I can't write my own content. I'm too ignorant to come up with my own ideas. Or maybe I'm just plain lazy. Instead of actually doing any work at all, I just set up a script that steals content from real writers.
I steal the author's content by pulling their RSS feed into my own blog so that I can sit back and drink beer while other people work hard to make my site look legitimate. Genuis, huh?
I dont know why you're even reading at my blog, since I dont ever write anything original here. You really should go find some other blog to read. I only set this up to try to make you click on my ads.
If you are reading this on any domain other than ClickNewz.com, the owner of that domain stole this content from me. This is my way of saying "thank you" 😀
Best,
p.s. A special thanks to RobsInternetMarketing.com and others like him for inspiring this piece of ORIGINAL content!
About Lynn Terry
David,
If you leave them sitting on your hard drive then you have declared them "valueless" to anyone but you. And form a net perspective, you will be always be defined by that which is attributable to you. However, if you post them, you will most certainly give a few away. But... you will defined by your great work. People can steal manifestations of who we are... but they cannot steal WHO we really are. If I really wanted to know WHO you were, I'd get a very different picture of you AFTER you post your pictures than before.
Secondly... there are a ton of technical things you can do to brand yourself and protect your copyright. Of course you likely already know that you can script your web page to prevent the "right click" "save as" function right? Secondly, you can use a program like Photoshop Lightroom to "brand" your pictures. It will add meta data into the jpg and... you can even create a small but recognizable watermark that is YOUR brand. With a copyright notice .. .and the meta data built into the graphic... you can notify these "bottom feeding scum" that you're about to take their home and cars. I've had tremendous success with this method.
The other thing to remember is that pond scum usually gravitate toward careers like Law and Politics... so you don't have to put up with them for long. I know this is certainly true in Canada probably more so than in the USA... given your terrific new leader!
Cheers...
I love this tactic! BRAVO!!!
By the way, the scum to which you refer have been doing this for YEARS - even before blogs.
About three years ago, I learned that a business in New Zealand had stolen every bit of content from my US based website. I discovered this via Copyscape. I contacted a lawyer who told me it would be $3K to send a letter to cease and desist.
Instead, I thought I'd be "smart" and launch a blog instead. "Try to keep up stealing my content now!" I thought.
You know the rest. Now literally DOZENS of scrapers steal my content daily - as opposed to the single pond scum sucking content thief I used to have stealing from me.
Sigh.
So that's why I'm so tickled by your post!!!
Nice job 🙂
This is a disease that is worse than the computer virus. Hawks are just waiting to pick content like starving skeletons. It could not have been more aptly put across as did your very "on the head" post.
There should be a movement against these sharks and they should be blacklisted by a separate page enlisting all those scumbags so that they can get famous in some way atleast. We could name that page/tag as "copycats" after ascertaining of course ( that would need another moderator I imagine).
All content writers should start the movement.Our silence has actually emboldened them to pick content at will and with the arm of the law being too long in this case, added to our " forget those scumbags" grumble, they are having a hay day.
May there be some innovation from Google to punish them severely and limitlessly this very year.
LMAO
Go get 'em, Lynn! Great tactic
I was a little shocked seeing this post on your blog, and though you say you did it in humour, I would say that it might not have been the smartest thing I've seen.
I know this is sounding a little rude, and for that I am sorry. I know that lots of my blogs have issues with spam and people scraping content, and that is a fact of life when you have a site that offers free syndication (via RSS) of your content. No matter what you do (including a post like this), you will always end up with people using your content in whatever way they please.
But I think what you neglected to consider is all the people that use your feed for the good. For example, if I had an Internet marketing lens on Squidoo and happened to use your feed on the page (with the intention of providing my readers with valuable, Internet marketing information for my visitors), what do you think that they will think when they see this post on the lens?
Well, I would guess nothing positive and chances are it would be damaging to my reputation when there was no intention on my part to do anything wrong at all.
So, even though you were targeting those people who scrape your site for content, maybe next time you should think about those people who are using your RSS Feed to provide valuable information to their readers - you are really just hurting them.
Besides, with the automated ways that the people scraping your content are using, chances are they won't notice and really don't care if you put a post like this up here.
Oh Lynn, you never cease to amaze me!
You have such a classy way of tackling tough topics that others would never handle near as well.
Keep up the good work on providing the real information.
I personally love RSS and pulling feeds from various places but it's two different things to provide access to good content and another to claim as your own.
There are good wordpress plugin that automatically places a footer in your rss post feeds.
I laughed for 15 minutes when I saw this entry the other day. Kristen had an interesting idea about using a WordPress plugin to add an RSS footer. I looked it up and found this one, for anyone who's interested:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rss-footer/installation/
Keep surprising us, Lynn!
Lynn, I'm giving you an honorary black woman card for this post. LOL LOL LOL. That was soo funny. I hope he does scrape this one.
Im a content thief from way back. All i do is copy and paste,copy and paste all day long.
LOL
There's a great post over at Problogger about steps you can take to address this.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/20/fighting-scrapers-with-your-left-jab/
It could be really time consuming to chase them all down, but sometimes may be necessary.
What a great idea! I have seen my content on many blogs through my Google Alerts!
Absolutely fabulous post Lynn! It's incredible how true it is and how many times I have had this happen to my own posts as well! The first time one assumes its a compliment to our writing style but when you see it happen repeatedly, its bloody annoying in my humble opinion...
