Was Your Article Stolen By The Arena Group or Its Third Parties? Here's How to File a DMCA Complaint

The Arena Group, in a convoluted scheme, shut out writers from contributing to or earning through HubPages. User writers can no longer submit new content or earn from their old articles. They can still post to the forums.

Some articles from Discover.HubPages have allegedly been mined, and counterfeits, made either using AI or scraping software, have been published on old HubPages' niches that now belong solely to TAG. Hundreds of these derivative articles exist.

If you have found articles that are eerily similar to yours on Owlcation, HobbyLark, DenGarden, PetHelpful, WanderWisdom, or other niches previously part of HP, one of the best things you can do is send a DMCA takedown request to have the content removed. The process is simple; I'll walk you through what you'll need to do.

Why Do These Similar Articles Exist?

The TAG-owned niche sites have replicas of high-performing or SEO rich Discover.HubPages articles. One theory is that TAG did not receive the desirable articles because writers requested they be moved to Discover.HubPages, where months ago, they could continue to earn from their writing. It seems TAG or its third parties found a workaround to acquire these articles anyway.

Starting in fall 2024, TAG endeavored to develop some niche sites outside of the HP system. The company decided to cut ad revenue for those sites —old articles stopped accruing earnings. Rather than donating articles on the old system to the new DenGarden, PetHelpful, Owlcation, and other sites, many writers preferred to have their work in a place that earned, which was Discover.HubPages up until sometime in early 2026.

I've gone into more detail about this in the article below: "The Downfall of HubPages and Concerns About The Arena Group's Practices."

It is suspicious that the websites, particularly Owlcation, are full of articles with identical or similar titles to those created by HubPages authors. This doesn't seem to be an accident.

Important: I do know people who have sent in DMCA takedown requests and successfully got the faux articles removed. That is a win for the writers. Before HubPages stopped users from publishing new articles and cut the earnings program, some people noticed that the forged articles were ranking higher than the originals on search engines. The URLs of the replica articles, in many cases, appear identical to those crafted by the original authors.

People shouldn't be competing with plagiarized versions of their own works. If you move your articles to your own website or another publication platform, the doppelgänger articles can hurt your traffic and earnings. In many ways, it is best to report the suspicious articles, not only because of possible damages to your own work, but because this kind of alleged large-scale copyright grab-and-go scheme is an indication of possibly more deceitful or unethical practices behind the scenes.

Approach TAG With Caution

TAG appears to protect itself by hiring third parties. This can make it challenging to point to the correct entity at fault.

Since HP and TAG left writers in the dark, it's hard to know for certain what really happened in this situation. It could be a giant misunderstanding… or it actually could be far worse than what anyone is putting together with the handful of puzzle pieces we have.

One of the Best Plagiarism Tracking Systems

Ironically, HubPages was one of the better websites for tracking copied articles online. It had a system that kept track of duplicated works, the website(s) where they were found, and listed email addresses for the offending websites. There was a form letter you could use to file a DMCA and to start a conversation with those wrongly hosting your work.

I think most HP writers never assumed their work would be stolen by the same group that gave them a space to post their articles and sent them PayPal checks. The situation is a bit like launching a book, but then the publisher decides to take that book, run it through a scraping system, changes the name of the author, distributes it for earnings only meant for itself, and you never receive a dime or credit in the slapdash mess.

Form Letter for DMCA Takedowns

If you're interested in writing a DMCA takedown, I've copied over the instructions from HubPages. I think it is apropos to use the form against the TAG-owned websites that host duplicate content. It indicates HubPages knew better, and since TAG is run by one of the founders of HubPages, Paul Edmonson, he should know better, too.

Here is how the form appeared on HubPages. (I do not have access to it anymore because I deleted all my articles off the platform. I took screenshots of the section before deleting my content.)

First, while logged in, you would go to "My Account" and then "Copied Articles." The screenshot below is how it looked.

The next page looked like the image below. It listed articles by title and the places online where the content appeared to be copied. To streamline the process, you could hit the button for "File DMCA complaint."

The image below is what it looked like if you clicked on "File DMCA Complaint":

Here is a copy of the script in its entirety:

"Unfortunately, we do not yet have DMCA information stored for fullpaczen.tistory.com. If you are able to locate a DMCA instructions URL or an email contact for that site please let us know, we will add them to our database.

You may be able to find the right contact in the U.S. Copyright Office list of registered agents, or for small or less reputable sites you may find useful contact information in the whois record or by tracking down the hosting company. If all else fails and the site has advertising you can try filing a complaint with the advertiser, for instance Google AdSense.

