What to Do If Someone Plagiarizes Your Writing: 15 Steps to Get Stolen Content Removed
You found your article on someone else's site, with their name on it. Or an AI-rewritten copy of your post that ranks above the original. Here's exactly what to do next, in order, without wasting time or money.
If someone plagiarizes your writing:
- Document it with screenshots and an archived copy before it disappears
- Prove you published first with dates, drafts, or archived versions of your page
- Contact the publisher or platform, then the person, with a clear request
- File a takedown notice with the web host, and ask search engines to remove the copy
- Talk to a lawyer only if the stakes are high enough to be worth the cost
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Copyright rules differ by country.
Finding your own words under someone else's name is a strange mix of feelings. For a second, it's almost flattering: your work was good enough to steal. Then you get angry, and you should. Nobody has the right to take your work without credit or permission.
Plagiarism has also changed. In the past, someone copied your post word for word. Now they might run it through an AI tool to reword it, publish it on a content farm, and outrank you in search. Or a scraper site might republish your whole blog automatically within minutes of each post.
The good news is that the process for dealing with it is clearer than ever. Here's what to do, step by step.
First, checkWhat counts as plagiarism, and what doesn't
- Plagiarism: your words, or a light rewrite of them, published as someone else's work without credit.
- Copyright infringement: copying your protected work without permission, even with credit. Copying a whole article "with a link back" is still infringement if you didn't agree to it.
- Usually fine: a short quote with credit, writing about the same topic, or having a similar idea. Ideas aren't owned. The specific way you expressed them is.
If someone wrote their own post on the same topic, that's competition, not theft. If it's your structure, examples, and sentences with a few words swapped, that's plagiarism.
Part 1 · Steps 1–6Confirm and document
Copies can vanish the moment the person senses trouble. Collect your evidence first.
1Don't react publicly yet
It's tempting to post an angry thread right away. Wait. Calling someone out publicly before you've saved evidence gives them time to delete it, or claim you're the one who copied.
Reality: The calm, documented approach gets content removed faster than the angry one.
Try this: Give yourself one hour to collect evidence before you contact anyone.
2Screenshot and archive the copy
Take full-page screenshots that show the URL, the date, and the byline. Then save the page with an archive service like the Internet Archive's Save Page Now or archive.today, so there's an independent copy even if the original disappears. For books or magazines, keep a physical copy or clear photos.
Reality: Screenshots can be questioned. A third-party archive with a timestamp is much harder to argue with.
Try this: Archive the copied page right now, before you do anything else.
3Prove you published first
Gather proof of your original: the publish date on your site, your CMS revision history, old drafts, newsletter send dates, or an archived version of your page. The earlier and more independent the evidence, the better.
Reality: Some plagiarists will claim you copied them. Timestamps settle that argument quickly.
Try this: Search for your page in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to see if it was captured before the copy appeared.
4Find out how far it spread
Plagiarists rarely stop at one piece. Paste a distinctive sentence from each of your posts into a search engine, in quotation marks, to find exact copies. Plagiarism checkers like Copyscape can scan the web for you, and Google Alerts can notify you about new copies. Reverse image search works for your photos and graphics.
Reality: If one of your posts was taken, assume others were too until you've checked.
Try this: Set up a Google Alert for one unusual sentence from each of your most popular posts.
5Spot AI-rewritten copies
AI rewriting tools swap words and shuffle sentences, so exact-phrase searches might miss them. Look for the giveaways: your headings in the same order, your examples, your statistics, and your unusual phrases with slight changes. Put both versions side by side and compare section by section.
Reality: Changing the words doesn't change whose work it is. A close paraphrase of your structure and examples can still be infringement.
Try this: Paste your post and the copy into two tabs in How Many Words. Nearly identical word, sentence, and paragraph counts are a quick sign it was rewritten from yours.
6Figure out who you're dealing with
Is it a company, a popular publication, a platform user, an anonymous scraper site, or an individual's blog? A domain lookup (WHOIS or ICANN Lookup) can tell you who hosts the site and sometimes who owns it. The answer decides who you contact first.
Reality: Companies and established sites usually remove stolen content fast to protect their reputation. Anonymous scraper sites rarely reply, so you'll go straight to their host.
Try this: Look up the domain and note the hosting company. You'll need it for step 10.
Get it taken down
Start with the easiest route, and escalate only if you need to.
7Decide what you want
Do you want the copy removed? Proper credit and a link? Payment at your usual rate? A published correction? Be clear about this before you contact anyone, because it shapes everything you write.
Reality: For most individual bloggers, removal is the realistic outcome. Payment is more likely from businesses.
Try this: Write down your ideal outcome and the minimum you'd accept.
8Report it to the platform or publisher
If your work appeared on a platform like Medium, Substack, YouTube, LinkedIn, or Amazon's Kindle store, use its copyright report form. If it's in a magazine, book, or company blog, contact the editor or publisher rather than the writer.
Reality: Platforms and publishers have legal reasons to act quickly. The person who copied you has every reason not to.
Try this: Search "[platform name] copyright report" to find the official form.
