Do you know how to find out if people are copying from your website? Take a phrase of one of your webpages, put it in quotation marks, and look it up in search engines. That way I find lots of webpages who use my text - and sometimes my pictures as well.

By some reason the most unscrupulous content thieves are real estate companies. I have friends who sell real estate in a good and honest way. They do not use my materials. Those who copy from me do this without my permission.

The problem is that people associate me with these companies while actually they are precisely those which I would not recommend. It’s because I ask myself if they way they steal from me isn’t indicative for the way they run their business in general.

Tamborhills a real estate group from Tambor now uses my text and pictures for two years against my objections:
http://tamborhills.com/nicoya-peninsula.html
http://www.c21paradiserealty.com/areainfo_practicalinfo.shtml
http://c21sunsetrealty.com/mal-pais-costa-rica.html and http://c21sunsetrealty.com/mal-pais-maps.html

See also Copyright Infringements, a page I put online December last year and sent the information to Tamborhills and the Century21 head quarters in San José. They apologized - and didn’t take off the stolen contents to these days.

Tamborhills uses my travel guide version of August 2005 when I hadn’t yet put a watermark on my pictures. I frequently update my travel guide but each version I ever put online since March 2002 is stored at http://www.archive.org

I didn’t mind in school when my friends copied from me. I wouldn’t however have given my stuff to class mates I didn’t like. I somehow have the feeling that I don’t like these people who today copy my text and pictures without my agreement.

I could make a DCMA complaint with their webhosts, announce duplicate content at search engines, go to a lawer, but this would keep me busy all the time. The Tamborhills group are not the only ones who copy from me. Looking up phrases like “The southern Nicoya Peninsula is one of Costa Rica’s most secluded gems”, “Mal Pais is a tranquil little village with charming hotels loosely spread out along three kilometers of road”, “Santa Teresa has become a trendy new travel destination in Costa Rica” I find so many webpages which use my text (and pictures).

http://tamborinvestments.com/region.htm
http://www.nicolesfirstrealty.com/nicoya.htm
http://www.dreamsincostarica.com/html/nicoya_peninsuls.html
http://www.distinctivehotels.com/bulletin/july

To name only the biggest content thieves.