Content thieves steal because too many people like me let them get away with it.

Sure. But my point is that I cannot spend most of my day tracking these people down. The money involved is too low and the time sink is too high.

There was nothing I could do about it before DMCA in 1998 and in fact, most of us back then did look favorably upon sharing with attribution. Few of us were monetized until Adsense started (2003?) - and that's when I first filed complaints.

I remember one guy who sneered at my polite email. I got an Eff You back and an assertion that there was nothing I could do. When his host took his site down, I got an even nastier email :)

What would be great is a service that does this for us. They would have the advantage of the likelihood that if my article was stolen, the thief might have stolen from other writers.

But best of all would be if someone like Google did it. Took note of reappearances and notified us with the forms ready to be posted with a click if we want. I'd pay for a service like that.