WordPressGarage is being scraped! I want to stop them…now!

By • January 10, 2008 • 29 Comments

This very blog, WordPressGarage.com, is being scraped by an annoying, lazy SOB who is republishing posts from a range of blogs writing about WordPress and making money off of stupid ads on their site. How dare they expect they can make money off of my hard work without contributing any value. Do they have no morals? Do they have no feelings?

(No? Oh.)

How do I stop them? What can I do?

Update Feb. 26, 2008: I wrote a follow-up to this post with tips on how to protect your blog from scrapers and sploggers: 10 steps to a more splog-free WordPress blog.

Author:

Alyk

Most people skip over the most obvious way to deal with this: e-mail them, nicely asking them to remove all of you content. Remind the scraper the material shouldn’t be re-published or re-broadcast without your permission.
Miriam Schwab

Alyk – I wanted to do that, but this guy has no email address or contact form on the site. So now what?
Blaine

If he or she is using adsense, I believe you can submit a complaint and they might revoke his ability to use it. If he’s using something else, perhaps that system has a similar method to deal with scrapers. Something to look into, anyway.
Miriam Schwab

Blaine – that’s a really great idea! Especially since I just found another nasty splogger who’s using my content.
Jennifer

Are they scraping individual posts or picking up your RSS feed? If they’re on their own domain, look up the abuse address for their webhosting service and write to them. Most hosting services consider this a TOS abuse, especially as your content is under copyright.
Miriam Schwab

Jennifer – they’re scraping my whole feed, and your idea is great. I’m going to try it.
Jennifer

I’ve seen in some discussions where the use of a feed implies your agreement to distribute your content, though one could argue that it certainly is not in a manner of your choosing. Try using the abbreviated feed rather than the full feed. Good luck.
Jennifer

You also might want to read this
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/09/05/autodiscovery-and-rss-scraping/#more-623
Lynne

I hate scrapers! I get several each week and haven’t figured out what to do. I did email one, but the rest I’ve tried to ignore. Please keep us updated on how you go about resolving this issue, maybe if we all follow suit we can banish at least some of the scraper sites?!
WTL

One thing you could do is file a complaint with their web host. Heck, you could wave a DMCA threat at them, but I don’t know how that would work.
Jonathan Bailey

There are a lot of ways that you can stop them. One of the easiest is to file a DMCA notice with the host, another option is to file a similar complaint with any advertising they are running.

If you want, feel free to email me the details of the case and I’ll have a look at it and see what your options might be. I’ve done my rounds with these guys in the past…

No matter what though, good luck with getting this resolved!
Israel Jobs

Miriam, all I can say is ‘welcome to the real world’. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened to you before. If I wasn’t using Bad Behavior, WP-Ban, CrawlTrack, etc., JobMob would be getting scraped all the time.

Sometimes it’s a robot, and sometimes they’re simply RSS subscribers playing with my feed.

Alyk, Blaine and Jennifer all had good suggestions.

It’s true that filing a DMCA notice with their host is one way to go, but that only works if they’re US-based.

In my experience, the best way to fight back is to hit them where it hurts, right between the Googles.

Easy: report them as spam to Google here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en

Harder: submit a dmca complaint to Google:
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

Jacob
Miriam Schwab

Lynn – as soon as I figure out how to stop these guys, I’ll let you know.

WTL – thanks for the advice. I’d never heard of using the DMCA before.

Jonathan – your site is really great. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take you up on your offer and email you the details of the sites scraping my content.
Miriam Schwab

Jacob – I was wondering if DMCA would work with non-Americans. I guess not. Thanks for the tip about "hitting them between the Googles" :). Money always hurts most.
Jonathan Bailey

Miriam: The offer is there if you want it, definitely feel free to email me anytime!
Ryan

I remember on Sitepoint.com about someone who’s site had been scraped. One of the other Sitepointers gave a short PHP script which replaced the scrapers site with a bunch of junk outlining what they though of the person scraping the content. I’ll go see if I can dig up the post as it was quite informative.
Ryan

Found it … Sitepoint WordPress theft Topic

The situation there was not an RSS feed that was being copied though, but a total replication of the site.
Darren Hoyt

If your RSS feed is getting scraped, you should try the FeedEntryHeader plugin, which allows you to insert custom copyright statements in the feed. Even if the scraping continues, it will tip off users that they’re viewing stolen content.
Miriam Schwab

Darren – does that plugin’s header only appear when the feed is being scraped? If not, I think it’s problematic because I’ve been seeing quite a few blogs lately that appear in Google Alerts, and while the title of the post is as it should be, the excerpt says something like "If you are are not reading this in your reader, it is being scraped." That’s not a great thing to have appear in Google Alerts.
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Ryan

I saw a new incoming link from a site, so I went to visit to see why they were talking about me. But it was this exact same page! Along with the rest of your site.
Miriam Schwab

Ryan – can you send me the URL of that site via email (I don’t want to give them any extra publicity). If it is who I think it is, I’ll be writing about them soon since they refuse to remove my site from their feed.
Ryan

Email sent.

On the site it says … “It doesn’t steal content, because every post reports the source at the botton of the article…the exact way a feed reader does. 🙂 ”

What a load of baloney. Feed readers only republish content for a single user, not the entire world. Apparently their grasp of copyright laws is severely lacking.
Jon

Almost every hosting free or paid refuse the right of using copyrighted content. Even though online it’s hard to copyright things I have actually done and found out that if you use whois services to find out who they are being hosted by and take it up with them they will address it and if not you have one of the most powerful ways of getting people which is word of mouth so if they choose not to do anything you post here about the company and there lack of help. If you want any further advice about this feel free to email me 🙂
Miriam Schwab

Hi Jon – thanks for your offer to help. Here’s the end of the saga with the bum who was scraping my content:

I found his contact info via WhoIs, and emailed him to tell him that he should stop. He gave me a whole song and dance that he’s an angel, and his site is basically just a big RSS feed reader, so what’s wrong with that. He said that in order to show his good will, he was going to take this debate public. I told him that’s a great idea, and I’d ask my readers here what they think of him and his giant feed reader.

Within a few days he stopped scraping my site!

So, if any of you WordPress bloggers are still being scraped by him, and you’ll know who you are, don’t give up hope! Use a little chutzpah, and maybe you can get him to stop scraping you too.
Jacques

Only 1 year old and being robbed already…. Looking at it from a ‘glass-half-full’-perspective: it shows your blog is interesting enough to be stolen…

As you didn’t mention how you found out: use this site: http://www.copyscape.com/ to find scrapers, thieves and scroundels.

Up to a cake with 2 candles!
Miriam Schwab

@Jacques – That’s a great site, thanks for pointing it out. And thanks for your birthday wishes – I appreciate it!
Pingback: Happy birthday to WordPress Garage! | Wordpress Garage()
Brett Wraight

Check out these guys http://www.scrapestopper.com They are able to stop any type of scrape attack I do not know how they do it but they stop all forms of scraping…They have a trial period Awesome and there system is so easy worth a look at..

WordPressGarage is being scraped! I want to stop them…now!

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