So it's been a few days. Do you know if that post actually ended up on anyone's site? And if so, how long did it stay?
Lynn,
This is classic self-government on the internet and I LOVE it! You are taking your stand and you will win, rather you have won. Keep it on!
Lynn,
Clever way of exposing the bad guy! Way to go!
Hollye
Great post. I hope none of the people I steal content from catch me. lol. really!
Nick has the right idea. Brand your blog.
I wrote a post about this on my blog and how important it to give your blog a identity.
I thank anyone that ping, copy or steal my content.
I thank them for the backlinks with anchor text.
Thank you Chantelle!
You have it right. That is the best way to lever your scum-suckers with their own dirt. This is how to turn adversity into many more backlinks!
Hey - I thought you would find Alex's post about using automated content properly very enlightening...
He hates scum-sucking content thieves too:
http://www.howtospoter.com/money-making/blog-income/automated-blog-posting-to-wordpress
David
OMG, that's Classic! I love that. I'm so sick of those stupid trackback requests with a dozen or more stolen posts everyday and zero comments. It's hard to believe that stuff even works.
Any trackbacks from those idiots? That would be perfect.
I had someone suggest to me one time that i just reword someone elses material and use it. Nope pass on that. Im not into re aranging someone elses work. Im a firm believer in what goes around comes around.
This is really hilarious!
Hi Lynn,
That is a great way to deal with content thieves. Having a sense of humor makes the silly things in life so much easier to deal with. 🙂
Here's a neat example of what the scumbags at feedpals think my blog posts should be used for:
Some time ago I made a post about transferring blog posts from one of my blog to another of my posts which had this sentence:
"I know I can set up redirects with a WordPress Plugin for each individual page after I move it - but it’s going to take time to set up 200 redirects one by one.
I also know that I can do a Tools->Export to have the"
Today I found that feedpals took that part of the post, substituted words - presumably in an effort to make "unique content" and made it look like this:
"I undergo I crapper ordered up redirects with a WordPress Plugin for apiece individualist tender after I advise it - but it’s feat to verify instance to ordered up 200 redirects digit by one. I also undergo that I crapper do a Tools-> Export to hit the …"
Look how neatly they translated "can" to "crapper" 🙁
The remaining 99% of that page is ads.
But then they were so kind to actually provide a link to my site - sort of.
The link reads "Henrik Flensborg cyberspace Marketing » Blog Archive » Need support …" - where they of course felt the need to translate the original "Internet" to "cyberspace" in the link.
The link then leads to another page on their site that is visually different from the rest of their site. That page is 2/3 ads and my original blog post served up inside an Iframe 🙁
This is hilarious 😀 ... and a great way to deal with content thieves.
Happy New Year! Lynn
This is fun! Happy New Year. May you experience a spam-free moment, each day, and enjoy it,
Rose
I receive notices when posts are made to this thread. And recently people started posting again. I read my own post again from January 21, 2009 and I must recant my statement. I referred to "your great new leader". I have never been so wrong. Obama has been the biggest failure in American history as far as I can see. Granted... I've only been here 54 years.
Obama's steadfast refusal to address the climate fraud issue prior to going over to Copenhagen is alarming as best. I now have to ask whether Obama is tied to the old Enron group? It was never about climate change. It was about a new religion - a world order to tax the planet and transfer wealth from the west to despotic third world countries. Hell, I don't even know if his name is Barak Obama or Barry Soetoro? I read yesterday that he registered in an Indonesian University under the name Barry Soetoro - an Islamic student!
Why is that pertinent to this threat you are all thinking? Simple. The movement to investigate and prosecute the Climate Change fraudsters is so large now that the only way they can stop it is to clamp down on the net. There are trillions of dollars riding on their fraud scheme. If you and others don't start defending the freedom of the internet, you won't have an internet. They have no other way to stop it.
Oh.. and if you are one of those who have difficulty dropping your old dogma, go here and read the articles and books. Your future pretty much depends upon what actions you take.
http://joannenova.com.au/
That's funny! I like your humor. This clearly refers to some people I know personally. They are pretenders. They want to earn money but don't want to exhaust their brain in coming up with original ideas.
This is a funny post. Check this out ihttp://tech.gaeatimes.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/#comment-534763
Thank you, Lynn! The "Content Thief" post was incisive and entertaining. Now all I need to do is to find an RSS feed to steal for my own webpage... not so easy seeing my pet subject is the causes of the Second Punic War! Actually I found your blog by accident, while searching for something else on Google. All the same, I stayed to read more because I found your posts interesting, and (most of all) well written. Perhaps I should introduce myself and explain that last remark! My name is Goodwin A I Manson, and I am a retired schoolteacher. So I am rather fussy about proper spelling and grammar. When I was marking school homework, I always looked for innovative thoughts, credible information, and clear accurate facts. If you had been one of my students, I would have been pleased with your efforts! You obviously enjoy writing, and I hope that you will appreciate a quick comment saying that I liked your blog. Keep up the good work. Wishing you all the best, Kindest regards, Goodwin A I Manson.
Funny post! There should be some other ways to have fun - by setting up a special RSS feed that includes additional source links like Better Feed (http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-plugin-better-feed-rss/) or the RSS Footer plugin (over at Yoast).
The funny thing is that those stealing blog content also aren't paying attention to their site so visitors get to see that 'thief' message.
I did something similar with images a few years ago. I had a site hot-linking to several images so I replaced those images with new ones using the same file name. They said, "I'm stealing bandwidth" on them.