Mike Van Bergen Steals Content - Stop Online Copyright Infringement

According to his website, Mike Van Bergen is an Internet marketing veteran. In truth, he steals articles from other people and passes them off as his own work, in an attempt to make himself seem like an expert. It’s an ugly example of online copyright infringement — a despicable practice that has gotten completely out of hand in recent years.

Many people feel powerless to stop online copyright infringement, and so they just throw up their hands and say, “What can I do?” Well, I’m going to tell you what you can do. And I’m going to use Mike Van Bergen as a real-life example.

The Van Bergen Story of Copyright Infringement

I publish a lot of articles online, using websites like EzineArticles.com. And from time to time, I like to see where these articles have been published online. So I’ll take a unique sentence or phrase from the article and Google it. It’s an easy way to see how well your article marketing program is working. What does this have to do with online copyright infringement and Mike Van Bergen, you ask? We are getting to that.

A couple of weeks ago, I did this Google process with one of my articles, and I was shocked to find that some guy named Mike Van Bergen had stolen my work. He just grabbed the article from one of the distribution websites where I had published it, took my name off the byline, stripped away my author bio at the end, and added his own name and bio, claiming the work was his own. Then he published it through ArticleCity.com. Long story short — my article is now all over the Internet with Mike Van Bergen as the author. It’s a classic (yet disgusting) case of online copyright infringement.

Here’s a guy who claims to be an Internet marketing expert, to the point of charging people for his “wisdom.” But in reality, he is nothing but a content thief. I work hard to create helpful articles on a variety of marketing topics, and he steals this one without a second thought.

What to Do About Copyright Violators

I have had it with people like Mike Van Bergen … people who think it’s okay to steal other people’s work and pass it off as their own. So I am launching a crusade through this blog and several others to educate people about online copyright infringement and what they can do to stop it. You can help me in that goal by linking to this blog post. This will help it rank well in search engines for the phrase “online copyright infringement.” That way, whenever somebody looks for information on the subject, they’ll find this blog post … and they’ll know just what to do about this despicable behavior.

Now, I’m no lawyer. So I don’t plan to get into the legal details of copyright law. But I will tell you this. If you write content and publish it online (such as an article, for example), and somebody takes that content and passes it off as their own work, then they’ve committed online copyright infringement. They have broken the law and violated your rights.

So don’t let them get away with it!

I’m sure there is some legal recourse you can take, and you can learn all about it on the U.S. government’s copyright website. But I myself have little faith in such a bureaucratic process. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to really get the attention of those content thieves, while operating entirely within the law.

Step 1 - Give the Thief a Chance

The first thing you should do is give the person a chance to correct their mistake. This works for me about 99% of the time. I will send an email to the webmaster and inform them that the content is mine. Most will say, “Oh, sorry. I had no idea I was doing anything wrong.” And they’ll proceed to remove or correct the copyright infringement content. Of course they know better. Everybody knows stealing is wrong. But the point is to give them a chance to fix the problem.

I wrote to Mike Van Bergen when I found he had been passing my work off as his own, and I got the following response: “Sorry Brandon. I’m fairly new to the world of internet. Didn’t realize I had done wrong. I have removed the articles from the blog.”

See what I mean? Everyone pretends they didn’t know stealing the work of others was wrong. That’s like telling a cop, “Sorry, officer. I honestly didn’t think there was anything wrong with stealing this digital camera from the electronics store. I’m fairly new to the whole shopping thing.”

I wrote back to Mike Van Bergen and told him that the article was published in several places online (aside from his blog), and that he needed to correct the problem.

He responded by saying: “I’m sorry to say that I can’t spend the time looking for these on other sites because I do work at a full time job.”

Incidentally, I also work a full time job, but I still find time to write my own material, instead of resorting to online copyright infringement and stealing the work of others.

So here we have an example of an infringement scenario where you have to take things to the next level — negative publicity.

Step 2 - Publicize the Copyright Infringement

The worst thing you can do is ignore the problem. If you do that, the content thief will keep on stealing content from people … including you! So in those cases where you know the name of the copyright violator, you can publicize the act online as I have done here. Keep it legal though. You can’t make any false written statements about the person, because that constitutes libel (which is a crime). But you can certainly explain what the person did to you, and you can do it in the most public way possible.

I certainly don’t enjoy taking an hour out of my day to write this blog post about Mike Van Bergen and online copyright infringement. But I knew that if I didn’t do this, there was a good chance Mike Van Bergen would continue stealing content from people, possibly even me.

Step 3 - Contact Website and Blog Hosting Companies

If you still haven’t gotten the person to correct their online copyright infringement issue (or if they publish an anonymous website or blog), you can contact their web hosting or blog hosting company. I often find cases of content theft on blogs published on the Blogspot.com domain (Blogger). There is a “Flag” button at the top of these blogs, and you can use it to alert Blogger / Google that the person is practicing online copyright infringement. I strongly encourage you to do this when it’s just. If a blog gets flagged repeatedly for violating Blogger’s terms, it will be banned / canceled.

If it’s not a blog but a regular website, you can do a Whois search to find out who owns the domain, where it’s hosted, etc. In some cases, you won’t be able to find out who owns the site, because they may have a private domain registration. But you can almost always find out where the website is hosted. I would contact the web hosting company and tell them the person is violating your copyrights with the stolen content, and I would provide documentation / links to back up your claim. Web hosting companies do not like customers who create problems for them, so there’s a good chance they’ll send a warning to the website owner.

Don’t Just Let it Slide!

I hope Mike Van Bergen and I have taught you a valuable lesson about online copyright infringement and what you can do about it. The important thing is that you do something about it, as opposed to throwing up your hands and saying, “Oh well.” Bad behavior left unchecked will always be bad behavior. So it’s time for the responsible and ethical webmasters of this world to join together and fight the growing problem of content theft.

Help Me Spread the Word

If you found this blog post helpful and/or inspiring, I encourage you to link to it as a recommended resource on copyright infringement. This will help increase the visibility of this article, which in turn will help us stem the tide of content theft!

Legal Disclaimer: I make no other claims or assertions about Mike Van Bergen, other than the fact that he has violated my copyrights as an author (and admits to doing so).