Below is a suggested email you can send to the infringing site:

I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in §512 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

1. The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on:

https://discover.hubpages.com/relationships/Body-Language-Cues-That-Tell-That-He-Likes-You

2. The URLs where my copyrighted work is being infringed upon include:

the exact website(s)

3. My contact information is as follows:

[your full name]

[your address]

[your email address]

4. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

5. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

[your full name]

[your address]

[your email address]

Important: You may be liable for damages if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. If you are not sure whether the material published infringes your copyright, we recommend contacting an attorney first."

- - - - - - -

Here's what happened if you clicked on the question mark in the upper right corner:

The script says:

"Some of the text from the article listed below appears to have been duplicated on other sites.

While these articles are not being penalized on HubPages, if this is your original content and it has been copied without your permission, we recommend that you protect your copyright by filing DMCA complaints with the sites listed, as appropriate.

If you click the file link to the right of a suspected infringement, you'll see steps to make this process easier."

Who Do I Email the DMCA Request To?

The formal takedown notice must be sent to the service provider's designated copyright agent. It can be tricky to figure out who exactly is the correct person or party.

I recommend emailing people directly involved with the website in question and TAG. Contact information for the niche sites will likely be in one of the navigation sections: about, contact, staff, or editors. I would also include TAG in the same email:

• General/Media Inquiries: [email protected]
• Terms of Use/Platform Inquiries: [email protected]
• Privacy Inquiries: [email protected]
• DMCA/Copyright Inquiries: [email protected]
• Legal Inquiries: [email protected]

Your email must be on topic, polite, and concise. This isn't the place to criticise HubPages or TAG; instead, it's focused on getting the infringed content removed.

What to Expect

After sending a DMCA request, you should expect a timely response from those managing the site or involved in the company. It will likely come from the legal team, and it might at first seem aggressive and/or intimidating. If the response mentions that the article has been removed or will be promptly removed, that is a win for you.

Once a valid request has been received, the service provider is required to remove or stop access to the infringing piece. This is to maintain its "safe harbor" legal protection. You may receive a counter notice if the content was removed in error, and then there might be some back and forth to straighten out the matter.

Save any correspondence in your files; it's worth printing a copy so you have a physical version. Unless there is more that needs to be resolved, I recommend stopping the conversation there.

* * *

EDIT: As a bonus nugget, if you go to the current HubPages’ copyright section, the page starts with a gray box encouraging HubPages authors who have found their work wrongly hosted on other websites to file a DMCA. I found the paragraph there interesting, so I copied it here:

If you are a HubPages author who has seen their works published elsewhere (not on hubpages.com) without your permission, please refer to this FAQ entry that explains how to file a DMCA complaint.

Oddly enough, after that paragraph, the text switches to how to file a DMCA if you find work on HubPages that infringes on your work posted elsewhere. I assume the gray box at the beginning was added for HP writers who are upset that they’ve found their work in other publications, presumably ones owned by TAG.

I find it interesting to start the copyright page with a redirect link to an FAQ about DMCA takedowns, which, by the way, are numbers 18 and 19 in the section “Account Administration — Publishing” of the FAQ. The information there does differ slightly from what was found in the copied articles section I described earlier in this article.

There is one important tidbit from the FAQ concerning what you should do if you file a DMCA and don’t receive a timely response:

If you do not receive a reply within a few days that the offending content has been taken down, then you can file a DMCA complaint with Google (select Web Search) and Bing (email [email protected]). This will not get the copied content taken down, but it will prevent it from appearing in Google and Bing search results.

As for the copyright page, it ends with two short sections. One is about how to ask permission to use content, and the other is about infringements other than copyrights. I’ve copied that part below:

Are you trying to report a trademark violation or some other legal issue other than a copyright violation? If so please use this contact the HubPages team here.

That last sentence on their part has much to be desired. I get the impression legal is still an active part of HubPages through TAG despite the termination of user writers by ending publishing rights and earnings. It might be worth checking the remaining niches to see if they have a copyright section that matches this one.

* * *

Staying Connected

Writing long articles about HubPages and The Arena Group takes a significant amount of time and effort. My days are busy with watching a toddler, so I appreciate any attention to these articles as I write them in the small windows of free time I have. I encourage looking into the matter for yourself, sharing this article, and writing any feedback.

Please consider signing the following petition to help prevent content hosts from abusing writers: