I just discovered Dr. Jon Mikel Iñarritu’s blog - “Unbounded Medicine” when he hosted Grand Rounds this week. That’s a bit strange, because I was already familiar with his photographs in Flickr, and already had him set as one of my “contacts” there.

When I found his web site, I blogrolled him, added him to my Bloglines RSS. I explored his blog a bit, and discovered the most amazing thing when you click on one of his photos … it expands beautifully! It took me a bit of exploring his Javascript files before I figured out which plugin was doing that … it’s called Lightbox.

It not only allows you to use thumbnails on a post and expand the thumbnail into a full sized photo, but it also allows you to add a title at the bottom of the photo, and link a series of photos together. What I’m hoping is that it will only load the thumbnail with each page access, and save the full photo (and the bandwidth it takes with each load) for when someone actually clicks on the picture.

To see how it works, make sure the blog has stopped trying to load things - (I’ve noticed that the page has to be fully loaded) - and click on the first picture. After it opens, you can read the title at the bottom of the photo. If the photo is attached to a series of other photos, you’ll see a little “Next” on the photo when you run your mouse over the picture. You can click on the “Next” to go through the entire set. When you’re done, click on “Close” at the bottom of the photo.

Let me know what you think of this plugin! I think it’s a really neat toy … but I’d like to know what my readers think …

NOTE - I’m at this time moment trying to trade over to the new, lighter version of this plugin … so if things don’t work right, please be patient with me until I work the bugs out! Thankee!

Those of you who want to use the Stop Bitacle buttons but weren’t able to make them work … it’s because the original web site is using an odd font which has another ASCII value in place of the ” quote symbol, or because your own blog software is translating the copied/pasted ” quote symbol into some other ASCII symbol, like perhaps the left quote and right quote symbols. Your browser won’t interpret those in the same way.

Cut and paste this instead …

If it still doesn’t work, substitute each and every ” with the regular ” symbol (shift ‘ on most keyboards,) and save it again.

If you know how to copy the buttons to your own server, and change the image address in the code accordingly, please do so. If you don’t - then don’t worry about it. It’s worth it! I promise to not substitute the graphic on you! >;o)

If your cut/paste doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll do my best to trouble shoot for you!

Am I being sarcastic? MOI? Nahhh … you know I would never stoop to such a thing … *cough*

In the last month, I’ve become aware that I have a huge bandwidth drain on my blog … a few web sites in China have linked to my music files, offering music “on tap” for anyone who wants to listen … a search engine will bring up the requested song, and play it. Those of you who are renting a server know that bandwidth is at a real premium … you can sometimes get unlimited storage, but the bandwidth is more difficult to find, and more expensive to purchase in large quantities. These web sites are using very little in the way of their own bandwidth - or even HD space - since they’re linking to other sites and stealing theirs! That would be like me going into your garden, stealing your sweet corn, and selling it in my virtual shop! You’re paying for the land to grow the crop on, and you’re doing the work and taking the time to grow the crop, and I’m getting the benefit! My Chinese friends cost me more than 3 GIGS in bandwidth in September, up from 350 Megs in August.

And then are there those who have spots on MySpace who hard link to the graphics here. If they only get a few hits a day, then unless they’re linked to something really large, they’re not stealing much bandwidth … but when there are a couple dozen of these moochers, and some of them get a few hundred hits a day, it starts to add up!

I started by putting all of my photos and music inside of robots.txt protected directories, although I realized that the stuff already being cached on the search engines was going to continue to give me trouble. I renamed all of the songs and graphics that were being stolen, and used “IP Deny” to keep some of the Chinese blogsites from returning to my blog and just searching for the new song names and directories.

It was moderately effective, however, I still wasn’t having any fun …

That’s where TJ comes in … in a recent comment, TJ from Dogs Cats Kids Life said:

Concerning bandwidth, maybe this will help…

One of my blogging friends has had people steal bandwidth from him in the past.

The way he deals with it is that he replaces the image/content that they are stealing with something that is either embarassing or blatant. He says that sometimes he just has the words on the page: “This website is illegally using someone else’s bandwidth” or “This site is stealing bandwidth”. He says the more shocking it is (like a picture) the faster they take it down.

Oh yeah! Now that sounded like a bit more fun …

I created a graphic and renamed it for each of the hard linked graphics … so now, all of those people on MySpace - and in those forums - who hard linked to my graphics are seeing the following little picture instead of the one they linked to (and so are their readers!):

To see a sample of this lovely little study in red, white and blue, take a look at this MySpace blog which was linking to a picture on my blog and using it as a background! >;o)

The graphics were small potatoes, though. The music is another story. I’m tackling that one in a couple of stages, actually. I made a recording which accuses the web site of stealing, and then gives the dictionary definition of the verb “to steal.” Those who are still getting through are now hearing my recording instead of the song. Most people don’t bother playing it through … they hear the “This web site is stealing bandwidth” message, and click it off. I’m hoping that this will embarrass the sites into removing the links completely. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to make a shorter, less polite recording next month. *evil grin*

Here’s a sample of what my Chinese friends are getting instead of Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” …

Do I forgive all of these numbies? Of course I do … but forgiveness does not equal stupidity! Forgiveness does not mean that I help them continue to steal from me!

It’s becoming apparent that the internet is bringing out the greed in a lot of people … it’s not just the little MySpace sillies who link to a graphic someplace, not thinking that they and the 100 other people doing the same thing are causing the owner some grief; rather it’s the big music web sites that are linking to songs, and the places like Bitacle which are using your blogs like cash cows, that really need to be stopped. If we don’t pull together and fight these guys, I predict a pandemic of this sort of thing - just like what we’re experiencing with email and comment spam …

Hey! It’s time to take the internet back!!!

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 … !

Dr. Hans Engel just posted his first efforts since his stroke. Please go over there and support him … he’s made amazing progress in only a few days. It’s such a relief to have him back!