The rise and rise of blogging as an online phenomenon has relied heavily on the ability of social nature of blogs - as each blog links into one another or as larger blogs link to and report on stories breaking on smaller specialist blogs. But while linking and references may be the lifeblood of blogging, there's a submerged undercurrent of blogs and Web sites looking to get something for nothing, sailing the high seas of the Blogosphere with a view to plundering hard working Blogs for what they can in order to build up page views and Google page rankings.
We at the Download Squad noticed this recently when one of our readers not only decided to cut and paste one of our posts into their blog but, also linked to his blog from the comments section original Download Squad post. While we're flattered at the attention, and impressed at the initiative it was still a little rude. All of a sudden we realized that it had all the hallmarks of a Blog Pirate, a fly by night operation that swoops in, cutlasses blazing, to lift off a treasure trove of stolen blog posts to their Google adsense infested pirate lair Web site.
When we started to look into the phenomenon of Blog Piracy, it was like sailing through the blue waters of the Caribbean circa the 17th century - suddenly the Blog Pirates were absolutely everywhere. Googling recent posts from Download Squad likewise turns up a host of blog pirates, such as the so called Software Online Guide (which looks more like a homage site to Download Squad than an actual blog) these folks are cutting and pasting for fun and profit, but probably without that much of either.
Looking across the waves at our sister site Engadget, it didn't take very long at all to come up with a host of Blog Pirates that had ruthlessly plundered its wares. Take for example the recent story 'Microsoft envisions invasive approach to targeted advertising' the story was reproduced word for word plus images and 'file under' references on both http://news.techvine.org/ and http://www.blogjunkies.com/, the only thing that was missing was any mention of either Engadget, or Darren Murph – the guy that actually wrote the post to begin with.
Blog Piracy can take a number of forms: sites such as TopWebStuffs try to look like to have an RSS reader interface to transplant entire Download Squad articles onto their 'aggregation' site, except unlike an RSS reader, you only get what they give you, not what you subscribed to read. Other sites such as kods.net seem to be set up to plunder anything that comes through on an RSS feed.
Don't get us wrong, we're always keen to see our work being linked to or quoted, but m'hearties it would be fine to be sure to see some of those tharr golden links in exchange for all of our hard sailing.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-31-2007 @ 4:55PM
Brad Linder said...
My favorites are always the ones that steal the complete look and feel of our blogs, right down to the "permalink, email this" etc links at the bottom of our posts.
Some of them even use our names as if we'd written the articles for their dinky little blogs.
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7-31-2007 @ 4:58PM
Chris Carey said...
ARGH I wrote an article on how to boot these blog pirates and put some fear in their belly's. Dosh Dosh has some good stuff too you should check it out. Savvy? Damn Pirate speak.
http://www.noheat.com/2007/02/14/how-to-call-out-content-theives-six-shooter-provided-by-doshdosh/
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7-31-2007 @ 5:40PM
Man said...
You mean the same people who download music, watch TV shows online, and get software from torrent sites also copy content they didn't write?
The same people(cheaters) who love the internet will be the same ones who will force strict tv/radio type regulations to become reality.
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7-31-2007 @ 5:45PM
R said...
Haha. This is awesome. I've been noticing a couple of different types of blog pirates.
Copy/paste raider..
Like you mentioned here, they copy and paste word for word. But they don't necessarily link back to their own site. If you google around for Ubuntu tutorials, you'll see that a majority of them are all copies of each other. And the worst part about it is they forget to copy/paste some parts, making the tutorial confusing and full of bad info.
The nonchalant booty thief..
When an article is posted on a site, someone leaves a comment like: "Oh what a coincidence, I happened to blog about this same subject matter a few days ago. You can read more about it at my site. ". Of course, the "coincidental" blog entry was written only a few minutes ago, paraphrasing the original source, and backdating the blog entry. And of course, the blog features a button for Digg, Redit, Delicious, and every other Web 2.0 site under the sun.
The internet is funny sometimes.
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7-31-2007 @ 6:39PM
Si said...
