The Five Finger Discount on Web Content – How to Protect Your Video Investment

Melanie Peters – Social Media Specialist

Anything on the web can be “stolen”. That’s why there’s such a big stink from record companies and motion pictures associations to protect their investments. Now that’s a whole other debate for sure, but as content providers, there is a lot of time, and therefore value, in the original content we produce. Original content is what drives the search rankings…. And if you’re good at it, you’re likely to be ripped off.
Case in point: Recently a client saw a major jump in their video “hits” jumping from about 3,000 per month to over 35,000! Now wholly bejeebus that should be a good thing, but they weren’t running any particular promotion that would have caused that type of jump in activity, so the client asked us if we could trace this wonderful new source of traffic!
Here is a snap shot of their homepage:
 

 
Notice the use of one of our great video spokesperson videos in the right hand corner…
Everything appeared fine, but we were able to pinpoint another URL that was using the video, meaning someone had swiped the code right off their web site and pasted on their own! The Five Finger Discount!
Here is a snap shot of the thieves’ web site:
 

 
This site was playing the client’s video and had a 90% exact duplicate of their website!  Same business model, graphics, worded content, and design too!
Now we’re not claiming to be the Internet Police, or any caped super hero, but if it weren’t for our detailed analytics, the client would have NEVER known about this cloned site, siphoning off his business leads! He is of course pursuing legal action, and we wish him well deserved justice, but this could have been prevented by utilizing our special “White List” feature right inside the Oculu dashboard, disabling it from being see on any undesignated URL’s. It’s the best way to protect your video content on the web.
Protect your content, your business, and your livelihood! Use a trusted site for your web hosting, and for your video hosting, and check up on your analytics often.
If you find a spike like this, you may think you’ve won the lottery, but it could be someone else’s jackpot.