image credit

For those of you following this blog, you are probably aware that this entire blog was copied by a splog, a fake blog that profits from stolen content.  I wrote about my experience and what I learned to do if you have been splogged last week.  I have learned from this experience that what most people who write on this topic say is true, "It's not IF your blog will be splogged but WHEN."  So if you have a blog and haven't protected it, now is the time to do it (before it even happens).  I think it's worth it to take the time to protect your content considering how much time you spend creating it.  Why should someone profit from your work?
I think protecting your blog is like protecting your house from being robbed.  You never can say that it's impossible to have your house broken into, no matter how much you do to protect your house.  Even if you take steps to protect your blog, it can still be stolen so you need to check every once in a while to make sure that it isn't.  I talked about how to do this in my last post.   But much like protecting your house, the harder you make it to steal the lazy theif is most likely to go to elsewhere.   

First it helps to think about who is your likely burgler whether it's for your home security (is it likely to be a drug addict or a highly skilled burgler), the same as it does for an online thief (is it an individual copy and pasting a blog posts or 2 of yours or is it a splogger using software and bots to steal  nuumerous individuals content)?  In my case I believe my splogger to have 1-3 splogs each one probably stealing content from 50-100 individuals via software and or bots that scrape the content by RSS feeds and strip the hyperlinks. This was a side thing he was doing while still having a full time job (related to computers).   Chances are if your content is stolen it will be in a similar manner.  I think it helps to first learn about how scrappers are able to do this.  If you want to learn about the software used to do this The Distil blog wrote an article listing specific software that is often used by sploggers.


How to Copy Right Your Blog
 Believe it or not some people think everything on line is free and not copyrighted.  This obviously is not true, the moment you hit publish your work is copyrighted.  You do not need to do anything for it to be copyrighted.   With that said it still is helpful to further make your copyright clear to avoid any confusion.   I learned this by working with photo printing.  If an image has a copyright symbol most photo finishing labs will not touch it.   Luckily I knew this so every image I have taken I have posted this blog's name or URL as a form of copyright.

Brand all photographs you have taken:
You can easily do this in photoshop, or using free software such as paint that comes free with windows under accessories using the text tool.  I like the open source (free to all) program GIMP that works on Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux.  I am so glad that I did this as it made it much more obvious that my work had been stolen and at least the post had some kind of forced credit. For more ideas on protecting your images I found a great article by Nature Focused Photography.

You should make a clear statement about if and how your content can be used.
Make sure that your statement is clearly visible and easy to find.  I have mine posted on the side and under my about page.  Be specific about your terms in your statement.

Post a copyright message at the end of your page
This should be paced under the attribution gadget in blogger.  See the bottom of this site for example.
If you don't know how to make the copyright symbol, you can just copy and paste it.  You can also use a creative commons licenses here.  I have not used this myself because I prefer to define under my statement so I have not used this myself, but it seems like an easy way to make your policies clear.

Post a copyright message as a post feed footer for your RSS Feeds.
Most sploggers use automated software that they plug in sites to and it automatically steals your content when you publish it via RSS feeds and the automatically publishes it on the splog (my splogger even admitted that this was how he had obtained my content).  So I would also suggest putting your URL in your copyright message so even if they strip the links in your site (like my splogger did) they are forced to have a link back to your site.  You can see mine as an example here.   If you are using blogger you can do this by going to the settings option, and then click on other.  Under the post feed footer box right what you would like to display below your RSS Feeds, and that's it. Another great idea for a footer came from The WM freelance writers connection
“This copyrighted article was originally published on MyBlog.com (hyperlinked.) If found published elsewhere, this material has been illegally scraped and should be reported to Me@MyBlog.com (your hyperlinked email address.)”

This way, content thieves who steal via your RSS feed will out themselves when they publish your work to their so-called websites.  Love it!

Place a Similar Copyright Message as a Footer for each Posts and Non Hyper links to Other Posts
Basically, write as though you know your content will be stolen.  Lots of sites say to place lots of links to your site in each posts (which is a good idea anyway) so that if your content is stolen you will force them to give you credit and a link back to your site.  The only problem is that most software strip all links from your posts (my splogger did).  So even though it doesn't look as pretty I would at least make sure you have the name of you site and the full URL of your site in each posts you write.  This way it is making it more clear who owns the content, and can at least maybe direct some traffic to your site (see bottom of this posts for an example).  I am currently manually adding it to each posts but plan to see if there is a way to automate this.  If you know of a way to do this please let me know!