Writing content requires a substantial amount of time, effort, and creativity so it becomes very frustrating when you discover that your creative works have been stolen — and such has been the case more than once this year for me, and probably for you too!

Plagiarism and content theft is probably far more widespread then what anyone can imagine, and it’s down-right disturbing! With the RSS Feed syndication it makes it even easier for this to occur, and the end result can be that your content shows up on another person’s website. In addition to myself there are countless others out there who had their content used for plagiarism or stolen from their RSS feed, blog post or website.

What prompted me to write this article is the fact that one of my articles from one of my Blogger blogs has had an excerpt from it published on another person’s website, without proper author credits going to my blog! At the very least the quote, or in this case “excerpt” from my article should contain a workable link to my site where I have the article published, but instead the individual only provided my url, not hyperlinked text for a human to click on! The person acquired my excerpt from my article from my RSS feed.

Now before you think that individual may have done enough because they at least provided a link, it’s not the case! Again, the minimum requirement for copyright law is that the individual should provide a workable link that a human can click on! RSS feed or not!

By all means I’m not a lawyer, however if one simply reads a few basics of the copyright law, it seems to me it covers our content that goes out via an RSS feed! The US copyright law states,

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device…

According to what I read above, the content our RSS feeds puts out would certainly be considered as “copies” as stated above by the US copyright office. By the way, for those of you who do not reside in the US, it does not make you exempt from the requirements of the law!

Not only did this individual use my content by using an excerpt from my RSS feed, but it’s also among a long list of at least 20 others — all without a workable link to any of the authors sites! But, here’s what is most annoying of all! The person is using the long list of RSS feed excerpts to promote his/her ebook they are selling from the same web page!

That in itself is enough of a violation as it is, but this leads me to the question, “Did the person publish my creative works in their ebook?” which they are now marketing for monetary gain! My suspicions are that most likely they have, but the only way I will know is if I purchase their ebook for the asking price of $7.00 to determine if their 30 page ebook is publishing my tips provided in my article!

At the very least it makes one suspicious of plagiarism, and makes me wonder if he/she re-wrote my creative works, as well as the other author’s works whose content excerpts were displayed. Why else would they show excerpts from over 20 articles pertaining to the same topic that their ebook is about?

In closing, if you have your content stolen you may be wondering what to do. One of my favorite places to look is on Lorelle on WordPress for a very thorough article on what to do if your content was stolen.

In regards to how you may provide greater protection for your RSS feed content, if you’re using WordPress, you’re in luck! For WordPress blogs (on your own domain), you can install a plugin, which will add a copyright notification to the bottom of each of your blog posts displayed in your RSS feed! I just installed the plugin today, and thought you would like to learn about it to help protect your RSS feed content.

Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin is the plugin you will want to install! It will add a copyright notice to each blog post that is displayed from your RSS feed. Be sure to follow the instructions for use once you have it installed into your WordPress plugin directory. If enough bloggers use the plugin, perhaps it would serve as a way to help reduce the amount of content theft from RSS feeds.

I hope this tip about RSS feed copyright notice provided you with some good food for thought, and something for your brain to feed on — with or without the use of the RSS feed! Either way, don’t let the content thieves discourage you from blogging!