It comes as some surprise that my blog is increasingly becoming the target of content theft. Yes it comes as much a shock to me as anyone else that someone actually wants to steal the content of my blog but its true.
It turns out that i am far from being alone with many bloggers and not just big names in blogging being targeted by Spinning Spammers who rip the post from your blog and change a few words before posting it as their own.
The strange thing is that the actual ripping is automated and steals based on its particular keywords and the thief has never actually read the post so me saying i was comparing the price of internet access in a country town to buying a property appeared on a spammy property website. Their automated thieves are obviously not tuned to pick up subtle things like the fact the post is nothing to do with what their spam bot thinks it is about.
But with all that i have decided to tighten up things, From now on there will be a message about copyright in the footer of the blog as well as after each post as well.
Oh and before i go, in researching the whole situation there were a couple of links that you should read if you find it happening to you and your blog:
- Protecting Your Content From the Spinning Spammers discusses the methods used by these spammers, legal issues, what to do and some techniques for detecting spun versions of your posts.
- Lorelle also has What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content which provides a lot of useful information and how to take action as well as confounding some myths and expanding on your rights as the author under laws.
So in short, keep an eye out as there are people happy to steal your content for their own uses.
Edit: Its not just the big names, its sooner or later just about everyone.
8 Comments Received
November 16th, 2007 @4:47 am
It’s a myth that sploggers and scrapers are targeting the “big bloggers”. Many who haven’t been paying attention lately are finding themselves scraped, their content appearing in odd and strange, ad-filled places.
You are right that scrapers don’t look at what they are stealing. The process of setting up splog farm blogs is easy, and can be done in minutes. A random search of the web turns up tons of blogs, and with a few copy and pastes of links, they can put any blog into their scraping list, stuffing thousands of blogs into the list.
Many big bloggers are being scraped less because they have fought back. Now it’s time for everyone to fight back. It’s fast and easy to report sploggers, and together, maybe we can put an end to this blight on the web.
Thanks for being one of the heroes speaking out on this issue!
November 16th, 2007 @7:01 am
This makes me sad… So far this hasn’t happened to me in the blog world (that I know of.) But it happened back in high school and I felt so violated and angry.
A blogger friend of mine had nearly her whole blog copied. Someone assumed her (more interesting) life. Bizarre.
November 16th, 2007 @7:54 am
Hi Lorelle, your right – i had a look further into the matter and it seems to be rife everywhere and i will be amending this post shortly
I am for the fighting back and I for one am not going to take it. If i find it happening to someone else then i am going to let them know. Time to get rid of these free loaders!
November 16th, 2007 @8:00 am
Tee – I guess the important thing is that we as bloggers don’t stand for it when it does happen. So keep an eye out for the trackbacks from strange places that have no reason to link to your blog.
As for your friend, i am thinking sadly that your friend is far from alone and its happening more then you might think.
Thanks for visiting
November 16th, 2007 @9:40 am
I have to reinforce what Lorelle says. Most spammers these days are just watching the central pinging services and either grabbing desirable posts or are finding feeds to take wholesale. Big small or in between, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The footer in the feed is a good idea but also consider using a digital fingerprint to track your content a bit. It has worked great for me!
November 16th, 2007 @11:12 am
Wow, I’ve never even thought about this. How do you even find out if your content is being stolen??
November 16th, 2007 @6:34 pm
Hi Jonathon, yeah i am increasingly finding that having found this very post ripped off by a spammer. The message itself was an early hours of the morning solution until i get everything else set up.
Steph – their blogs are sending trackbacks when they link to my blog plus with WordPress the blogging platform i use, recent links to my blog from other sites from out of google are displayed
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