Thieves Folow Blog Popularity
Thieves come in many forms and shapes and stealing intellectual property is one of the oldest forms. Widespread of internet self-publishing in form of websites and blogs brings this issue to a new level. Now thieves can earn money by stealing YOUR content! While I can understand that some might do it out of lack of knowledge – I don’t care!
Anyone stealing my content will be taken actions against! Information I write is designated for my blog visitors and for my RSS readers ONLY. I have never given permissions to anyone to take my RSS feed and post it on their blog. Yes, it is easy to do and I don’t care if I get a backlink or not – a link from a blog that has no original content has no value to me but even that is besides the point – my RSS Feed is clearly marked as copyrighted material and anyone stealing my posts will be taken action against! And In this post I want to share how you can do same – effectively!
I personally think that concept of RSS creates some confusion but make no mistake, on majority of blogs it is provided for readers convenience ONLY. Generally it means you can read my blog posts in RSS Reader and I welcome and encourage it but I don’t give anyone permissions to reprint it in any form or shape on their own blog. This is in direct violation of DMCA and dealt with as such. Since some of the biggest cash cows used by stealing scammers are Google and Yahoo – this makes job a lot simpler, although not completely painless.
Here are the steps you can take to protect your content and deal with the thief when need comes up. I have used exact same steps to remove those ads from last 3 thieving blogs and will continue to do so. It doesn’t prevent them to continue stealing it but it will remove couple of the main reasons for it and protect your content originality as well as avoiding possible duplicate content penalties….
- Protect your Feed with copyright notice. I use an excellent plugin Feed Footer to add copyright to every post in my RSS Feed along with other notes. It helps me to prove my claim when it comes to it later as well as prevent people who are taking my content due to lack of knowledge.
- Identify the theft is taking place. I use two methods for this one: FeedBurner “Uncommon Usage” stats and I also subscribe to Google Alerts. Anytime specific parameters used anywhere on web, such as specific words from my Feed – I get email from Google with notification. Setup is simple and can be used for a lot more then just tracking mentions of your blog
- Identify the thief. If someone takes my content and tries to monetize it even after seeing my copyright notice – he or she is a thief and needs to be dealt with. But first we will still give them a chance. Use Whois Source to get information about the blog owner along with hosting company contact information. Generally it will be listed or at the very least – you should get hosting company info.
- Make first contact. In my experience this doesn’t result in resolution of the issue but worth a try. Email domain owner with a note to remove your content and disable ANY means of further automated publishing of your content. As I have mentioned – this generally doesn’t produce any results but at least your consciousness will be clear. I generally give a 24 hour deadline and lack of response on their part leads to next step. While it is VERY rare, my last contact have shown that a person did it by mistake and actually thought he was helping me (my faith in humanity was partially restored) and giving that last chance to correct mistake goes a long way. Some people DO make honest mistake and making this contact helps not only you by saving you a lot of time but also gives you a chance to perhaps help that person avoid the mistake in the feature – not everyone is a crook!
- Contact Hosting provider. If hosting is private or in different country other than US – this might not be effective step but well worth a try. Advise them that your copyrighted material was stolen and provide exact links to all stolen content. This is where your copyright note comes in handy as proving your point becomes a lot simpler. But still make sure to provide links to original material as well. This might result in offending domain been shut down and all content removed – but it might not, as I have seen some hosts with NO contact information that they respond to.
- File DMCA complain with major advertisers used on offending site. What you will generally find is that these type of scam blogs are built for AdSense and might use some form of YPN advertising together with Google or by itself. Those 2 are responcible for majority of their income and hitting them where it hurts should be your next step. There are number of requirements when you file complain but since both AdSense and YPN DMCA filing rules very similar you can reuse the document created in process. You are required to fax the information. Here is link to AdSense DMCA and YPN DMCA. Simply follow the process they outline and see their ads eventually disappear for the blog that steal your content.
Steps above will not protect your content from being stolen but they will ensure that principal of Crime and Punishment followed and might bring you at least this form of satisfaction. While I was unable to verify if YPN terminates account of the offender – Google has this statement on the AdSense DMCA:
Account Termination
Many Google Services do not have account holders or subscribers. For Services that do, Google will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate repeat infringers. If you believe that an account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer, please follow the instructions above to contact Google and provide information sufficient for us to verify that the account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer.
