Now it's really heart-breaking as a blogger/writer, to have worked so hard to put together an article or post only for some random 'bloggers' copying the whole thing (sometimes word to word) and pasting directly on their own 'blog'.

What most of this guys don't know is that Copyright infringement/plagiarism is a very serious crime around the world.

  If you are a blogger or writer, and you're worried or feel someone copied the contents of your blog or article without your consent, or without them giving the credit back to you, or perhaps you want to make sure that what you've got on your site is not someone else's property. Here are the steps you can take:

*. Check for duplicates of the contents of your blog or article.
*. Take actions.

1. Google.com

This is pretty easy, just copy the article you want to check and then paste it in google search and submit. But you might need include it in a quote tag("") for accurate results. Google will return the results of where what you searched for can be found, and that way you can see who copied your contents or where it was used.

2. Copyscape.com

It's free and they help check for copies of a specific page on your site. Just enter the url(web address) of the page you want to scan. They offer advance options too in their premium package.

3. Plagspotter.com

Very similar to Copyscape, insert the url of your site or the page you want to search.

4. Articlechecker.com

This one offers flexible options, you can either use your url or just paste the contents you want to check and click on 'compare'

5. Plagiarism.com

All you need do is type one or more phrases from different parts of the documents into the searci box, and hit the enter key after each phrase then click on search. It's free, also if you want Google to e-mail you when new instances of your phrases are published on the internet, just click the 'create google alert button'.

TAKE ACTIONS

*. There are two parts to this. If you discovered that the contents on your site is some else's property and you were not allowed to use it, you should either take it down or seek their consent before they take actions against you.

*. And if you discovered that someone copied your contents without your consent or without giving credit to you.Here are the bodies you can report to:
 Most of these bodies take the issue of copyright infringement and plagiarism seriously, most especially google. If you report a case of piracy or plagiarism to google, they can go as far as taking down the blog (blogspot), we can all remember what happened to Linda Ikeji recently. That's how serious it is.

*. Nigeria Law Intellectual Property Watch
*. Takedownpiracy.com
*. Legal.aol.com