Blog Content Theft

Two weblogs are republishing my content without permission. One is called “Advertisging, News & Information.” This site is profiting off my content by running Adsense. The other is called Podcast Rebroadcast.

This appears to be a common problem. Jason Calacanis wrote in June that we should call these people out. I am doing my part. Beyond going to partial text RSS feeds - which I am loathe to do - I have really no other course of action right now other to email the site operators, which I have done.

This problem is only going to grow over time. Perhaps some digital watermarking technology needs to come into play here. Or, once again, Google needs to step in and shut down all Adsense sites that are deliberately spamming the blogosphere and bloggers. Anyone have other ideas?

Comments

[michael d. pollock]

This tactic thoroughly stinks Steve. Aside from castration of the offenders, perhaps switching your Creative Commons license is a good first step on your part.

I'm certainly not supporting what these sites are doing wth your content, and the CC license you're using seems to allow it:

You are free:
- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
- to make derivative works
- to make commercial use of the work

Under the following Conditions: by Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

- For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

How do you interpret it?

Best - Michael

[Dennis Howlett]

So is it fair to say you've joined the 'control' gang but maybe without knowing it?

If so then I'm not surprised. We may try and change our spots but in reality it's almost impossible. If we're pretending then why do we continue?

[Elisa Camahort]

I just wrote about this yesterday because I found a WordPress blog doing the same to my content. The new element is that they've moved beyond pulling in the feed (like your 2nd example) where the posts still link back to your blog. Now they pull in the content and create new posts with it (like your 1st example, and like the example I blogged about yesterday.) That way there are NO links back to the original blog. And then they have the gall to call us "Contributors"!!!

Someone left instructions in my blog about how to file a DMCA notice with the host of such blogs to get your content pulled down. I have no idea if it works, but check out the 3rd comment in this post for his isntructions:
http://workerbeesblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/wow-this-version-of-blog-theft-is-new.html

[Matt]

Steve,
You have several options available to you beyond just emailing the site operators.

* Contact their ISP / Hosting provider - send a DMCA notice if necessary (they will legally have to take down the content)
* Contact their advertisers - if they're using Google Adsense, report them to Google for action.
* If they are being indexed in search engines, contact those search engines - use a DMCA notice if you need to.

DMCA gets results relatively quickly as the law is fairly clear.

Hope this helps,
Matt

[Claus]

I posted about seeing this issue in my blog as well.

One tool that bloggers can use to monitor for content lifting is http://www.copyscape.com/

I don't know if you use this tool, or maybe you blogged about it before. I saw it mentioned over at Threatchaos http://www.threatchaos.com/

Really handy tool!

--Claus

[Bob Gladstein]

The "Advertisging" site is clearly using a scraper. In the right column, the "Contributors" are the sites from which it's lifting content, and below that is a link to "Relink Software" which happens to sell a product called AutoBlogger.

From http://www.relinksoftware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=34:
"The Autoblogger Pro System takes articles syndicated via RSS and posts them to your site automatically, then using our Relinker autolinking system the system creates links from whatever word, or phrase you specify, and automatically hyperlinks them. Any number of words, or phrases can be added." There's your culprit. If you can find the user-agent's name or IP address, you can probably block it.

[Bob Gladstein]

By the way, the Podcast Rebroadcast has scraped and republished the post that names it as one of the thieves. Brilliant.

[Jim]

This post is currently the topmost post at Podcast Rebroadcast.

It would be funny if it weren't so heinous.

[Tim Harrison]

Why fight it? Instead, monetize your content with an occasional hard-coded affiliate link and let the content flow.

For more on monetizing content theft, see:

http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2005/11/monetizing-content-theft.html

[Nicolai]

Steve

Isn’t this on of those examples of the not so attractive features (possibilities) made possible by RSS?

Michael D. Pollock has a point regarding the CC license. But isn’t the blog violating the CC with this in the sidebar:
"Credits and Copyright Proudly powered by WordPress. All content © 2005-2006 Unless Otherwise Noted SurferDiary.Com Blog Network"

Therefore I'm with Matt on the “what’s next”. Tip of Google Adsense.

Nicolai

[mark cuban]

Or you work with blog search engines that recognize sites like this as splogs.

They add zero value.

they re use content from other sites, without adding any of there own, and without permission from the author

we dont consider merely aggregating links as adding value.

surferdiary.com wont be able to add any further posts to icerocket.

[Elliott Back]

You should definitely invoke the Digital Millenium Copyright Act here and issue takedown notices. If the problem continues, you can use it to obtain monetary relief. I had to do this at least twice so far with scraper sites....

[Nishi]

I have to agree with you Steve. This totally is not professional from an individual or a business stand point.

[Zoli Erdos]

The absolute irony of this situation is that this very article got republished, too. So now the content thief declares his/her own theft:-)

[David Krug]

There is actually a Wordpress plugin called FeedWordPress that makes stealing content really easy. I don't understand why plugins like this exist. Blows my mind. Best thing to do is create a plugin that makes your feeds subscriber only feeds -- meaning creating yet another service in which people can access your feed data. In my opinion.

