fracas

Thanks for the heads up!! I’ll be writing a post about it today. And since I know how much you loooooove meme’s I’ve tagged you in one hehe!!

I’ve had this happen to me. If they are running AdSense, it doesn’t take much time to contact Google and get them to pull them, though the first time through is time-consuming. Once it’s set up, the next time is easier. Because there will be a next time. This problem is not going away.
http://lettershometoyou.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/what-to-do-if-youre-getting-as-sick-as-i-am-of-having-your-blog-copied/

[...] What the hell is a splog?! Yeah that’s what I was asking myself earlier when reading this post by Fracas. She explains it much better but in a nutshell a “splog” is a blog that takes content [...]

Good information, though Blogspot/Blogger is one of the most notorious “suppliers”, if you will, of splogs.

You might want to consider removing your link to them as that can score against you with PageRank and gives them exactly what they want. I’m sure you don’t want to do that.

I also recommend What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content with the step-by-step details on what to do, and the short version, The 6 Steps to Stop Content Theft by Jonathan Bailey.

I’ve had that happen too! Some refer to my site and others don’t. I didn’t know what to do about it until now. The one site doesn’t allow comments so I couldn’t even warn them. I’ll report them now!

(Hey Fracas - go you-know-where to read something very important and then delete this part… lol)

Bloggers are experiencing is theft. It’s easy to see what motivates the thieves is profit - plain and simple. And no blogger that I know wants to provide a source of income for lazy parasites who refuse to write their own material.

What’s more? No attempts to rationalize or justify stealing blog contents phases me in the least. Theft is theft.

The thieves have a false sense of security. They assume that because wordpress.com bloggers are on free hosting here that they can’t afford to take legal action. They are wrong and the sentiment against them these days is so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

What needs to be done is known to us. All the steps are laid out. Simply go to the WordPress forum and type DMCA into the searchbox.

The most effective one is to click the dickens out of the google adsense ads on the splogs with our stolen content on them and then to click the little report to Google link and follow through by making a complaint. We can also follow through with reports to the blog hosts about the thieving and, if these are not effective, then we can make DMCA complaints.

I have a hosted wordpress installation with not a single advertisement on it. I do not visit blogs covered with advertising more than once. And I certainly do not link to them.

I have Google alerts. I check Technorati and Google every day. And, I’m capable of doing whois searches so there is no splogger out there scraping my content that I’m not aware of.

It’s just not ok..

(Hi timethief - This post was in the askimet bin. I just thought I’d let you know in case it’s happening to you at other blogs. If so, let me know and I’ll send in a report so they can unspamify you. -Fracas)

girliegeek - Thanks for the support!

ian in hamburg - I believe I’ve read your post too! It’s so frustrating, isn’t it? I wish I had powers and could just render all those blog scraping idiots lobotomized or something.

Lorelle - Thanks for the tip. I linked to the article for the satisfaction of them seeing the trackback and knowing we’re all spreading the word about them, but you make a good point. I’ll remove the link but leave it in such a way that people still can see the site address. As always though, you have great tips for us. I encourage everyone to read your articles on it.

jayleen - If it weren’t for people like ian, timethief and Lorelle, we’d be fumbling more than we are. I really appreciate their help whether it’s at their own blogs or in the WordPress forums. (And I’ve gone and left something for you too.)

timethief - thanks for pointing out the help in the WP forum. I’m so behind on what I’d like to do online because of stuff going on here the past month or so… but I sure do plan to make a page with links to all of your (the collective your) information on this topic. I was mad that night and so posted the post with minimal information but will do better. If we all had a page like that on our blogs, soon enough, all bloggers would know what to do and we’d have a better chance of stopping these cretins.

[...] the hell is a splog?! Yeah that’s what I was asking myself earlier when reading this post by Fracas. She explains it much better but in a nutshell a “splog” is a blog that takes content [...]

I have never suffered from the blog scrapper, or at least I never knew if I was, when I used other blog sites. It wasn’t until I came here to WP that this whole thing started up.
I have been hit four times in one week. I have tried to contact the administrators of those sites that stole my entries, yet there’s never a contact link. On one site they had a “register” link, and if you want to comment, you have to register, so I did. I went to it, left a comment about them stealing the entry and it went to “awaiting moderation.” Since then, the register link was removed and of course the comment was never approved.
I’ve found that the ones who stole from me use WP template and is “WordPress” but not on WordPress server, but one that they pay to be on.
I guess there’s nothing we can really do about this theft, is there? It’s a shame, especially since we, the originators of the entries have a copyright.

[...] Spammers only send stuff and you can either erase their crap or your tech admin can block it… sploggers steal your work, your ideas, and use them to fund their gambling [...]