Who Owns the Media?

At Optiem we preach to our clients to think of themselves as CNN, companies are now their own news channel and need to be creating media accordingly. Instead of waiting to "rent" the feature article on the nightly news, shoot it yourself and put it on YouTube. Write and distribute an online press release. Support the story with an optimized case study or article validating your topic. Submit the PR/article/case study to other Web 2.0 news channels like bloggers who write on topics in related industries.

But what happens when someone picks up your media and makes it look like their own? What happens when JohnDoe.com, repurposes your content on their site for search engine value? We've seen several instances of this recently where content is pulled through and the original source is credited, but not in an SEO friendly fashion. No backlinks, no keyword rich anchor text, nothing. Just an "Original source XXX". Its even worse when you get into image hosting and bandwidth issues.

I know this is an age-old SEO dilemma, and search engine spiders are getting better at identifying these sites. But how are others handling? Sure you can submit the offending site to Google through the Digital Millenium Copywright Act but other avenues are there?