ProBlogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog » General Discussion about Blogging

1. 

   karmazen
   Member

   Hey, I did a search for Copyright and did not find my answer. Perhaps you all can help me.  I was checking stats and found a scraper site that copied one of my articles.  I have had people link to me and then add a paragraph of my content with a note to "read more" whilst pointing their readers to my site.

   On my Copyright page I am pretty deliberate with my message.

   My original article on Bodyfat percentage: http://jcdfitness.com/2009/03/what-is-my-body-fat-percentage/

   The Scraper post: http://health-ezine.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-my-body-fat-percentage.html  

   I emailed them nicely asking them to remove the content and they haven't responded nor taken it down.  A friend of mine with much more experience than I in blogging and specifically taking over the interwebz, said that google will notice who the real authority is regarding this article so I shouldn't really worry about it. so what can I do if they don't remove it?  It is kind of flattering that they think enough of the content to steal it. HAH!

   A No BS Approach To Looking Great Naked

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   ChristiaanH
   Member

   I solved the problem of stealing with a simple copyright statement. "feel free to use anything, just link back please" 

    

   I don't mind if some content gets stolen, you can't hope to prevent it every time. So I just gave in immediatly and it's a free for all. As long as they link back. 

   Now it's the linkback that will prove hard to enforce, but as I said again, you can't hope to ever stop every copy. They gave you a linkback right? That will help you get noticed :) 

   Mind the beginner A blog on beginning, it sounds so simple but it’s quite complex

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   lance_
   Member

   You can get blogspot to take down the copied article using a DMCA notice. Note that DMCA notices only work on US hosts, but Blogspot is US based. Here's the google help page showing you how to send one. No letter needed to take down a blogspot article, it gives you an online form.

   If you feel like getting the copied post out of search engines take a look at the notice to search engine letter hosted at PlagiarismToday. Send that to Google Blogsearch and any other search engines you care about. Contact information for a bunch of them is also at plagiarismtoday.

   If you want to make it easier to find more scrapers then consider signing up for FairShare, which is the free version of Attributor. It'll give you a RSS feed and tell you when it spots license violations. (If you tell it you license under CC with attribution it'll warn you if there's no attribution for example.) Not only that but it builds up your database of posts that could get you money if Fair Syndication comes through. Hope that helps and good luck getting it sorted out!

   Edit: Fixed anchor text to stock letters.

   I'm always on.
   Blog: im addicted / Twitter: lance_

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   Rachael
   Member

   At least they linked back to you ;)  I don't mind so much as long as there is a link back to my original content.  I was really surprised when I did a google search for the first time and found my stuff all over the place.  Only once was there not a linkback saying who and where to find the article and I contacted them to take it down.

   www.warmheartshappyfamily.com

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   lance_
   Member

   @ChriatiaanH, linkbacks from splogs are bad news. It increases your "bad neighbourhood" score with google which leads to a reduction in page trust, and with that rankings. It's still worth pursuing takedowns if you get more than a couple.

   I'm not clear if this blog is considered a bad neighbour yet, but if it's a scraper it likely will be eventually.

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   NateDesmond
   Member

   @ karmazen

   Here are two Problogger articles on that topic:

   • http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/07/copyright-blogging-and-content-theft/
   • http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/08/how-to-defend-your-blogs-copyright/

   You can also work with Google to remove the scraper site from Search Engines:

   http://www.google.com/dmca.html

   Hope this helps,

   Nate

    

   Debt-free Scholar - A growing college finances blog

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   lance_
   Member

   ChristiaanH* .. Wow, sorry for butchering your name so badly. I'll start proofreading my posts a little better.

   Posted 1 year ago #
8. 

   mayank
   Member

   I've read lot of articles on fighting the copyright issues and I can safely say one thing and that is the amount of knowledge, resource that one can read over at http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/ can't be found easily at any other blog on the internet. Jonathan Bailey is one of the best person for this kind of stuff.

   --

   
   

   Blog Design Studio

   Posted 1 year ago #
9. 

   lance_
   Member

   @karmazen, I'm not sure that the blogspot page is a scraper after all. It looks like it was non-automated plagiarism. A DMCA notice might be a bit heavy handed on second thought. I'd suggest writing the health-ezine owner first (maybe turn it into a guest post?)

   Posted 1 year ago #
10. 

    karmazen
    Member

    wow you guys are freaking awesome.  So much info here that I never knew about! thnx!

    @Lance: I contacted them but like I said, no response yet.  Your response with the attribution links are monumental.  Thank you very much.  I will definitely make use of them.

    aqain, you all rock.  I really hope Darren leaves this forum up after the 31 day thingy is up.

    Posted 1 year ago #
11. 

    lance_
    Member

    @karmazen oops, I must have a very short memory. It looks like I need to read not just my own posts but others' more clearly. Sorry about that, and happy to help. :)

    Posted 1 year ago #
12. 

    Holly Jahangiri
    Member

    Jonathan Bailey is AWESOME. We first met when he commented on my article, "Copyright Essentials for Writers," and provided some valuable info to help me tackle a repeat rip-off artist. I've had a few web sites taken down for copyright violation. With some, it's just not worth the hassle. Instead, use the damned fools as fodder for a blog post and have a little fun at their expense, as I did in "Ten Secrets to Hugely Successful Article Writing."

    Posted 1 year ago #
13. 

    jon.reid
    Member

    For folks who want to allow others to use their work, that's what Creative Commons is for. Here's the copyright page I added to my blog not too long ago: http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/creative-commons-copyright.html

    blog one another | http://twitter.com/jonmreid | http://jonmreid.stumbleupon.com/ | http://digg.com/users/jonmreid

    Posted 1 year ago #
14. 

    ChristiaanH
    Member

    That's okay Lance_ I have typo's all the time. I didn't even notice untill you wrote about it :p

     

    The "bad neighbourhood" score... never thought about that actually. (I'm not so much into SEO and all other things search engine yet ... ) I guess I'l need more reading to do about google..

    Posted 1 year ago #
15. 

    Holly Jahangiri
    Member

    Has anyone here EVER had any luck in getting Google to do a take-down? I haven't. Even once when I explained that the splogger was ripping them off by collecting adsense revenues with dishonest, unethical practices (never mind outright plagiarism, my idiot was scrambling the content, thinking I wouldn't notice he was still up to his old tricks). Google seems singularly unfazed by notices of copyright violations. Other sites are generally quite responsive.

    Posted 1 year ago #
16. 

    mayank
    Member

    @Holly I agree, one of my friend Kanak (tecfre.com) has had bad experience with Google in these cases. This is actually pretty bad from Google's point of view. Sometimes, I feel that how important it is to actually have a talk with a real person.

    Posted 1 year ago #
17. 

    Holly Jahangiri
    Member

    I'm seriously beginning to doubt there ARE any real people at Google; they certainly have no interest in enabling anyone to make contact with them. Their scripts are fairly intelligent; one could talk to those for hours...

    Posted 1 year ago #

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