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Yesterday’s post was not scraped. When I checked the Technorati Links in the WordPress Dashboard, all the posts that were linked came up with a Great Big 404 error (page not found). Hurray!!!
Understand, Did You Rob Bill Gates is still stealing other peoples content, just not mine (fingers crossed). So, I wanted to share my thoughts on what may have worked, at least in this one instance.
As mentioned in the earlier FeedBurner post, I commented on their blog asking & then telling them to stop stealing my content. I also blocked their IP address so as not to allow access to the blog itself. Of course, nothing happened with these steps, but I felt it was the right progression to cover any further steps I would take.
What Might have worked.
On each of the linked posts, I clicked through to DYRBG as each of my new posts were linked. Of course, AdSense is right at the top, so I clicked the small Ads by Google link in the Ad Box. Within the popup screen there is a way to send Google your thoughts on the site you are reading.
Clicking that brings you to another page where you can tell how relevant the ads are to that post. Below that is a link to report a violation of AdSenses TOS. Clicking that gives you a choice of Website or Ad Violations.
Click Website, and you get a list of violations, including but not limited to, distributing your copyrighted material. Once you click that it will ask for examples of the infringement (you must type something in there, eg Your Link) & e-mail address (optional).
It’s doubtful that this worked, because the site is still there and scraping.
What I think may have worked.
Since they were scraping my RSS Feed every time I posted something new, that was the place to start.
I have been using the RSS Feed Signature Plugin by Smackfoo to put the copyright for WAHI in the footer of the feeds. The plugin works great, but some people have no respect for other peoples work even if it is protected. You can actually put anything you like in the footer, links back to the blog, advertisements, whatever. So, I put “IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON “DID YOU ROB BILL GATES”, IT IS STOLEN CONTENT! PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON ANY ADS, IT WILL ONLY ENCOURAGE THIS THIEF!”
This showed up on EVERY post of mine they scraped so that if someone read their posting of my article, they would see it and possibly take heed and Not Click an Ad.
I don’t think they felt any guilt, but maybe it affected their pocketbook a bit. Maybe even enough to take down they posts they stole from me.
Actually, I don’t know if it was any one or combination of the above that worked, but something did. At least for the time being.
So, if your material is being scraped by such a Splog, maybe some or all of these steps will help stop the problem in it’s tracks.
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by Joe Hauckes
2 Comments
Okay, I did the first one and reported that scrapper site to Google. Let’s see if they do anything. And I’ll try putting a footer on my posts. Maybe that’ll help. Thanks for another informative post!
Hey Dave,
Hope reporting them stops them, but for some reason I think will take a long time either way. I’ve seen scrapers out rank the original author in Search Results because they usually do it often and to a lot of different sites. Bulk scrapping.
Just keep an eye on them and follow up.
Good luck.
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