Since it is one of the major revenues used by scammers – your actions serve not only to protect your own content but serve community as well. You will find that your stolen content generally is not alone and that thief uses multiple feeds from many blogs producing good and original content. Another important point to this exercise is that you make a claim on your content and should avoid penalties for duplicate content from 2 search engines responcible for majority of free traffic.
Good Hunting my friends!
Note: While pulling RSS Feed to publish on your blog is permitted by SOME Article Directories and even RARE blogs that includes FULL ARTICLE content – generally blogs don’t permit this form of RSS Feed usage. You are encouraged to use RSS Widgets that give a headline and short summary of the content but almost never FULL Content as it damages the source blog.
Please be sure to read guidelines of the blog or site and if none provided – try contacting the owner. After all – theft of intellectual property is no different than theft from your local store…
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
33 Responses to “Thieves Folow Blog Popularity”
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[...] Thieves Folow Blog Popularity [...]
I have already had the same problem with people stealing my content from my blog. One thing that worked very well for me in finding these sites is Copyscape.
Mike’s last blog post..How To Install A Car Amplifier
Thanks Mike,
Copyscape is great but I personally never really worked with it, so can’t write on it. Jeremy Schoemaker posted something that takes a bit different approach to it
I just read it this morning and you might find it interesting:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/01/10/getting-value-out-of-scrapers/
In many ways similar to step one I describe
(giving myself a pat on a back now)
Alex
Thanks for the quick reply, yes that has to be the best WordPress plugin I have came across in a long time. I am installing it now to see how it works.
Mike’s last blog post..How To Install A Car Amplifier
If you do – one thing I learned on install, it only ads footer text to new published items. (Am talking about Feed Footer). Your old posts will not get tagged.
Alex
I was not aware of Copyscape–so thanks.
To answer your question, out in cyberland I found that the word “blog” is attributed to Peter Merholz, who broke the term “weblog” (coined by Jorn Barger) into the phrase “we blog” in his blog sidebar around 1999.
Is that right?
You got it
official announcement will follow on Monday…
Alex
Hi Alex,
Another great post. Thank you for the great information, particularly the copyright feed.
Charly.
http://arvoreentreasures.com
Charly’s last blog post..What is Web 2.0 and Does It Work?
Thanks guys,
Alex
Response to RSS Question
From WikiPedia:
‘The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (“to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).’
Cheers,
Charly
http://arvoreentreasures.com/
Charly’s last blog post..Video and Web 2.0
As usual, you don’t disappoint, Alex.
Very informative and helpful article. Man, I’m sure not looking forward to going after people who steal my stuff!
Honestly, I thought syndicating a blog’s RSS feed was good for the publisher. I’m glad you specified why you don’t want to syndicate (at least not randomly). I also learned what the DMCA is, I’d never heard of it before.
I just downloaded Joost’s RSS Footer plugin and am looking forward to trying it out. I’m curious, would you suggest using both RSS Footer and FeedFooter together?
I have to respectfully disagree with you on the duplicate content penalty statement you made. As the original publisher (i.e. the first person to get the content spidered and indexed) you will always be given priority. Others who use your content may end up in the supplemental index, but not you.
Jonathan Leger, a very successful marketer and testing maniac recently wrote a 49 page report called “Search Engine Myths Exposed”. He covers a bunch of search engine ranking issues, including duplicate content. I believe he’s giving it away for an opt-in and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to hear the real deal from someone who actually tests things at a scientific level.
All for now,
Russ
Russ’s last blog post..Will You Stick With Your Online Business Choice?
