Like lots of folks, I’m finding my content showing up on lots of random “web sites”. Here is a list that showed up in one day of my “ego” search feeds.
- http://internet-information-server.pixieblog.net/9084/
- http://handy-gloves.info/
- http://servers.agfteam.com/36888/
- http://webhosting-webspace.net/hosting/how-to-become-a-domain-name-registrar/24455/
- http://prosnja.net/q-a-on-the-feedlounge-dns-saga/ (see explanation from site owner in the comments)
- http://millionringtones.com/blogs/bach-nokia-free-ringtones/30187/
- http://www.askthewebhost.net/blogs/web-servers/5904
- http://computer-techweb.com/computer/dedicated-internet-server/15971/
- http://ebay-auction.damnblogs.com/344301/
If I wanted to actually hunt for copies, Copyscape seems like the right tool for the job.
Several friends alerted me to several of these sites, which seem to be attempting to monetize my (and others) content by adding their own Google AdSense code or by increasing their page rank by linking certain words on the pages.
Their advice was to report the sites to Google for copyright infringement, and get them delisted from Google/AdSense. I guess this is a good idea, I’m not exactly sure where to send the information to do this though (and I guess I really should automate it a little).
I’m quite sure that many of you are seeing the same problem. How are you dealing with it?
UPDATE: Yes, I know “thieves” is misspelled – I wanted something to search on in the various blog search tools that could help find these leech sites.
Wow that is bad news! I am finding people hot linking my images, where in that case, I change the image to something like “Hotlinking = Bad”. But I have not my content poping up yet. I’ll have to keep an eye out.
When in doubt, Google it…
http://www.google.com/dmca.html
Appears to be the place you’re looking for. It includes all the procedures for getting them axed. Doesn’t look like there’s any way to automate it (they require you sign and mail in information), so good luck.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9894
Deals specifically with AdSense related issues, but links to what appears to be exactly the same as the above page.
I suppose he should “Google” this too?
The worst offender I’ve seen so far has been weblog-pla.net They’ve got separate sections like WordPress Planet, Movable Type Planet which aggregate the biggest blogs in their respective areas with absolutely no link backs.
It’s down right now so, perhaps it’ll be up with proper linkbacks and marking of copyrighted content.
I’d be interested in hearing how you deal with this. I post artwork sometimes and since there’s really no way to search for images (that I know of) I could only wonder if anyone would ever steal my stuff and post it somewhere.
Don’t report only to Google. Do all 3 at once. I created a frameset for this:
http://www.schestowi[...]report-spam/
You should take the proper actions against these theives. It’s just not right!
Hi Alex,
I would like to apologize for this, my website is on your black list (ups)
http://prosnja.net/q[...]ge-dns-saga/
Let me explain how this happened and you’ll see it really way unintentional. Ok…
I am using a plugin called Feedwordpress on my blog and it’s updating the content from my partner’s site via rss feed into my site, which we wanted to be like that.
The problem is that WordPress 2.0.2 asks for password before updating the content via rss feed and when you enter it, it asks you which feed you’d like to update from the dropdown menu.
Here, i once somehow accidentally clicked on “Update All” instead just on the feed’s name of my partner’s site and what happened is that it updateed ALL feeds from the Blogroll into my site, not just yours.
I got aware of this a few days after that, because if you take a look, my site is even not in english language and i don’t see any reason to have english language content on my website, it would ruin everything.
When i saw what happened, i deleted all posts form ALL the authors in the Blogroll (you were not the only one who’s blog posts were updated into my blog’s content) and now everything is ok, there is no content of yours or anyone else’s there on my blog but mine only.
Please let me know if you have read this, so i know it’s ok and please take my sincere apologize, it was just a glitch, i had no reason at all to do this the way you said it was done.
My site Prosnja.net is a serious website with serious intentions, made to stick around for a long time, so there’s no way i’d do spam or something, hope this is celar now?
Thank you for your time Alex.
If you need to get in contact with me:
prosnja @ gmail.com
Best regards.