I’ve been running Vista for about a week – because Unreal Tournament 3 hasn’t released a Linux client yet. Don’t worry, you aren’t missing very much! Since there’s no Linux server either – you end up only a few popular windows-based servers that never fill up and are pretty boring… the game is great, no doubt… but with nobody to play with, what good is it?
I’d rather be playing Team Fortress 2, and since it runs in Wine… well – I don’t have much of a reason to keep running Vista, other than the fact that it was completely free (as in beer). I guess Microsoft can’t give away their operating system, since I’m going to perform a 7-pass-wipe to make sure I completely rid my computer of Vista.
So…. except for some sweet revenge there hasn’t been much to write about. Other than some content theft (par for the course when you’re a popular website) …
Long story short, some guy decided to steal my content and images, and I sent google a DMCA request to remove their advertisements from the page, they didn’t respond in a timely manner….. so I sent them a quick note that went something like this:
“Sup Google, thanks for the check this last week, I owe you one – stop by and check out my new tattoo, it’s badass personified. Oh yeah, also I faxed you a request about providing advertising for this jerk who is stealing my content – would you cut it out?”
Google replied something like this:
“If you would like to report a copyright infringement, please send us a properly formatted request.”
I replied,
“Don’t taze me bro! I already sent it to you.”
Google replied something like this:
“If you would like to report a copyright infringement, please send us a properly formatted request.”
So I figure the DMCA request is going nowhere fast, what is a guy to do? Enlist the help of his readers….
Not you guys!
I’ll enlist the help of the folks who just happen to be reading content that’s been stolen. I deleted my old image pointing to the entirely nasty HP Vectra slimline computer that runs my network (now running IPCop 1.4.18 to test out the latest release – trust me, it’s nothing special) and replaced it with a message to the readers of websites who steal my content.
And the thing that REALLY sucks… when searching for the name of the article, the website of the content theif shows up first. I guess it’s a bad case of Google’s algorithm for determining “duplicate content” and my website has been penalized… what a pain in the neck!
For your enjoyment… I’m not providing a hyperlink, since that would be kinda silly, but I bet you’ll enjoy this stuff.
http://linuxcult.blogspot.com/2007/11/seven-different-linuxbsd-firewalls.html
http://www.dralnux.com/2007/12/03/seven-different-linuxbsd-firewalls-reviewed
It doesn’t quite fit with their website theme… but ah well, what can I do?
19 replies on “To Catch A Content Theif”
Just copy your DMCA request into an e-mail reply.
By the way.. Neither one of them removed the inline liks that you had that pointed to other fsckin content.
At least linuxcult says “(Via fsckin)” at the end.
I think the problem is that everyone assumes that everything on a blog is CC licensed and doesn’t bother to read the copyright at the bottom of the page.
-A
I did the whole DMCA request in the reply and still no joy.
p.s. http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=76315&topic=12468
That’s the Blogger “report abuse” link. I’d DMCA them there.
Ok. I did my part by flagging the Cult of Linux blog.
-A
FYI, both those sites are run by the same guy, so “technically” you only have a single thief, he just stole it twice. 😉
Plus 4 others…
linuxcult.blogspot.com/2007/11/kde-40-release-candidate-1-now.html
linuxcult.blogspot.com/2007/11/iphone-auto-correct-capitalizes-linux.html
linuxcult.blogspot.com/2007/11/20-awesome-devices-that-run-linux-but.html
linuxcult.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-run-microsoft-outlook-natively.html
Thanks Adam 🙂
Reported it to Google as well, I sure hope it gets taken care of ASAP, I HATE content thief’s!!!
Google notice sent. Good luck!
P.S. Keep the Linux goodness coming.
Commented on both blogs. I’ll write a follow-up on my own blog tomorrow. These scumbags deserve to pay. Keep up the excellent blog.
It is impressive that you’ve hamstrung them, but sad that they couldn’t come up with their own content.
Oh well, I hope they stop this nonsense 🙂
Tough stuff. You’ll spend more time combating the plagiarists than you do write articles. If this become systematic, then it’s worth addressing.
Strangely enough, I got a reply from google blogspot support an hour ago.
Thanks guys, I’m sure this helped – unfortunately all they’ll probably do is delete the offending posts, which is about all I can expect.
🙂
that is classic, i wonder how long it takes him to realize the image edits you made… this is almost as good as the guy who turned the internet upside down for those stealing his connection
I’ve had a couple of rss scraper bots steal content off my site, and Google gives me the same run around. They are totally unwilling to do anything to stop this. Makes me glad I said Fuck Blogger a long time ago and switched to wordpress.
Hey… both sites are now down 😉
it’s a good day for vindication isn’t it?
I saw this the other day and thought you might like to see it if you haven’t already> http://www.blogherald.com/2007/11/26/the-6-steps-to-stop-content-theft/
Oh and I just found this… http://www.copyscape.com/
It searches for copy’s of your content etc…
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