If someone scrapes your blog, it means that a very lazy person out there is stealing content from your blog and pasting it in theres to create the illusion of original content. Most of these people build blogs around various popular topics, scrape blogs for content, and profit through adsense and other monetization options.
It use to be that scrapers only stole content from the big bloggers. But now that’s getting a little too dangerous for them to do, so it’s much easier to steal from the smaller blogger who may not even know how to check to see if someone is stealing their content. This could be you!
Now, when someone scrapes your blog…
1. You may feel helpless and angry and want to call the copyright office, but that’s not the right protocol nor the way to get matters resolved quickly. Trust me – I’ve been through it.
2. The first step is a simple one and that is to contact the owner or webmaster of the blog usually by email. And give them the url of the content they scraped and the original url of where they can find your content. Make mention to them that they have used your content without your consent and you would like them to take it down within 24 hours. If you can get a hold of someone, this step is usually the last step. Most people will take it down fast. End of story. But if not…
3. The second step would be to contact them again if you haven’t heard from them via snail mail, telephone, etc.
4. The third step if you haven’t been satisfied is to contact the webhost and/or domain host of the site which has a responsibility to help you seek a resolution. You can check this by using the WhoIs database through GoDaddy.com. Just plug in the domain name and after it says that the domain is already taken – there will be a link next to it that you can click on which says “click here for info”. Click on that and you can usually find the owner’s name and contact information for the site.
Remember that anything you write on your blog that is your original content is protected under the copyright laws of the U.S. So you are in your full rights to pursue this course of action.
*Also if you own a blog powered by wordpress (like this one) or a blog which is actually on wordpress.com (a free one), then your rights and how you pursue copyright infringement can be a little different depending on which one you own. Learn more about wordpress content theft at Lorelle’s blog.
Lisa Angelettie
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wow!!!!!!! that is a shame. why can’t people just come up with their own stuff.
i hope no one ever does that to me. oh who am i kidding. who would copy a bunch of posts about me and a toddler. 🙁
wow!!!!!!! that is a shame. why can’t people just come up with their own stuff.
i hope no one ever does that to me. oh who am i kidding. who would copy a bunch of posts about me and a toddler. 🙁
Scrapers suck. However, there’s a WordPress plugin called “Rss Footer” that actually turns the scraped content into a link back to your site (while tipping off anyone who reads the scraper’s site that they aren’t writing original content). As soon as I installed it on my different blogs the scrapers began leaving me alone.
Blogging For The Money’s last blog post..My Surprising Lesson About Making Money Blogging
Really great tip, I just implemented it on my blog. Thank You
Scrapers suck. However, there’s a WordPress plugin called “Rss Footer” that actually turns the scraped content into a link back to your site (while tipping off anyone who reads the scraper’s site that they aren’t writing original content). As soon as I installed it on my different blogs the scrapers began leaving me alone.
Blogging For The Money’s last blog post..My Surprising Lesson About Making Money Blogging
Thanks for your interesting article
Thanks for your interesting article
Thanks for the great tips.
Thanks for the great tips.
We live in an age of spinning, scraping and rewriting. It is unavoidable and inevitable. You can fight the most blatant theft, but the rest would not be worth your trouble. We are all guilty of plagiarism to some degree – what's important is how well you hide (spin) it. Just focus on writing original, well-spun content and don't look back.
hmmmm… that's an interesting take on it. Thanks for your input.
Before I comment, no I don’t scrape other people’s work. I may refer to other sources and authors, but I then create original information, written in MY way. One of the problems re plagiarism may be the fact that ultimately there is a limit to how many ways you can ‘describe an egg’. To a certain extent I think that a degree of plagiarism is inevitable.
Oh – I hate spun articles, they are often pretty obvious.
Regards
Alan
From the Magic Forest, England
Long before article writing and blogging became popular, I used to write stories and publish them on a website. Eventually, someone stole one and I flipped out over it, ranted and raved about it to everyone who would listen, and actually managed to force the thief’s ISP to remove it. Yeah, I won, but my stress levels went through the roof and it did nothing to stop the next plagerist who came along. Today, I just make a comment on the offender’s blog telling him how flattered I am that he published my work on his site, and that I’d appreciate it if he put a link back to my site for it. Most ignore me, but a few actually do as I ask. 🙂 Anyway, that’s how I handle copyright theft today.
Honestly I can’t believe people are still doing this — but ’tis the world we live in.
I send them an email in the format below. It has a great success rate, at least 90% I’d say. It’s a bit harsh but it works very well.
Dear Sir,
We are the proprietors of all copyright in a online article entitled “” originally published at.. . We have reserved all rights in the Work, with the exception the the article can be republished according to the guidlines of the article directory where is was originally published.
It has come to our attention that your publication at — is identical/substantially similar to our copyrighted Work. Permission was neither asked nor granted to reproduce our Work and your Work therefore constitutes infringement of our rights. In terms of the Copyright Statutes, we are entitled to an injunction against your continued infringement, as well as to recover damages from you for the loss we have suffered as a result of your infringing conduct.
In the circumstances, we demand that you immediately eigther:
A. remove all infringing content and notify us by email that you have done so.
or
B. only publish the article according to the reprint guidlines of the article directory where it was origianlly published, with the inclusion of all live (not “nofollow”) linkes as originally contained in the article.
Faliour to hear from you by no later than close of business on (date in 2 weeks time) will result in futher action being taken. which may include:
i. A report made to your hosting provider.
ii. A Spam report made to Google – Through Google webmasters Central.
This is written without prejudice to our rights, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.
Yours faithfully,
Very nice. I’m sure this works very well Mark. Thanks for sharing this with us.