Stop Bitacle From Plagiarizing YOUR Blog!
In the last few months, we’ve been battling the internet’s bad guys like never before. My email spam has risen from one or two pieces a week less than a decade ago, to between 900 and 1200 daily today. I’ve been keeping a daily log since early this summer.
It hasn’t just been the email spammers. My comment spam went from an occasional annoyance several months ago, to being a very serious problem today. A few days ago, I got 141 in a 24 hour period on this blog alone. I’ve got a plugin that works amazingly well for that … I’ll give you an update on that in another post.
As if the reams of spam leaking in through every orifice and stealing our bandwidth isn’t bad enough, I’ve had big fancy-schmancy web sites (more than one!) in China direct linking to my music. They come off as the “good guys” over there – if someone wants to hear a song, they just do a search on their search engine, and lo and behold, there’s the song they want! They can hear it for free! They’re so happy that they pay for the service through donations and/or fees. Meanwhile, the web sites offering the music aren’t expending any bandwidth … they’re linking to the songs in other people’s blogs and web sites! My bandwidth counter for the directory the songs are in went from about 350 megs to 3.5 GIGS between August and September.
And then … of course, there are the folks over at MySpace nickel and diming me into next week by linking to graphics they found on my blog …
Thanks to TJ, I came up with a way to squelch that … which I hope to have time to share with you later today.
This post, however, is about the most egregious thief of all: Bitacle.org
This morning, when I got up, I had an email from Sarah waiting for me. This is what she said:
Something bad is going on with the blogging community. Some website is stealing blogs!
[...]
This is the article they pointed to, to read more about it:
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/the-bitacle-battle-of-blogs/I’m still not sure what’s going on. How do I find out if these people are stealing my posts too? They are just scraping stuff right off the RSS feeds apparently.
I *THINK* this is the site that is doing it: http://en.bitacle.org/
And then, another email from her … letting me know that they had, indeed, “stolen” my blog. They apparently have 204 of my posts on there! Since I only have about 221 of them – not counting this one – then it appears that they have my entire blog, including pictures, etc., minus my private posts, on their server!
The blogger at Lorelle on WordPress explained what these guys are up to better than I could have:
Bitacle has become Public Enemy #1 this weekend in some parts of the blogosphere (Search Bitacle on Technorati for more details). As I reported earlier, the Spain-based splogger scrapes your content (your Creative Commons deed be damned), monetizes it, keeps the cash — and refuses to answer email complaints. I called them “thieves†in my first post, and I am repeating the charge here. Bitacle’s boss, the magnificently misnamed Jesus Angelo “But call me Ladrón, honey†Glez, is a thief.
…Bitacle, while not replying to anyone’s mails, as far as I can see, seems to be aware they are under attack. They’ve been down much of the weekend, and they have (today) started including the URL to the content they steal. Nevertheless, they are still ripping off and re-purposing content, without permission, for their own financial gain. Worse, they still encourage comments to the stolen blog posts on their site in an attempt to dupe readers into believing they are seeing a “real†blog.
So – Bitacle steals your content, drops ads into it, and makes a killing on your work. Every word and graphic you’ve ever publicly posted. How many of you are on there? I don’t know … however, my blog is only a “Slithering Reptile in the TTLB Ecosystem” … so, chances are good that they’re got you in there too. Go take a look: Bitacle.org … I went, selected “Blogs,” and typed in “Funeral Hymns Tag” and came up with Shelly’s blog, Sarah-Jean’s blog, Ipanema’s blog, and many others I didn’t recognize.
You should see all of the familiar blogs I found when I put in “P4P”!!! – Dr. Dino, Kevin MD, MedMusings … Healthvoices … and I don’t need to tell you what typing in “Grand Rounds” brought up! To name just a few: Dr. Anonymous … Borneo Breezes … Cut to Cure … Emergiblog … Grunt Doc … I could go on and on and turn this into a real link fest! If you see your blog on here, and even if you don’t. they have probably stolen all of your posts.
There’s a blog helping out with the plagiarism problem … it’s called Stop Bitacle. They have quite a bit of information there, and are offering free buttons to include in your posts. When Bitacle steals your posts, and each one has a STOP BITACLE button on it, it might begin to make an impact.
If we don’t act … fight back … then you can scrap any idea of turning a profit from blog ads. There will be plagiarizers up the wazoo snagging your readers, using your own work as bait. Those who like what you’ve written will bookmark Bitacle to return to your work. I wasn’t able to the find the places to leave comments, so I guess they’ve removed them … but apparently, they even had open comments on your posts … where people would think they were commenting to the post’s author.
I’m going to include the buttons from Stop Bitacle at the bottom of my posts for the time being. I recommend that you at least get over there and read their information. I have a feeling that, like the spam buildup of the last number of years, this sort of thing is going to worsen too. We need to find a way to defend ourselves … and I, for one, am not going to stop blogging … !
Defend your blog from theft!
October 11th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
We need to work together to stop these idiots!!! I am so tired of people ruining it for the rest of us… There are so many bad people out there…
We need to stop all these bad thieves that are on the internet!!!
October 11th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
They had my story… I think though I can’t be sure they even translated it into other languages.. the only reason i think so is cause some of my words don’t translate as they are umm specific to my story and i seen it sprinkled though out the text… *sigh*.. in one way I guess I should be flattered… in another.. it breaks my heart. My storys aren’t much but they are mine.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Moof, I am going to send a link to your site to a few other blogs if you don’t mind so they can read this article..ok?? This sucks…..Madd
October 11th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
[...] Moof I couldn’t seem to get the buttons to work but I will work on this.. hopefully ya’ll have better luck. Soon as I do you’ll see the scattered throughout my blog… [...]