[Mike Masnick]

Hmm. In both cases they link back to you as the original source.

I guess I'm confused how this is different than most aggregators, which also redisplay your content.

There are probably hundreds of sites that do that with our content, and as long as they link back to us, it's hard to see why it's a problem. They're just helping to get more people to read what you have to say.

[Mike]

Isn't the whole pointof RSS to allow republishing? What if someone wants to create a feed with the best posts from the best blogs about a particular topic?

Is that really such a bad thing?

Yes, there are cases when it is blatant that all the other bloggers wants to do is to profit from your work. However, what if they truly want 8to create something better?

I personally find the irony here pretty funny. Bloggers initially called out newspapers for not being open enough and now that the top bloggers become ever more powerful they are starting to act just the same. Perhaps it is human nature...

[Marc]

Well, checking out surfdiary's whois info at GoDaddy reveals the domain is registered to an "International Web Design Consortium". If you google that, you'll come back with a lot of angry blog posts about stealing content. You're not alone Steve. These people make me want to rethink my stance against drawing and quartering...

[Jim Kerr]

I looked at the first example you cite, and it looks like it isn't stealing your content but rather using it within the limits you yourself set with your Creative Commons license, which is basically to use the content however you see fit but to attribute the source.

I'm just a regular joe surfer, however, so I certainly may be missing something.

[Robyn Tippins]

Yep, I found that particularly amusing Bob. The fact that this post is currently their top story... LOL

[Mike]

Ironically, they're duplicating this post, too, in which you cite that they're duplicating your posts. :(

[Jason Simmonds]

I agree with Mike, aslong as they state the source, they are helping you spread your message.

[Nathan Weinberg]

Steve, I've reported the site using AdSense to Google, and I think the best first tack is simply to encourage a large number of your readers to do the same.

Another thing you can do is push some very, very illegal content through your RSS feed to this content theft blog. Since they reproduce your images on their server, add to your feed (very temporarily) an illegal photo, such as the Jennifer Aniston photos. Delete the post as soon as they duplicate it, then email Ms. Aniston's lawyers.

I guarantee they stop stealing your posts the second they get a takedown request for that.

[Donnell King]

I think I'm missing something here. How is it that running Adsense steals the content? Is it something to do with how Adsense is installed on their site? I apologize for my ignorance if this is real obvious.

[Robert French]

David Krug wrote, re: the FeedWordPress plugin, "I don't understand why plugins like this exist. Blows my mind."

David, it is not the tool that is bad - it is how the tool is used. Could that plugin have value as an aggregator that is housed behind a firewall? I think so. That is just one of many uses.

Arent' we dealing with the issue of "intent" here?

The taking of content is nothing new, Steve. You linkblog and you run ads on the pages where those links appear. Agreed, you are not doing the same thing as those you indict here. Your intent is different. But, there is at least a tiny bit of similarity.

Think about it. Why do people visit your blog? To find the resources you've scraped from the internet - albeit manually, not through scripts. Your intent is to draw them in. And, you run Google Ads, too.

People don't call you out because of theft. They thank you for the link-love. Two different purposes/intents at work, I'll agree. But "aggregating" is "aggregating" isn't it?

[Nick Wilson]

Geez, how much time you got Steve?

You want to call out everyone that "steals" your content? Your blog is going to get very boring very quickly at that rate, cos if these are the only two blogs you've found, you're not doing very well.

I can tell you, that just with *your* blog it's a much, much bigger thing that 2 silly blogs.

The best way to deal with content theft, when it's simple scraping like this is to ignore it -- that's right, ignore it.

Rather than worrying yourself to death over such trivialities, concentrate on writing interesting stuff for your readers right?

Seriously, if you view that as a problem, you'll have a heart attack if you ever look a little deeper.

[Jim]

A previous commenter said that those posts link back here as the original source and this is partially true: There's a subtle link at the bottom that says "source" at Advertising News and a link that looks like a tag at Rebroadcast. These are hardly appropriate citations or credit. These guys aren't adding anything, they're simply putting Steve's (and others') words on their blogs and suggesting by omission that the words are their own. That's just snarky.

This is most definitely not a case of an a-list blogger getting his undies in a bunch, this is a case of bottom feeders trying to make a buck off of someone else's work. There's a big difference between the two!

On the other hand, the world is full of unethical hacks. They won't be going away anytime soon and I'm at a loss as to what you might do about it Steve.

[Jeremy Pepper]

They link back to you, and isn't that what you want most, another link?

[Podacster]

Steve,

I believe you largely misstated the situation and intention of my blog; there was no theft, profiteering or harm intended. The site accredited your site as the source of the post, and linked directly back to your site and its content. There was intentionally no commercial purpose of the blog and it was setup only to share your valuable information with educators interested in your material who had no way to access it within “blog blocking” school districts.

You may not realize it, but most school systems filter or block access to many types of content, including virtually all public blogs. Many educational technology professionals are trying to implement the latest podcast technologies in schools for our kids (K-12 education), but can’t access most of the web material because of school filtering policies and practices.

