This is a cheap and horrible blogtrick. Someone is stealing my content and the content of other local bloggers and posting it to another blog full of advertising for which they presumably get the revenue. Money for them, no effort on their part. No permission sought.
The slime is question is in KL too. Anything I can do? I have the IP address so I guess I should contact Telekom and start a complaint procedure.
(I am not giving the link because if I did you'd go take a look, and they would make money.)
Update
I contacted GoogleAds three times to report abuse - no response.
I contacted the webhost Hostgator and reported abuse - no response.*
But at least the guy hasn't posted for a couple of days so maybe something is happening.
Another Update
*Hostgator has responded. Did respond earlier, but my Streamyx account appears to be bouncing all my email with recipients getting the message that my account does not have a valid IP. WTF??????? This is the service I pay for ...
17 comments:
Sharon, that's really awful. I think you'll need to write a cease & desist letter to this person for infringement of copyright if I'm not mistaken. Will find out and let you know.
thanks. glad to have some lawyers in the vicinity!
Hi Sharon --
As someone who's also had the experience, I so hate content theft and am sorry to hear that you're a victim of such. As to what you can do about it: I suppose that it helps some that the errant site in question is based in the same city as you.
At the same time, if the errant site in question is hosted by either blogger or wordpress, I believe that there are buttons on it that should help you to report the site to those web hosts.
Also, if the errant site in question carries google ads, go to the following for directions as to how report copyright violations:-
http://blogher.org/node/14851#comment-14687
Sharon, what u can do is also to put a sort of clause at the bottom of each of your posts.
I used to do that when this 'aggregator' called bitlog (or something similar, i forget the exact name) which started lifting a LOT of the content from US bloggers, using a technology that 'scrapes' the blog posts and using the content as their own without any link backs or credits. A LOT of good bloggers actually STOPPED blogging because of this.
Check out http://shenuts.com/ and look at the end of her blog posts. This way, if anyone is reading your blog post (because that part gets scraped too - the technology is not sophisticated enough to know) somewhere else, they will soon stop.
thanks so much for your v. practical suggestions will report to google
didn't know it was being sone by technology and not just an individual
Sorry to hear this, Sharon. But in a way, it's a tribute because I'm sure they only lift good stuff. Altho I know this type of tribute you don't need!
As for the technology, there is still a human behind the technology, you know?
omg sharon. you have to do something! who is this person???
This is terrible. I’m very sorry to hear this. I don’t know if it would be of any console, perhaps this is included with the package of fame.
But where is this blog in question? (Am certainly curious).
News aggregator or RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or feed reader is client software that uses a web feed to retrieve syndicated web content such as weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites, or in the case of a search aggregator, a customized set of search results.
One must first subscribe to the RSS feed (usually by getting the feed address by clicking the small yellow button with the tag “RSS”) in order to read them.
This web tool allows one to read any web content that they subscribe to (lets say, favorite news, blog sites), at least the snippets of it, without having to visit the website that they subscribe to. It’s also fuctions as a tagging system, where one will know when their favorite spot has updated their content.
A tool - when used in not an evil way – a very nifty tool for someone who reads a wide range of websites and blogs, without having to waste time typing in the url, or browsing through the bookmark or wasting time to go to a site only to find the new posted content are nothing interesting.
While another approach of the kind of site, that steals content normally use a “spider” or sometimes called a “webcrawler”. Now this tool allows them to “crawl” all over the Internet – a popular MO for spammers - looking for any information the user had specified (email address, specified types of content) and then sent back the collected information to their site/place/whatever.
okay - the url is here
if you can't immediately find my posts it's because post after post have been added since my stuff was nicked, but i saw at least 3 of my posts on there - original stuff mostly w. my photos
and yes, there are other legit. sites which take my posts and i have given permission to, but this one is completely bogus. not the first time this has happened but the nastiest example
ystl - i complained to google - many thanks to you for the link. we'll see what happens.
Wow, they even nicked one of Yazmin Ahmad's pictures, but at least they credited her with it.
interesting - i think my stuff has been taken down now. which means that the slime is someone who reads the blog.
Yep, I saw your post (even yasmin ahmad's)
If the blog owner is just aggregating the contents of blogs as in highlighting/reviewing blog pages (there are a few good blog index) I think it would be okay.
Even though there is a link pointing to the original blog, but posting the whole blog content, instead of snippets and making money out of it? Now that's daylight robbery.
By the way, I didn't see the ads because I am using a camino browser, and its got ad-blockers.
Dear Sharon -- I ran a WhoIs on the domain name (to check who owns it) and, whilst the owner's info has been blocked, I managed to trace his webhost, http://hostgator.com. I believe you should forward a complaint to his hosting company (with supporting evidence) so that they can do something about it. Stealing content is a violation of their terms of service, and if it is proven that he has done so, they would likely suspend his site.
Through Technorati, I found another "travel Malaysia blog" that does almost the same thing. It's just a collection of feeds ripped off the Internet using some web crawling script.
I almost feel sorry for the person.
don't feel sorry for him sotong
he's minting money! he has so many google ads and even with just casual google hits he's bound to be drawing in a lot of revenue
he's not doing this because he wants a nice blog himself - he's doing it cynically, ripping stuff from popular blogs esp. posts which get widely googgled
many thanks irene. will contact his service provider
Post a Comment