I've had my content stolen a few times now. Once, they even just hotlinked to the images that formed the post. It's a real pain but luckily none of the copies gained any tractions in terms of traffic or Search Engine Rankings. In the end I just emailed them politely, which did nothing, and changed my htaccess file so the hotlinked images were replaced by big ones that said "this content is stolen". I also commented on their blogs pointing out the content was stolen.
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7-31-2007 @ 7:36PM
raycosm said...
Google Reader shared items. Copies an entire post to your "Shared Items" page. Google also generates an RSS feed for your shared items. What you do with that RSS feed is up to you.
It's easy as that, and sometimes it's easy to not realize you're doing, example, using that feed for sharing items on Jaiku or Tumblr. I was doing that on a Tumblr, but after reading this post, I looked in my Tumblr settings and changed it to import my shared items as links.
Although I suppose you wouldn't be making profit on Tumblr, or at least one hosted on a tumblr.com address.
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7-31-2007 @ 9:37PM
a said...
agreed. blog pirating is like download music from torrents but not knowing who really sang the song. it's like you downloaded an album of metallica but instead it says the newest album of demonoid. i
guess just adding a link and a source will do. its not that hard.
btw my blog is entirely made of stuff from other blogs and websites and i always add the original source whenever possible and the link by request.
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7-31-2007 @ 10:43PM
rtms said...
It was drilled into my head way back in elementry school when doing book reports etc, that one is always to acknowledge where they got the source etc. I still do the same thing with my blog.
Google Reader is a little different, the shared page it creates for it's users acknowledges the site, the author and all the links. One is unable to alter the shared link, so all credit goes to the original. Now when Google decides to add a edit and share button then there will be problems.
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8-01-2007 @ 12:47AM
Pete said...
I'm with Man. What we need is a Blogging Industry Association of the Blogosphere (BIAB) to represent all the serious professional bloggers and fight the despicable dinky little blog pirates through legal action.
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8-01-2007 @ 9:30AM
DunxD said...
If they pay you for it, it's called syndication.
There are plenty of sites out their aggregating content from multiple sites using RSS feeds.
Once Google stick Adwords into Google Reader, what are you going to call them?
Two solutions - 1) adverts in the feed/content of your page. 2) Some compelling reason for people to read content on your site rather than someone else's (or in the feedreader).
The majority of content piracy out there is so amateur, I can't believe they are having a significant impact on your own adword income. Would you visit any of those sites twice?
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8-01-2007 @ 10:07AM
Victor Agreda, Jr. said...
It's funny tho, because some folks think that simply linking back or crediting the source counts as not stealing. While it's true that since grade school we learned to cite sources, what a lot of folks forget is that you can't photocopy Encyclopedia Britannica's page on Iraq, slap your name on it, add a Works Cited page and turn it in for credit. Unless the class is Photocopying 101 or something. A citation is a reference to the data that backs up a claim or provides further information. It is NOT a substitute for original work, nor is it a cop-out for theft.
Still, I'd prefer thieves link back to us. And yeah, the ones that copy the CSS and images and everything-- those are HIlarious...
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8-01-2007 @ 10:25AM
Jonathan Bailey said...
This problem is very serious and it is growing rapidly. The problem is that the spam blog applications can rip and post thousands of feeds per hour. It only takes a handful of pirates to do a lot of scraping.
I've had a lot of experience in fighting these guys. I've stopped over 500 misuses of my own content in the past five years not counting the ones I've stopped for others. If anyone needs help, feel free to email me jonathan at plagiarismtoday.com or visit the "Legal Issues" forum on performancing.com.
I'll gladly help out any way I can.
I may not be an industry organization, but I will help anyone who needs it.
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8-01-2007 @ 6:26PM
Davin Peterson said...
Whenever I post a story on my blog, when I copy a paragraph or two, I always put the source of where I got it from.
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8-27-2007 @ 4:28PM
SEOlla said...
Nice article but... guys! you are in Web 2.0. - age of syndication and aggregation. I started my own online "Inozoom" ( http://inozoom.com ) because i was soooooo tired to open my emails and see the same stories again and again. I decided to open RSS aggregator for everyone (the last thing i wanted - making money from google). I am not a pirate, just a busy person. I always put links to original sources.
i think nothing wrong about sending traffic to you guys !
Olga
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