What’s Up With This?
Every now and then, the lovely Akismet will catch some spam. Well, okay, its catching it left, right and centre, but I only bother to check what it is actually catching every few days. Usually, there’s a link to an outside site and when I visit this site, there’s an excerpt (about a paragraph) of one of my posts (usually one of my most recent ones).
My problem is this: Because it is an excerpt, and not the whole post, is there anything I can do about it? They all have ads on their own sites so if folks click through - presumably from the comment, if they weren’t being caught by Akismet - they’re going to be making money from my content.
The whole deal leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. These are not legitimate link backs, by the way. They’re something like ‘onlinecasinoslots.com’ or ‘losetenpoundsinfivedays.com’ or some such thing. What I’d like to know (and this is something the more well-versed bloggers could tell me) is if someone were to put ‘Lizzie’s Home’ into Google, would these scraper sites be closer to the top of the list (and therefore garner more visitors)? Are they stealing my traffic as well as my content?
Every now and then I’ll type my URL into Copyscape and usually nothing pops up. And even though these scrapers ARE covering their own behinds by only putting up excerpts of my work and linking back to my own page (it IS coming back to MY page, right? Not one of those total site clones?), do I have any right to ask them to please stop? I don’t know how I’d do that really, given none of them have a visible contact method, sigh.
Very frustrating.
Cheers,
Lizzie
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Just an Aussie mother to three, wife to one, special needs advocate, sometimes crafter, always procrastinator and awesome baker. Well maybe not bread. Bread alludes me.
Well - while you have a copy right at the bottom, I would also post an obvious creative commons first and foremost. (you can get the link of my site, left column at the bottom.) Mine specifically says that you can use my stuff with an obvious link for non-commercial purposes. IE: don’t make money strictly off of my stuff. You’ve been splogged. Use “splog” or “splogging” as a search term and you’ll fine great info. Yes - you can write to them and ask that your stuff be taken down, as they didn’t ask permission to reprint. If they don’t, you can then go after their host.
Michele’s last blog post..They say it’s your birthday?
This is all still applicable even when they’ve only printed excerpts and are already providing a ‘read more’ link back to Lizzie’s Home? The other thing that sometimes happens - I’ve caught this twice now - is that they’ll attribute someone completely different to my words, but they’ll still link back to my site.
Thanks for the link info.
Cheers,
Lizzie
I’ve done a few things about this. Firstly, I have started putting a copyright symbol and my web addy right on my posts/pictures.
It is hard-I had a real problem with that earlier in the year until I deleted the feed and started over again. So far I haven’t had any issues, and put a copyright thing on my feed as well.
But then I don’t have any ads, and that could be a big part of it as well.
ScatteredMom’s last blog post..Cookie Crumbs: Entirely Worm-free
As you can see I now have a Creative Commons licence (bottom of right sidebar). Mostly the images I use are graphics (used with permission as per the artists’ Terms of Use’, including attribution/link backs). The straight-out photos I use are either Creative Commons (sourced via Flickr and given proper attribution) or our own images. None of the images I put up here of my own have any real value to me (unlike my posts) but I suspect I’ll be putting a watermark on those too from now on.
Is the CC licence I have up in the sidebar (plus the watermarking, when I next upload a photo of my own) enough do you think?
Cheers,
Lizzie
Just a little post script…Talented Hubby seems to think a Creative Commons licence offers no protection whatsover. He is an amateur photographer and believes that people, whether scraping for photos or text, simply see ‘CC’ and think ‘aha, I can take that, it’s ‘free’ to use’. Plus he thinks that these same folks who have ads on their sites and are garnering an income from our work, do not come under the ‘non commercial’ aspect, or at least, if cornered will say ‘oh, I’m not selling your work, and I’m giving you attribution’.
Personally, I think Hubs and I need to have a talk about CC licences, LOL. I think I’m covered, at least to the point I’m comfortable with (I don’t mind of folks take my words/articles so long as they give attribution, aren’t making money - in any way - and aren’t changing it once they’ve got it (although excerpts are fine, I suppose…just don’t change the words within the excerpt).
Hubs also thinks I should add a very obvious bit of text underneath the CC logo explaining that ‘all work is copyrighted and must not be used without consent of the author’. You know, for all the really DUMB people who don’t think to click through to the CC site, LOL.
Cheers,
Lizzie