February 18, 2007

Bloggy Question 37: Excuse Me, that Content on Your Blog Is Mine!

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:11 pm

I Never Gave You Permission to Use That

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week. I offer this bloggy life hypothetical question. . . .


You’re checking your links at Technorati, and you find one that is obviously a scraper. The blog has picked up several of your articles and republished them without your permission. It is running ads next to them — making money from your work.

How do you respond?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Bloggy Question 36: Mom, I Got the Part!
Bloggy Question 34: Time Is Money, but Content Is Free for the Paraphrasing!
Bloggy Question 33: You’ve Changed, Man — DON’T Look at Yourself
Bloggy Question 32: Blogger Alert! Where Is She? What Should You Do?


Filed under Bloggy Questions, Successful Blog |



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30 Comments to “Bloggy Question 37: Excuse Me, that Content on Your Blog Is Mine!”

  1. February 18th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
    bj said

    That doesn’t bother me HALF as much as the guy who took my free wordpress theme downloads (released free for noncommercial use, with a link back, under the Creative Commons License, and clearly stated so on the download page.) He repackaged them and had them for download on his adsense splog site, then got indignant when I told him to take them OFF his site. He acted like he was doing me a favor, and I should be kissing his butt for the free publicity or somesuch. Luckily the idiot had the files stored at one of those file storage places with a nice strong TOS. They removed the offending file from the server before he knew what hit him, within an hour of me contacting them.

    I also blogged about it and posted it on the WordPress Forum so other theme creators would get a clue about the guy. I imagine I wasn’t the only theme creator who got on him about his thieving.

  2. February 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Yeah for you BJ. I once tried to find the location of a guy using autoblog and stealing from many sites that I knew. He had no idantifiers on his blog or ways to track it in Whois. So I wrote a giant post with a screehshot, his URL and the headline “Is this GUY STEALING Your Content Too?

    He contactd me within an hour. My content was down 15 minutes later. I kept the post in draft for 4 weeks before I deleted it. :)

  3. February 18th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
    qureyoon said

    this is OOT, but nice comment layout now ;)

    oh, and happy chinese new year to all the SOB readers ^^ who celebrate

    anyway, this will be a nice conversation to follow ^^

  4. February 18th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
    Murad said

    I think I would be a little upset if someone was using my information. However, if this is the case then they should include a link back to my site.

  5. February 18th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Queryoon,
    I’m not sure what OOT means could email me and tell me? Thanks for the NEW YEAR wishes. :)

    Yes the conversation should be fun!

  6. February 18th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Murad!
    Welcome!
    A whole article deserves MORE than a link in my book. That is content theft. A link isn’t enough, eapecially if someone is making money from my work. I should have given permission. I don’t want a link so they can make money. :)

  7. February 18th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
    HART (1-800-HART) said

    For me .. it would really be hypothetical .. if technorati links worked for me. HAHAHA ..

    But, seriously - if it wasn’t for scrapers giving me back links after stealing my content Technorati would still be broken on my PetLvr blog - go figure - as these links actually helped keep my content working and that’s the only blog that does seem to work now after 1-year of troubles and continuous problems with technorati.

    And semi-seriously .. if there was a link back to your site .. and he’s scraping your RSS Feed .. Why not post a 1-page gross ad or picture and see who’se reading it?

  8. February 18th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
    seanrox said

    Liz, OOT means Out Of Town or for my fellow geeks, Object-Oriented Technology.

  9. February 18th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi HART!
    I’m not sure how you mean to see who’s reading it? I’m not following you.

  10. February 18th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Thanks Sean,
    It helps that you’re multilingual. :)

  11. February 18th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
    Renée said

    Hey Liz,

    Sounds like the conversation we had few days ago! I won’t rehash it here. In short, they are a bunch of morons, linkback or no linkback!!!

    BTW, very nice template. Finally! That’s one task off the chest! :)

  12. February 18th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Renée!
    I’m right with you “dirty big dig b’t'rds . . . :) It’s not good for your blog to link to them. They only add a smell to your linkage . . . Think of it as stinkage. :)

    Thank you, Renée, I do think it was worth waiting for. It’s got a personality most blogs don’t get to show off. :)

  13. February 18th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
    Tony said

    Lorelle wrote a great article last year, and sums up exactly what steps you can take, starting from sending a curt letter to drafting a potential C&D

    http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

    Cheers
    tony

  14. February 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
    Renée said

    *wink, wink*

    Be careful though, you might attract unwelcomed attention and sleazy pickup lines with this new template of yours. *trying to blow a whistle and failed* :)

  15. February 18th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Tony!
    Yeah I remember that article. I cited it as one of the best on the web and I still think it is. Thanks for reminding us of it. :)

  16. February 18th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Now, Renée, what are you saying?
    It’s the same old Successful-Blog. :)

  17. February 18th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
    Renée said

    It was meant as a compliment with such appealing template you got here.

