Myth 1. Web Content Theft & Other Internet Copyright Violations Are Hard to Pursue.

At least for written content, search engines make internet copyright violations easier to find and pursue than violations in print.

It is very easy to take injunctive action against a copyright violator. It would be a waste of money in most cases to go to an attorney. Simply file a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) complaint with Google, Yahoo, MSN, other search engines, any advertising programs of which the site is a part, and/or the site's host. I just filed a complaint with Yahoo the other day. They responded within two days.

Myth 2. Search Engines Inflict a Duplicate Content Penalty on Content Theft Victims.

There is no duplicate content penalty in major search engines for work that is duplicated across different sites; only for content that is duplicated across the same site.

If there were a duplicate content penalty for content shared across websites, distributing content to other sites would not be such a popular website promotion tactic. Do a search on "Secrets of Writing a Business Website Homepage," one of my articles, and you'll see it on hundreds of websites--none of them delisted.

Myth 3. Web Content Theft Completely Destroys Your Site's Value to Web Surfers.

Web content theft erodes the links of trust that make up the web. But it won't completely destroy your site. The web is so vast that even having your content on hundreds of sites does not mean that people will find your site unoriginal and not worth visiting. Just look at how much of any news website is "duplicate content" in the form of newswire articles.

In short, web content theft is bad, but it's not the end of the web--that is, unless people let it be.