So I was checking my “Recent” incoming links in my Wordpress Admin area, and I saw that one was a trackback from a blog hosted on Wordpress.com. So, I clicked the link to see how they had linked to my article…
It turns out that a person had scraped the article that I wrote and the track-back was to a post that I had linked to in the article! Everyday is something new at Bradblogging.com. 
I had two emotions as I read my own post on another website - Annoyance and Happiness:
Happiness because that meant that the article that I wrote was actually worth copying to another blogger’s blog, which means that people would consider your article “Good Enough” to scrape off your website.
Annoyance because now I have to ask them to put a link to the original article, or file a D.M.C.A. Takedown notice, which takes valuable time out of my day.
We’ll just have to see how this plays out I suppose.
Have you encountered content theft before on your blog? If so, how did you handle it?
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12 Responses to “Mixed Emotions About Content Theft”
In the last four months I have come across two cases of content theft. In both the cases I contacted them by email and explained them with proof that it is copyright violation. They realized it and took corrective action .
OldSailor’s last blog post..Movie Dasavathaaram gives Reason for Asian Tsunami 2004
I’m doing the exact same thing that you did. I am giving the person 48 hours to either add a link to the article or remove it from their blog, then I will contact the people who run the service of which they blog on.
you also get free links. I don’t like it when my stuff gets scraped, but it’s hard to police these spam sites. might as well learn to deal with it. at least some of them get you higher technorati rank
bloggernoob’s last blog post..Why you shouldn’t trust make money online income reports
I had a problem similar to this but that time the splogger was actualy reading my RSS feed and publishing articles. To overcome that I added a plug-in which attaches a copy right notice at the end of every post ( Only in RSS ) and you have already done another easy thing to avoid content scrapping , linking back to your old posts inside the article
Nishadha’s last blog post..Blogger in draft features continued
I put the following at the bottom of “almost” every blog post I write..
at least they can’t say “I didn’t know”
~john~
Author - Master Networkers Web Blog
Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit this article in any way, give author name credit.
A Master Networker’s last blog post..$300 Viral Marketing Contest
It happened to me once. Some dude translated one post I wrote from English to Spanish. But at least he linked to my original post. Funny thing is that Spanish is my native language and his post was an exact translation of mine. If this hurts Google wise I don’t know but at least I got a deep link from this. But what if Google bot is bilingual?
Archie Pennies’s last blog post..Make money with payed surveys
I have this happen at least once a day for the last year or so. I used to get all bent out of shape and actually file those takedown notices… But it gets tiring. I include several links to my site in every post. And in case I forget there is always one following my name at the bottom of each post!Damn scrapers! Almost as bad as spammers!
So far I haven’t found anything “scraped” from my blog. However, maybe I’m just not as popular yet!
I probably would ask nicely with the email and then if they didn’t comply or respond I would take action. I think you’re doing the right thing. Some people just don’t understand what copyright and all of that mean. They wouldn’t — at least I hope they wouldn’t - reprint an article out of a magazine or newspaper, but they often think it’s okay to do so on the Internet.
Petula’s last blog post..175 and holding
I used to get pissed when it happned but there’s not a whole lot you can do, except get mad. I just think to myself, “Mimicry is the Highest Form of Flattery…”
WordPress, Made Easy’s last blog post..Your Blog Won’t Be Read
Funny, the day I read this the same thing happens to me on one of my blogs.
Technology blog’s last blog post..Xbox 360 price drop means a new model
Scrapers really do this quite often, usually they leave the permalink intact and well yeh at first I bothered to report it to wordpress but I grew tired of that. It’s too much a waste of time to keep on going after that kinda stuff for me.
Slevi’s last blog post..Hulu adds more and more full length movies for free!
Feeds should publish excerpts only because that is what a feed is for…Bring people to your blog. You could publish a signature after every post. Trackbacks and pingpacks are actually good for you. I have a blog that autogenerated content (not my precious Pixel Shoppe). I only publish an excerpt and you have to visit the original site to read the rest of the article. It is a do follow blog and I entirely give credit to author. Thta is nice scraping and you know what, no one minded and some have even said thanks!
Asuka_Aki’s last blog post..Let Your Technorati Authority Soar