Sometimes plagiarism can’t be resolved face-to-face. Either the plagiarist can’t be contacted or they otherwise refuse to take down their work. Many get caught up in the misguided notion that copyright law actually protects their misuse of your work and that there’s nothing you, the content creator, can do about it.

When push has come to shove, it’s time to move on. If the situation isn’t going to be resolved amicably, there’s no point in arguing with them. The old saying of “Never argue with an idiot, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience” is very true here.

Instead, it’s time to take things to the next level and inform their host about what’s going on.

Who is the Host?

For those unfamiliar with how the Web works, the term “host” might be somewhat confusing and intimidating.

The vast majority of people who run Web sites don’t use personal their Internet connection and home computer to do it. Instead, they find someone else to do it for them as they have better connections and faster machines. The vast majority of Web sites, including professional “.com” sites, including this one, aren’t hosted at home, but in data centers far away from their creators.

Simply put, the host is the person or company who owns and is in charge of those computers. Usually it’s a large company, often called an Internet Service Provider (ISP) but it can also be an individual or anything in between.

However, despite the simplicity in defining the word “host”, determining its identity isn’t always an easy task.

Free Web Sites

For most free Web sites, to determine the host, you simply look at the domain. To determine what the domain is, you need only look at the URL at the top of your browser.

URLs have a consistent format that read something like this: http://subdomain.domain.extension/folder. For most sites, the subdomain is either absent or simply “www” and the extension is usually “com”, “net” or “org”. If the home page of the plagiarist site has either a subdomain or an folder, the host is most likely is hosted by a free Web host. You can find that by visiting the domain and the extension in the URL.

For example, if the site in the address bar says http://www.geocities.com/XXXXXX, then Geocities.com is their host and you need to visit there. The same holds true if it says http://www.blogger.com/YYYYYY, http://ZZZZZ.livejournal.com or any of the other free Web hosts, blog services, social networking sites, etc.

Basically, if the home page of the site is not a “.com” of its own, you can just go to the domain and start your hunt there. Otherwise, you need to follow the instructions below.

Domains

If the site is a domain of its own, things get a bit more complicated. Most of these sites still have third party hosts that respond quickly to plagiarism and other forms of copyright infringement, but finding out who they are is a bit more tricky.

You need to take the domain name (Ex: theirname.com) to Domain Tools (linked below). From there, paste it into the field present and click the “Search” button next to it.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken to a second page that presents a great deal of information about the site itself. The section we’re interested in is entitled “Server Data” and includes seven lines of information. Of those, we are most interested in the second and third, the IP Address and the IP Location.

The IP Location line will tell you what country the host is in, useful for knowing which laws to apply, and who is listed as the host of the company. Most likely, you can simply search for the company name to locate the host. However, if you want more information, click the red “W” next to the IP Address to perform what is known as an IP Whois.

From there you’ll be taken to a page with a great deal of text that will give you more information about the company that owns that particular IP address and even provide email addresses, which generally have domains that can lead you to the home page of the host.

Using these steps, you can find the host with well over 99% reliability and then move on to contacting them.

Video Guide for Domain Hosts

Help With Finding a Host

Domain Tools: The site used to locate the host for top-level domains.
Network Tools: An alternative to Domain Tools.
Sam Spade: A network analysis tool with more funcationality.