My content has been shared across different websites - how do I become the canonical link?

[gazdye83]

I wanted to ask about canonical links. Basically I produced some content for my website which was an interview with a famous band who were playing at a festival that summer. I told the festival and they asked to have exclusive dibs on releasing the piece in exchange for linking back to our domain. I said yes as I knew the link would be a good one. So this interview got posted up, I then posted in on my website's blog, and a month later the local newspaper also featured it on their website. Is there some way to have a creative license over this interview piece (which has been copied word for word) without getting the other websites to edit their code and add a canonical reference? I did ask them but my request was unsuccessful.

I'm thinking there might be no way to claim this content as my website was not the first domain to post it? Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks

[Andrew-SEO]

The date you posted your content will signal to google you are the original.

If the content has been copied contact the webmaster and ask for a reference in the form of a canonical tag.

Otherwise you can report copyright infringement to google

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)

[EGOL]

Here are a few things that many people do not understand.

1. The date of posting does not indicate who owns the content.

2. The date that Google finds the content does not indicate who posted it first or who owns it.

3. Ownership is independent of date of posting and date of Google discovery.

4. Google does not always grant best rankings to "who they discovered first".  The rankings often go to "who is the most powerful".

5. If you file a DMCA against someone who has documented permision to post the content and they decide to sue you for having that content taken down, you are probably going to lose, and you might have to pay more than you expect in damages and more than you expect in attorney fees.

6. The good news is that legal advice on copyright often costs a lot less than you expect and a Hell of a lot less than getting sued.   Know what you are doing and the potential consequences before filing DMCA.

7. There are two ways to get the canonical applied.  A) the webmaster of the website that is publishing the content must insert a canonical tag into the of the html of the page.  It should read like this...    B) the webmaster of the website that is publishing the content can apply rel=canonical using .htaccess.