Russ,
Syndicate RSS feed is generally means getting the Title and small part of the content. This article was more meant for scrapers. If you subscribe to my RSS you will see that I provide full content as do many others, I also give links to other related articles, copyright note, etc … well, what I’m addressing here are people who take my content in its ENTIRETY and simply post on their blogs via automated means. That hits me with duplicate content problems plus someone else is making money off of my work …
I welcome RSS syndication via RSS widgets, etc … I encourage people to subscribe to RSS feed to read at their convenience in their favorite RSS Reader, I just don’t don’t like “scrapers” who create hundreds of blogs for AdSense via scraping other people’s work …
Hi Alex,
I use Copyscape as well as Google alerts and I also check Feedburner for unusual usage. Another recent problem is on MBL where bloggers take a break and return to find that their blog has been stolen! I have taken this up with MBL on behalf of some of those involved in having lost their blogs and managed to get them reinstated to their rightful owners. It’s not easy going though!
In answer to your question: The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb (“to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).
Have a great week
Colin
Colin’s last blog post..Google Myths Exposed
Thanks for the input Colin,
I wasn’t aware of the issue with MBL. And anytime there is an issue with them – it is always hard to resolve… Seem like corporate mindset is overtaking them … rather sad.
Hi Alex, very informative article. I am a new blog person, and really its just for a personal site that I have done for a small group of friends.
In my internet travels have seen many blogs and sites with interesting original articles and many with obviously taken articles.
I have been trying to find out a way to have some of those of interest posted on our site while referring to the original poster/author/blog without becoming a scraper guy!
I am learning a lot here so far, but still not quite clear on the whole thing…
So is it OK to have a piece of the article or thats not good either?
jerry
KAPSCigarBar.com’s last blog post..Damn
Jerry,
Do contact the authors, perhaps they will give you green light. Generally it is acceptable to post your own article, include small part of other article in quotes and link to original. 99% of the time nobody will have a problem with that. It is when entire content is taken and reposted on someone else’s blog that it creates a problem …
Hi Alex,
Another excellent article on a subject that I think quite a few people are not fully aware of.
On a consistent basis 6-10 different blogs syndicate my content (snippets) and one uses the full articles.
Since my blog is to create awareness on canine advocacy issues, I welcome the syndication. The one blog that uses the full articles contacted me prior to inclusion and submitted a request and a ‘contract’ giving my permission to allow them to use my content.
For me, the additional exposure has been beneficial but I do keep track of those using my feed and content. I do have a copyright and Creative Commons License on my site as well.
Thanks for the info and keep it coming. I am an avid reader of your blog and always look forward to the great tips and information you consistently provide.
Deanna
Deanna’s last blog post..Benton County Citizen Want Mayor Out After Shelter Condition Come to Light
Thanks Deanna!
how about my RSS Feed have been subscripted to published in the blog of the Bloglines, Zimbio???
The problem is that the content of whole of the RSS subscrided blog is exactly the same as my blog Homepage… and i recently found that I unable to found my homepage in SE despite i use the main keyword of my blog….
Does it already considered as duplicated content by SE???
Do RSS Subscription to blog is considered as duplicated contents too??? will it hurt our own source blog???
Wincent’s last blog post..Easy Steps to Initial Tattoo Care
Hi Alex,
Another day, another useful post. Great.
Coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, the term weblog, popularly shortened as “blog”
I think you are doing a great job man!
Ronak Shah’s last blog post..Online Copywriting
Ronak – you are too late this one (contest question related) is closed already, sorry.
Wincent – Real RSS aggregators such as bloglines or Google reader should never hurt your SE saturation. I would look for a different reasons…
What I have seen is that some a$$hole scrapes my content as well as few dozens of other related blogs, publishes it on his own blog (automatically) and fills that splog with ads. Well, thanks to my efforts he lost his AdSense publisher id and am still working on what I can do to deindex him from Google
This one is hosted somewhere in Italy and both host and scraper ignores any emails ….
When host is not responsive – it is hard to do much about those guys. But in your case I don’t think Bloglines was responcible for your SE bad luck…
Hey, nice article and very useful to me! I have a business blog with an RSS feed.Is it not enough just to copyright your content on the blog and RSS feed? What else can you do?
Tom Lindstrom’s last blog post..Why Should You Use Social Bookmarking?
Tom,
You can copyright it but it will not prevent scrapers. I have outlined what I personally do … there are more advices on similar on other blogs. Each person decides to take their own steps or simply ignore it …
Unfortunately, nothing is full proof.