October 12th, 2006 at 2:02 am
[...] A Moof’s Tale [...]
October 12th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
[...] Moof [...]
October 12th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
That’s exactly what I’m pointing in my above comment Moof. We have the same title. Now if I’m going to COPYRIGHT Protect the whole blog, any similar title could be affected. But they are not copying me. We were doing a hymn tag so most of us will have the same title. It will be crawled in seconds and you have results of blogs.
It’s dangerous if you put this button because there will be others affected. COPYRIGHT button which I used before, issues a warning before installing. That unless it is your original idea, don’t install it. If we link to news articles, other blogs, this will be picked up and it won’t be fair.
In my case I do commentaries on news article. For example, I quote CNN for the weather, it will be picked up. Now, CNN isn’t plagiarizing me nor I’m doing the same to them. So I took it out. There could be some legalities if they’ll find out. I mean if we link to sites and other blogs.
I think we can do it in every post. If you want the whole blog, I posted mine on the side bar before but took it out because that was the effect.
October 13th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
I am confused. Yes, I could find my blog using the Bitacle 2.0 search screen that came up when I clicked on the link in this post. It looks to be the same blog — same Adsense ads — same nonsense prose, current as of this morning. So… is it the same blog or not? Right now it looks more like a search engine than something that is making ghost copies and inserting it’s own ads. How can you tell?
Sorry to be so dense.
October 13th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Curmudgeon … than you for stopping in.
I was a little confused at first too. My kids pointed a few things out to me though …
When you go Bitacle, there are 5 search tags … the first 4 are regular searches, like Google’s search. The last one, Aggregates, is the one you choose to find the sites they’ve plagiarized. Putting Moof in there brings up my own blog, plus quite a few others … putting Stolen Moments in there brings up Pattie’s blog … Medrants brings up DB’s Medrants …
This is how it looks when you put Moof in the Aggregates search field:
All Blogged Up: A Moof’s Tale
Formerly – Letting Go
moof.blogsplot.net/?feed=rss2
[ Subscribe to Bitacle ]
Clicking on those links brings you my entire public blog, on their web site. You can subscribe to my posts there, and never visit my blog. The put ads on the page, so they’re getting click profits from everyone else’s work … and since many people have no idea they’re not on person’s blog, that’s what they’ll bookmark and return to. Up until recently, they even had open comments on the blog posts … allowing commenters to believe that they were leaving comments for the post’s original author.
Hope that answered your question.
I imagine that those who aren’t in there will eventually be – unless we put a stop to this fellow …
October 14th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
This is awful!! I’m going to alert all my blog buddies right now. This has to end NOW. Mimi is miffed.
October 14th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I don’t get it–what makes this anymore than a search engine?
October 14th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Mimi … go for it! The more people do something about it, the less successful this sort of thing will be.
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Dr. Blogstein … please read my reply to Curmudgeon for that … or even better, take a look at what Lorelle on Wordpress has to say about it. The “Stop Bitacle” blog explains things quite well in their “Stop Bitacle.org post“.
There’s a lot of good information about dopplebloggers on Lorelle’s blog.
October 14th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
UPDATE: I did a search from the Aggregates tab at Bitacle. My entire blog is there from post one to the one I posted just hours ago. At first glance I had the same question Dr. Blogstein did. Isn’t this just a search engine? NO. And here’s why. Bitacles homepage looks very much like any other major search engines homepage. The first search I did from the first tab brought up my site. No problem, I thought. It’s when you go to the AGGREGATES tab that you realize YOUR content, YOUR stories, YOUR graphics are haphazardly placed under THEIR webpage banner with THEIR ads at the top. There are other disturbing facts here. If you click on the link to your site in the top right corner a LOGIN box appears for blogger.com. WHAT??! There is a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says “All articles copyrighted by their respective authors.” Very clever. There’s ONLY one problem. WE’RE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Go to the HELP page. It’s almost incoherent. No wonder they have to steal my content; they can’t write their own. I’m doing an entire post tomorrow on this issue. Stay tuned.
And yes, Mimi is still miffed.
October 16th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
wow! your posts on blog stealing was enlightening. Thanks!
October 16th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Thank you so much!! I appreciate your work on this!
October 16th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Mimi – you have the straight scoop on that! If we don’t act, that sort of thing won’t improve on its own …
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BarnGoddess … thank you for stopping in, and thank you for your kind words! You know, I have a shirt that says “Barn Goddess” on it! ;o)
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Frectis … thanks for coming by and leaving me a message. I see that you also have a Bitacle post up on your blog – and that you’re a fellow student! I also realize that I’d already been to your blog recently … but I can’t remember what led me there. Incipient Alzheimers! *LOL*
November 16th, 2006 at 5:53 am
So there are thieves stealing fron our BLOGS now?! How in the world are we gonna put a stop to it? I am glad I found this site! A really nice site and so glad I dropped by! Thanks for sharing with me! I am so glad there are people like you around! Well, you stay safe and be blessed and I pray all will be well with you always. In HIS love, Katie
http://miskaj-wwwjnksansone.blogspot.com/
http://www.jnksansone.com/index.html
January 29th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
[...] It seems that HealthCentral Network has acquired Wellsphere! Whoa! Wait a minute! That’s my blog content they’re selling! That’s not much different than what Bitacle was doing back in 2006. [...]
August 17th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
[...] I’m really upset about it. I’ll refer you to Moof’s description of the situation (Part 1 – especially the comments, Part 2, Part 3), as she is the first I heard about this. Mimi also [...]