Last week, two fellow bloggers alerted me that my posts had been lifted by a splog. I’ve encountered this in the past, but usually it’s something like “Ms. Fancypants had an interesting post about X. Here’s an excerpt…” (Then they copy a few sentences from my post and move onto the next one.)
I was a bit dismayed to discover that this splog had reproduced at least half a dozen posts verbatim. In their entirety. Including the photos I’d carefully selected to comply with the Creative Commons license. And without any attribution to yours truly.
Not cool.
My first impulse was to leave comments on all of the stolen posts letting the blog administrator know that if they wanted to use my posts, they’d need to do so with attribution. Not surprisingly, those comments are still “awaiting moderation.”
Next I searched the blog for contact information. Nada. So, I logged onto WhoIs.com to see if they had any info on this domain. They did, and it was some random web administrator in Canada. Fortunately, my Skype plan covers unlimited calls to the US and Canada, but when I called I got an automated message instructing me to log onto some website to get in touch with the website administrator.
That website assured me that my message would be relayed to the website administrator, but because of privacy issues, they are not obligated to respond. Yeah… I’m sure they’ll get right on that and remove the stolen content…
A little more digging revealed that WhoIs.com also has a form where you can report inaccurate database information. Technically, I don’t know if this information is accurate or not, but the fact that they make themselves so inaccessible reeks of spam to me. So I reported them.
I know you’re all dying to see this splog for yourselves, but I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. If I link to them, then you’ll click on the link and their traffic will spike. So you’ll just have to trust me on this (and I’ll be interested to see if this post gets splogged, too).
Honestly, I don’t expect anything to come out of my efforts. I did it more as an experiment and because one of the fellow bloggers suggested that this might make an interesting post. It seems that the World Wide Web is much like the old Wild West in that there really isn’t an authority figure to police these things. It’s a totally new content model (blogging in general, not just splogs). But at the same time, I doubt that splogs will ever make a dent in my readership or my ability to earn a living, because savvy internet readers (and even search engines) can tell the difference.
What do you think? How have you dealt with splogs? And how do you feel about the general lack of content boundaries online?
Susan,
The only times I’ve been splogged have been like you mentioned had happened to you before—an excerpt with the link to the post.
I get frustrated when sites don’t provide contact information and don’t respond when you try to reach them, but that’s what I’d expect from a splogger.
Argh! This has happened on a popular site I help manage on so I feel your pain Susan. The offender ripped the entire feed and republished it on their site, including images!
Did you contact the company’s web host and ask them to remove the content?
In one instance I couldn’t find contact or host information, so I posted in the comments saying this content wasn’t permitted and to remove it immediately. That got a reaction. But I’m not surprised these folks won’t publish your comments.
If they’re ripping your whole feed you may be able to ban them from accessing it completely by insetting a bit of code in your site’s htaccess file.
If I can help at all, please feel free to send me an email.
Sorry to hear about this.
Hey Susan: As one of the people who tipped you off to the splog, I’m happy to hear that you followed up, but frustrated that you haven’t been able to locate any live bodies. I agree with Janet about contacting the Web hosting co.: I think other bloggers have been successful using that route to get material removed from a site. I’ll be anxious to hear what happens.
Michelle Rafter
I’ve never really considered an excerpt with a link to a post a splog. I consider that fair use. It happens all the time and usually just gives me more traffic.
When I got truly splogged with all my content being copied and reproduced in full, including my copyright notice, then I was really angry. The splog was stealing content from dozens of blogs and had tons of Google Ads, which I’m assuming is what they were stealing for. To have content to make money off of the Google Ads.
I tried contacting the splog people to no avail. What I ended up doing was filing a DMCA Complaint with Google AdSense. They in turn took down the ads and the splog disappeared soon after.
The blog PlagiarismToday has a ton of information on how to deal with these issues. Below is a link to the blog’s page with DMCA information.
http://tinyurl.com/5lgfux
I’ve been dealing with this same thing for a while now. I detest getting a Google Alert and going to the site (and in most cases, Blogger blog) and find ZERO contact info. It’s disgusting. I did find out that you can fill out forms here via snail mail but it seems like a long process. I don’t know. It makes me sick. One of my pieces ranks first on the first page of Google – but it is a splog link. ARGH!
I feel your pain…
*hugs*
Michele
Thanks for all your feedback! I realize there are more important things in freelancing (like completing projects for paying clients), but I can see this is an issue that many bloggers face.
@Janet: I would love your help. I’ll send you an email.
