DISQUS

Mark Evans · 3 years ago

apparently, i've been scraped as well. i guess it's a badge of honor!

mark

Mathew · 3 years ago

I'm considering setting up my own dummy blog so I can scrape myself :-)

Jeff Jarvis · 3 years ago

I'm not saying that Google needs to be the policeman for all but Google should try to assure that its services are not being used to defraud advertisers and steal from writers. And others should take care of their own messes. If you were an isp and someone were using you to spam the world with email, wouldn't you listen to requests to shut the spammer down? Same goes for this. It is theft and fraud.

Mathew · 3 years ago

Thanks for the comment, Jeff. I'm not necessarily saying that Google
shouldn't take action in cases of obvious site-scraping -- but I don't
think the first impulse in every case should be to file suit against
Google or drop DMCA summonses or whatever.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by.

Jeff Jarvis · 3 years ago

Matthew: Agreed. I was hoping that Google would do something on its own. But sometimes, a little lawyering helps motivate the unmotivated. But I, too, dread lawyers .

Jonathan · 3 years ago

Mathew: DMCA notices are just a sad reality right now. It used to be that you could handle copyright issues by just going straight to the abuse team of a site. Abuse teams would check the evidence to make sure the case is reasonable, take appropriate action and do it more quickly than a DMCA notice. DMCA notices, which have to go through lawyers, take forever, offer no protection to the plaintiff and offer only one recourse.

Still, I use them regularly and teach my readers how to do so as well, though only begrudgingly. I don't like the law, but it's a fact of life and the only way to get things done. It's the way the Web hosts wanted it and the way they got it.

Sad but true.

Thank you for the interesting article and for helping to shed some light on this issue!

Mathew · 3 years ago

Thanks for the comment, Jonathan. Keep up the fight :-)

James S · 9 months ago

I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website to find duplicated content. To me it has a number of benefits over copyscape and copyrightspot:

1. it's automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who's republished my articles on the web.

2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.

3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.

4. it's a free service as opposed the "per page" cost of copyscape/copysentry.