Help, Someone’s Stolen My Web Content!
If you’ve been blogging for any length of time you might occasionally run across your content on another blog.
It’s happened to me several times. I recently started hearing the term “blog sraping” although the term is new to me it’s been used for a few years.
What is Blog Sraping?
Automated software scans thousands of websites daily and searching and copying related content. It’s basically copying and pasting content that is not owned by the person and pasting it into their spam blogs.
What’s the big deal?
Your content can appear on any website. Think about that for a moment would you really want that to happen. What if it appears on a website that might be potentially damaging to your credibility.
For example, if I had a website that talked about children would I really want to see my information on a pornography website? I don’t think so and yes this happened to me. I used to run a online web forum about parenting/pregnancy. We had over 150 active members. I found some of my original work plastered on a pornography website.
I Didn’t Know That Was Considered Stealing
You do have many people that copy content from other websites without thinking that they are doing might be a violation of the websites policy. Most people think copying content is harmless.
What they fail to realize is that copying aka screen scraping is against the terms of use for many commercial (and some personal) websites so copying and pasting material onto your own website, without the author’s permission, even if it’s not for commercial gain can get you into trouble.
Just Ask
If you see an article or picture that you would like to include on your website check out the Terms of Use on that website and ask the owner if you can include the material on your website. Think about the consequences that might happen if they find out about the copying.
How Do I Check If My Info Has Been Copied?
I use the Way Back Machine along with CopyScape and check my website often. Recently, a few people have contacted me by email to ask whether they could use images that I have taken on their website or if they could use information from some of my original post in reports they’ve written.
I was more than happy to let them use the articles. I had no idea children read my website yet even more of a reason to keep it child friendly.
How Do I Protect Myself?
1. Copyright Your Information
Include copyright information at the bottom of each original article or post. This should stop everyone but the most unscrupulous people from linking to your content.
It still won’t put a stop to the web scraping software that is out there however adding this information, but it gives you the legal right to go after the party.
How Do I Register My Information?
If you’re in the USA you also have the opportunity to place copyright material on file with the Copyright Office. Check out the United States Copyright Office website to learn about Copyright Office Basics.
2. If You’re Using Full Text Feed Add Copyright Information
I recently started using an RSS feed. I use Feedburner to manage my websites Rss feeds. Feedburner allows you to use a Creative Commons license. I use the Word Press Plug the Feed Copywriters Plug In in my footer. For more information check out RSS content theft and how to prevent it.
3. Place a Hidden Image In Your Entry
Another way to track a person that is copying and pasting your content.
For more information check out Lorelle’s What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content.
Question: Has your work been copied? What have you done?
[tag]blog scraping, copying website content, United States Copyright Office[/tag]
on July 25th, 2007 at 8:46 am
When I copy and paste stuff it’s usually an article or recipe but I also state the source I don’t say it’s my words or my “thing”. I have been noticing a bunch of link backs to my health posts or my yoga posts or fitness posts…
That’s scary about the children’s posts…ek!
on July 25th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Harmonia,
Just make sure it’s ok to do so there is some websites that don’t want their info to be redistributed at all. I ran into this problem on my forum.
A moderator posted info and linked back to the source. The web owner contacted me directly. I apologized and moved the link. I knew the moderator intentionally didn’t do this she just didn’t know. My forum members that would actually click over to her website even with reference to her website were slim. Why should they when the complete information was right on the forum. I definitely understood why she was upset.
Although we didn’t meet under the best circumstances, The web owner and I developed a great relationship. She even extended my readers a discount when I asked for one. The web owner that contacted me made her living on the internet.
I think part of the reasons that some web owners don’t like this is that the bots don’t know which article is the original. It’s highly possible that website of the person copying the article could rank higher, in search engines, for those keywords. I can see why this would upset the originator since it’s their work however someone, who has copied their work, is ranking higher than theirs.
That’s why when I mention an article, after checking their Terms of Service to make sure it’s ok, I’ll include a few short paragraphs and link back to the original article. It is their work, and for me personally, I want to recognize them by directly sending my readers to their website.
on July 25th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Somebody stole my “Blogathon in a Nutshell” page almost word-for-word and changed only the necessary information. She even retained my all-capped words and my “…” and my sentence structure and tone.
I sent her 2 emails to request that she either remove the post completely or use her own sentences instead but she did not take action.
I’m so p*ssed!
on July 25th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Pelf,
I can feel your frustration. That has happened to me. My emails didn’t work so I reported their website to Google Spam. They also had Adsense on their website and that is against Adsense TOS.
A few months ago I had someone who copied my content every single day. That was extremely annoying! Their website was loaded with content taken from other peoples websites. It was a Splog.
Matt Cutts (head of Google spam) wrote an article, I believe in April, that touches briefly on this type of behavior.
If they are caught they can lose their indexing in Google, Lorelle’s article, mentioned, at the end of my post is very informative and talks about other measures that you can do to hopefully put a stop to that sort of behavior.
Unfortunately you will have people that will ignore your requests.
on July 25th, 2007 at 10:14 am
I should really switch to linking to the specific articles. :) Thanks for the notes and tips. I did get a note from a person who’s recipe I posted but she was fine with it because I sourced it and linked her site. I’m glad because the last thing I would want to do is upset someone…that is why I give credit where credit is due. But you are right I should revise the way I do some things…I will work on that. Thanks again!
o/t - are you having problems viewing MyFitnessPal’s website today???
on July 25th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Harmonia,
I think anyone that as been on your website for any length of time will know you’re not being malicious.
I think a lot of people just don’t know about the legal issues on the internet and that is understandable but there are some who know and continue to do it anyway like pelf has mentioned.
That’s great that you give credit some don’t do that which is a shame.
on July 25th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Don’t forget even Google penalizes duplicate content, so your pagerank goes down eventually
on July 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Thanks Opal! ;)
on July 25th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Fred,
I completely forgot about that, and you’re correct now that I think about it maybe that is another reason why my Page Rank went from a five to a four with this past update. I was thinking the only reason was that I switched my name but before the last Google PR I was having issues with one website that copied my content every day for a few weeks.
I haven’t seen them online for a few months so I think Google must have yanked their website.
Harmonia,
You’re welcome!
on July 25th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I have a cabbage problem! Swing by when you have a chance! lol
on July 25th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I’ve had a few sites shut down because of the plagiarizing scumm scraping my content.
I contacted their host and ISP and reported them. I also reported them to Google as it goes against their TOS.
It was a lot of work though. To see that 404 page not found was great, but the time and effort is crazy.
I use the RSS plugins so the first line has the Copyright notice, and only the first few lines show in the RSS so they can’t copy the whole thing. That way your PR isn’t affected because of Duplicate content.
on July 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Harmonia,
I stopped by.
MacBros,
Hey buddy what have you been up to?
Tell us how you really feel, lol. Thankfully that hasn’t happened to me but I would be highly upset if that happened to me.
On some of my articles I spend hours writing them and to have them swiped like that doesn’t make me feel that great.
The last article that I had copied was High Blood Pressure: Six Ways You Can Lower Your Blood Pressure Naturally. The copier finally took it down after the third email.
on October 6th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
how are you? great post!!!!!!!!
on February 20th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I feel your pain. I have had it happened to an article that was ranked #3 on google.
They reposted it 4 times (with my typos and all) on four blogs. So far, one is showing a 404 page. LOL. I had contacted wordpress on which it was hosted and they yanked it.
BTW, I’m curious to learn how the hidden image in the article is done.