@Anali: Posting an excerpt is fair use, but attributing it to some madeup name is not. Aside from stealing content, splogs also clutter the web with useless and often nonsensical information. That’s another reason to want to fight back!
Does anyone know how to contact the web hosting co.? The information I found on WhoIs.com was a dead end. I filed a complaint with WhoIs.com and they wrote back saying it’s not their jurisdiction (though I did appreciate getting an actual response).
This has also happened to me a few times, with about as much success as you’ve had. I’ve learned to just ignore it and chalk it up to another hazard of the internet, sad as it is. If you do get a response somehow though, I would be happy to know how you do!
@Freya: I think you have the right attitude. Blogging is relatively uncharted territory, so there’s not much that can be done to police or prevent splogging.
Wow. I suppose imitation is a form of flattery, but that really sucks. I agree with Anal — my feeling is these kind of sploggers don’t have much of a loyal following, but are just doing it to make money.
Hi, You also have recourse with the domain owner’s reseller or their registrar’s compliance department. Take the same Whois search for the domain in question. ICANN mainly governs domain name ownership, but sometimes a Reseller or a Registrar will work with you on intellectual theft.
Good luck,
Heather
Sorry if I offended Susan. That wasn’t my intent. I agree that splogging is very bad, which was why I filed a complaint when it happened to me. I must have misunderstood. I thought that you meant they were excerpting you, but that they had attributed to you.
I recently found a blog using an article of mine – which had I looked – it might have been on a free reprint site or something. But the thing was, they used one of my pictures also without permission. No contact info and comments were closed.
So *that*’s what it is called.
Yes, I’ve had it happen to me a great deal. I’ve got Comment Filtering enabled on by personal blog and I usually have to delete four or five comments a week that gleefully inform me that some grubby nonhuman spam-feeding blog somewhere has linked to my writing. I also see some rather disreputable sites sending links my way – nothing to do with me!
Kudos for chasing up on them this one time. I’m not sure what the correct approach is. I used to think that any publicity is good publicity, but it’s not really that simple…
- Mike Sowden, ‘Fevered Mutterings’
Hi Susan,
I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t get this straightened out. I know when I discovered one of the instances last week, it didn’t appear that there was any contact info on the site. I initially thought you were also writing for someone else, and then realized that they were just lifting your content.
I’ve had this happen a couple times too … very frustrating.
-Jenny (http://www.thegoldenpencil.com)
@Anali: Don’t worry, you didn’t offend. My indignation/self-righteousness was directed at sploggers, not at you!
It turns out that the web host is in Germany and their website is written entirely in German (how convenient).
Thanks everyone for weighing in on this one, and I’ll update if I’m able to get any answers!
The lack of electronic frontiers really lowers people’s inhibition, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there will always be people who abuse the system, which is really unfortunate. These are probably the same people who plagiarized papers in college – yikes!
Luckily, we have not been splogged (yet). Our excerpts are always attributed to us.
And Susan: since we are German translators, we would be happy to give you a basic idea of what it says on the German site. For free, of course.
Judy and Dagmar: That is really sweet of you. I’ve sent you an email!
This has yet to happen to me with my personal cat sitting blog (I guess sploggers aren’t desperate for cat-related content!), but the professional writing I have done for other Web sites/online magazines has been splogged, and it is infuriating. I can’t tell you how many reviews and celebrity interviews have been re-run on other sites without my permission. I don’t care if they attribute the pieces to me. I never gave them permission to re-run the stories in the first place! I have tried contacting the sites in the past to no avail, and I have also notified the sites that I originally wrote the articles for to see if they wanted to pursue the sploggers. At this point, it seems to be a losing battle, which is really too bad.
Sorry, it happens to anyone that’s getting enough traffic to be an attractive target. You never will find them and could waste So much time trying. DCMA is also WAY too time-consuming and Google is really unhelpful. “Not our blog.” Frustrating as it is, I’ve decided to just make one pass at finding who’s behind it — then move on to paying work. You know what they say about imitation and flattery…
We have an update: the splog actually reposted this blog post that refers to splogs (but does not link to any), which all but confirms my theory that they’re using my feed. The good news is that they’ve started using the disclaimer “original post by XXX” at the bottom of most of the posts (not mine yet). So this is some kind of improvement, and I suspect that others have had the same reaction I did to prompt this.
Recent story on plagiarism that went viral. Not splogging. Maybe worse because the post was edited. Just incredible.
Cooks source (food magazine) incident – http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/11/05/cooks.source.plagiarism/ .