9Send a clear, calm notice to the person
If you're dealing with an individual's site, email them. Explain that the content is yours, link to your original and the copy, say what you want them to do, and give a deadline. Keep it short and factual. If you'd normally be paid for this work, you can include an invoice at your standard rate.
Reality: Many people remove content quickly once they know the original author has noticed.
Try this: Use the template below, and give a clear deadline such as seven days.
10File a takedown notice with the web host
If the person ignores you, go to the company hosting the site. In the US, this is a DMCA takedown notice. Many other countries have similar notice-and-takedown rules, and most hosting companies have an abuse or copyright form. Hosts often remove infringing content to protect themselves.
Reality: This step is often faster and more effective than arguing with the person directly.
Try this: Search the hosting company's site for "DMCA," "copyright," or "abuse" to find its process.
11Ask search engines to remove the copy
Even if a copy stays online, you can ask search engines to remove it from their results. Google has a legal removal request process for copyright, and Bing has its own.
Reality: If nobody can find the copy, it can't outrank you or take your readers.
Try this: File a removal request for each copied URL, and keep the confirmation emails.
Escalate and protect yourself
What to do if it continues, and how to make your work a harder target.
12Keep records of everything
Save every email, report confirmation, screenshot, and reply in one folder, with dates. If you have to escalate or involve a lawyer, a clear timeline makes everything faster and cheaper.
Reality: Disorganized evidence costs you time. Organized evidence costs the other side.
Try this: Keep a simple log with the date, what you did, who you contacted, and the reply.
13Tell your network
Let writers in your niche know. The same person may be copying them too. A group of affected writers can report together, and split the cost if legal action ever makes sense. Small writing communities are often where these patterns get spotted first.
Reality: Scraper sites rarely target just one writer. You're probably not alone.
Try this: Share the offending domain in your writing group or community, and ask others to check.
14Talk to a lawyer only when it's worth it
Legal action is expensive. Against an individual with no money, you may spend far more than you'd ever recover. Against a company profiting from your work, a lawyer may be able to win real compensation. Many lawyers offer a short first consultation, and some writers' organizations offer legal resources.
Reality: Winning on principle is satisfying. Winning on principle and losing money usually isn't.
Try this: Before you hire anyone, estimate what you could realistically recover against the cost.
15Make your work harder to steal
You can't stop every copy, but you can make it less attractive and easier to prove. Show clear publish dates. Add your name and site to images. Use internal links in your posts, so scrapers often copy links back to you. In your RSS feed, show summaries instead of full posts. You can also block known AI training crawlers, like GPTBot, CCBot, and Google-Extended, in your site's robots.txt file.
Reality: In the US, registering your copyright makes stronger legal remedies available. It's worth considering for books and your most valuable work.
Try this: Add a few internal links to your top posts this week. Scraped copies will start linking back to you.
A simple takedown email template
Subject: Copyright infringement: please remove my content
Hello,
I'm the author of "[Title]," originally published on [date] at [your URL].
Your page at [copy URL] reproduces this work without my permission or credit.
Please remove the content within 7 days, by [date]. If it isn't removed, I'll file a takedown notice with your hosting provider and request removal from search engines.
I've saved copies of both pages for my records.
Thank you,
[Your name]
[Your contact information]
For a formal DMCA notice to a host, you'll usually need to add a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorized, a statement that the information is accurate, and your signature. Most hosts list exactly what they need on their copyright page.
Wrapping upYou don't have to let it slide
Plagiarism feels personal, and it is. But dealing with it is mostly a process: document, prove, request, escalate. Most copies come down without a lawyer, especially once a platform, host, or search engine gets involved.
And the best long-term protection is the same thing that makes your writing worth reading: a recognizable voice, specific experience, and an audience who knows where the original lives.
Compare your original and the copy
Paste both into separate tabs and compare word, sentence, and paragraph counts side by side.
Try How Many WordsFrequently asked questions
What should I do if someone copied my blog post?
Screenshot and archive the copied page, gather proof that you published first, then contact the site owner or platform and ask for removal. If that doesn't work, file a takedown notice with the web host and ask search engines to remove the URL.
How do I prove I wrote something first?
Use your site's publish date, your CMS revision history, saved drafts, newsletter send dates, and archived copies of your page from services like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
What is a DMCA takedown notice?
It's a formal request under US copyright law asking a website host, platform, or search engine to remove content that infringes your copyright. Many hosts and platforms around the world accept similar copyright notices.
Is AI-rewritten content still plagiarism?
Often, yes. If someone runs your article through an AI tool and publishes the result with your structure, examples, and ideas intact, it can still be plagiarism and may still infringe your copyright. Compare the two versions section by section.
Do I need a lawyer to remove plagiarized content?
Usually not. Most copies are removed through platform reports, host takedown notices, or search engine removal requests. A lawyer is worth considering when a business is profiting from your work or the copying continues.
How can I protect my writing from being copied?
Show clear publish dates, add internal links, watermark images, use summaries in your RSS feed, and set up alerts for distinctive sentences. You can also block AI training crawlers in your site's robots.txt file.