an exact duplicate of one of my more complicated articles on Ask Dave Taylor hosted on a second-tier blogging platform. Not so good, but honestly, I figured that it was probably more trouble to try and shut it down than it was worth, because it’s not like copying one part off my 2500+ page site is going to adversely affect me in the online world.
However, theft of intellectual property is still theft, so I composed a quick message to the “abuse” account of the hosting company:

Hello. It’s come to my attention from a reader that one of the blogs on your site has a page that’s a direct rip-off of a page of my own. His page:
http://harbic.blogsome.com/2008/07/05/how-do-i-install-windows-xp-on-my-mac-with-parallels-desktop/
And my original page:

Rather than hassle with DMCA takedown notices, filing complaints with Google, etc, I’d appreciate if you can just drop this page from this user’s site, along with a warning to him about wholesale theft of content.
Thank you for your prompt attention.

Much to my surprise and delight, I received the following message from from their administrator within 20 hours:

Hi Dave,
We’ve deleted the blog in question. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Regards,
Roger

My kudos to the Blogsome team for dealing with a nuisance complaint in a speedy and appropriate manner, and I encourage you to also take at least this first step of complaining to the hosting company of a site that’s ripping off your own content to see what happens.
Ya just never know, it might be just that easy…