    One of the reasons for more comments on blogs (beside good writing blah and blah), well layout template (especially the comment area) does attract more convesations. That’s my observation, yet to be proven wrong. ;)

  18. February 18th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Renée!
    I was thinking that could be what you meant. These comments are so much easier to read, aren’t they? Once we get a couple more thing going they’ll be even better. This is so exciting. :)

  19. February 19th, 2007 at 1:36 am
    Mihaela Lica said

    Don’t worry, Liz. Recently Google has patented a similarity engine and I think this means that scrapper sites will slowly, but surely, disappear. Or at least I hope so! I have an optimistic nature. :)

  20. February 19th, 2007 at 2:52 am
    Tim Draayer said

    I’ve had this happen several times. First on my main blog, Live Your Best Life, but also on my project specific blogs as well.

    In all cases the site was taken down in weeks. Now I have a Creative Commons Lisence on my blog and often will link to my blog in a footnote at the bottom of my bigger articles to deture scrapping.

    At the very least if my article gets scrapped its still very clear who actually wrote it and a link is there to my blog.

    Not exactly a cure to content theft but its a start.

  21. February 19th, 2007 at 5:50 am
    Chris Cree said

    When this sort of thing has happened to me it seems the offender normally puts up the entire post straight from the feed complete with the feed flair complete with a “View CC License” link. :roll:

    The first time it happened I got a bit miffed, especially because I intentionally don’t monetize my own site at this point. But before I did anything I contacted a more experienced blogger who explained what action I could take and what results I could reasonably expect.

    In the end I chose to ignore it. I figure anyone who’s been around the web more than a week will recognize what the scraper is doing. If they are truly interested in the content they might come on over to my place.

    But ultimately my decision stems from one of the core truths in life that says, “You harvest what you plant.” The scraper is stealing content and stolen seed makes for a lousy harvest.

    For me life is too short. I’ll leave the revenge for others, even though what they are doing is totally wrong.

  22. February 19th, 2007 at 7:50 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Mihaela!
    Welcome! I hope that Google leaves enough room for the folks who post the same article on more than one blog. I know there is a duplicate content penalty but some folks see more value in doing that than they do in Google ranking. The issue there is complicated.

    Personally, I’ve been lucking in that I’ve been able to resolve all of my issues fairly quickly. [she whispers\

  23. February 19th, 2007 at 7:53 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Tim,
    I’ve think the solution of including a line at the end of each post that says, “If you are reading this outside of my feed or my blog, you are reading stolen content.” Is a fine solution. :)

    Unfortunately that same line gets in the way of other kinds of syndication that you might want to do with your content.

  24. February 19th, 2007 at 7:56 am
    ME Strauss said

    Chris,
    Your approach has much wisdom. A blogger can lose at of time and positive energy trying to remedy a situation with a content theif . . . those are resouces that could be put into building new content. On the other hand, if we all ignore them, are we just giving them free reign to keep doing what they’re doing? That’s the problem.

    I sure don’t want to invite Internet police.

  25. February 19th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
    Sterling said

    If I saw that someone stole my content I would first ask them for a linkback. If that didn’t happen I would ask them to take it down, but what power do we have to really enforce someone to take something down? I would say that would depend on how long you have to spend on it. I have never had anyone NOT add a link to my site when they took my content, but a friend did. He actually contacted the hosting company that hosted the blog and had them shut it down, which they actually did! I didn’t think they would do anything, but it did take him quite some time to make it happen so that is the draw back…

  26. February 19th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Sterling,
    Welcome!
    The linkback can be useful or it can be useless. I’ve found that offering a chance to take down the content before I do a story on blog that has stolen my content often gets the right kind of action. I have run the headline that mention in comment #2. That was when the blog owner was untraceable and the blog had content from this blog and the blogs of many of my friends. :)

  27. February 19th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
    Chris Cree said

    OK. Irony Alert! Check out this post here. :roll:

  28. February 19th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
    Glenn (Customer Service Experience) Ross said

    Stealing content like this is why the man upstairs invented wooden canoe paddles. Find the guy and go upside his head. Oh, excuse me, think that’s too violent. I’m (Ahm) from Texas and we don’t even start thinkin’ it’s violent until a knife or a firearm is involved.

    Don’t take any prisoners!

    Glenn

  29. February 19th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Glenn!
    Stealing content is serious business, I agree. It’s theft and should be seen as such. I always look for the fastest way to deal with it. Though once I found all of the guy’s blogs and left a comment on every one of them saying I needed to speak to him, not mentioning about what until he emailed me. Then I politely told him to remove my content — which, by the way, had a link with my text but that linked to another blog.

    Wasn’t that an interesting techique? :)

  30. March 11th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
    Bloggy Question 40: Um er . . . Your Enthusiasm Is Killing Our Ebook - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. said

    [...] Related articles Bloggy Question 37: Excuse Me, that Content on Your Blog Is Mine! Bloggy Question 36: Mom, I Got the Part! Bloggy Question 34: Time Is Money, but Content Is Free for the Paraphrasing! [...]

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