The practice of “blog blocking” has become so prolific in schools, it’s almost impossible to use blogs as educational tools, and perhaps even more difficult to implement podcasts for educational purposes. Blocking is restricted to “known” blogging sites, and one like the “re-broadcaster” escape most filtering and blocking policies.

The situation is best stated by a prolific educational technology blogger:

“We’ve been talking about how blocking blogs from students may (or may not) protect students. But we haven’t talked much about how blocking blogs from teachers affects us all.” Another educational blogger states, “We just don’t trust our teachers – to run their computers, to teach information literacy, etc. In districts with integrated learning systems, lock-step scope and sequences that must be followed religiously, it’s clear they are not trusted to even teach.”

“Teachers in districts are denied access to potentially millions of sources of knowledge that, even if their students can’t access it, they can use to supplement what they teach and make it relevant. It’s tragic that until the district educates its teachers in information literacy, the teachers aren’t even being trusted to make good decisions.”

Because you do not wish your valuable information to be shared with teachers and students, I’ve completely disabled the web site. It did accredit you as author, but apparently you don’t wish to share your knowledge, skills and talents with teachers and students in America.

If suitable use of RSS syndication is such a problem for you, why did you activate it in the first place? Also, I never did receive any email from you advising me of your concerns. I suppose it was blocked by the filters.

Podcaster

[Jay Currie]

Why not do an excerpt feed. I run an aggregator at http://canada.info-syn.com and I keep bugging people to offer an excerpt feed.

The objective is to put up information which will get people to go to the blog where the headline and the "tease" came from.

The software for aggregation available off the shelf is not good at excerpting. I have one feed I have been trying to convince to give an excerpt blog for three months. But they either will not or can't and have objected when I said I would have to drop them.

RSS is wonderful way of distributing content and making a publisher known. But whole post feeds, whether to individuals or aggregators, are often more trouble than they are worth. Excerpt!

[Jay Currie]

And, while I'm here, what do you make of Memeorandum (through which I found this post), DIGG and Diggdot.us? Seems to me that a huge element of the entire Web 2.0 project is driven by the intentional exerpting and repuposing of others's content.

[Curious]

Shouldn't you set a rel="nofollow" on the links to those splogs? All you're doing right now is giving them more legitimacy in the eyes of Google e.a.

[Jonathan]

Steve,

If this reuse still bothers you, you might want to consider sending a DMCA takedown notice to the host of the site, phatservers.net (Note: I noticed that the schwoebel.biz one is already down so I'm focusing solely on the surferdiary.com one).

I have info on how to file a DMCA notice on my site, or you can simply google for sample DMCA notices. Though I couldn't find an email or fax number for the designated copyright agent, which is actually a requirement of the DMCA, I'll assume that writing legal-at-phatservers.net would be adequate.

Just follow the guildelines for a DMCA notice closely and, as always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I'm not a lawyer, but I've handled over 300 cases of plagiarism of my own work.

I've been around this block a few times before.

[Melissa]

I appreciate that you keep your site going and allow comments. To me feedback is an interesting part of a website. Your site is a very great website and I make your site for my homepage!.

[Matt Gerlach]

Steve, I was just wondering (as I wrote a post).

How did you find out that these sites were stealing your content?

[Pete Cashmore]

Steve,

While I accept that sploggers are irritating, I agree with the above commenters who suggest that splogging can't be stopped - you can't control your content, so why not treat these new distribution channels like free advertising for you and CooperKatz? Why not figure out how to make more money from the sploggers than they make from you? I know this sounds pretty counterintuitive, but I've tried to explain it here:

http://mashable.com/2005/12/31/why-online-media-should-be-free-and-why-we-should-embrace-the-splogophere/

[Chris McElroy]

Give it a rest.

1. You are not aristotle. Your content is yours but please don't place such a high value on it.

2. As long as they link back to you and don't alter the content and claim it as theirs, it isn't plagerism and is within rss guidelines.

3. It must be a slow blogging day for you if this is the best topic you could come up with.

4. Use the short feeds and it will actually end up sending you more traffic.

5. Monetize it if you want as others suggested. Let them work to make you money.

6. Everytime your post is linked from someone else's website to yours increases your link popularity.

Those that rewrite the content and claim it as theirs and original are thieves.

That doesn't mean that every time your post is reposted somewhere that gives you full credit and a link back it is theft.

Are you such an important blogger now that you want to control content and be like MSM?

I write 4 blogs daily. They aren't big. I get about 50-100 people per day reading each of them.

If you'd like to repost a bunch of my content on your blog, I'd appreciate and would never call you a thief.

By the way. Your post just helped me make the decision to put up an auotoblog. So now I have 5 blogs, one is just very low maintenance.

Chris McElroy

[Erik]

I think the best thing is copyright and then court.

[Maki]

Anyone know how you can find out the IP address or useragent of someone who is stealing your content via your RSS feed?

[FranchiseBrief.com]

Has anyone found a way to stop FeedWordPress to automatically steal your content???