After much soul searching and internal debate, I’ve decided that I’m done with splogs and feed-driven blogs generating content from my blogs. Aren’t you?
Here is the scenario.
A trackback comes in with the following starting off the “quote”, followed by the start of your blog post content:
- […]admin wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt[…]
- […] Jim Phillips wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerpt…
- […] Novak wrote an interesting post today on 100 bloggers worldwide collaborate to benefit charityHere’s a quick […]
Notice the similarity? These all involve the words “wrote an interesting post today” and “here’s a quick excerpt”.
I’m considering adding these two phrases to my banned commenters list, but it’s a difficult decision as many use these words perfectly innocently. I wish there was a way to put them in the filter using all of the words without kicking out the innocent usages.
It’s that, or teach all bloggers to never introduce a blockquote using those phrases.
Notice also that the words run together and the punctuation stinks. These twits are so lazy, they don’t even customize the feed scraping WordPress Plugin to change the name from “admin” most of the time. This is a sign of a splog and feed-driven blog which uses feed scraping WordPress Plugins to grab content from your blog and publish it, using your content, or excerpts of your content, on their ad-filled spam blogs.
What I do now is check the source and if the blog has no original content, I mark the trackback as comment spam. I do not want them leaving trackbacks on my blog, or anyone else, to help their link juice, page ranking, or to encourage anyone to click from my trackback list on a blog post to their ad-filled and useless blog.
It’s About Blog Integrity
I know I’m sometimes a hard ass when it comes to comment spam and abusers of the web, but I am tired of lazy folks using my blog content on their ad-filled blogs. Some of the splogs I’ve checked using this technique don’t care about content. One published over 800 blog posts every day, each filled with excerpts from dozens of blogs of all types and sizes. Think they care?
Their use of my content is technically legal, fitting within the standards of Copyright Fair Use, but their use of my content according to my copyright policy violates that policy. It states:
You may NOT use this work for commercial purposes without explicit permission from the author and blog owner. Commercial purposes includes blogs with ads and income generating features, and/or blogs or sites using feed content as a replacement for original content. Excerpts are permitted if credited and not a replacement for content. Full content usage is not permitted.
That’s pretty clear and splogs using my content, even as excerpts, violate that.
Will it hold up in court? Maybe not, but I’ve stated it publicly in writing. It’s up to them to find out what my copyright policy is before they violate it.
I’m not attacking their right to use my content, though I’d love to, and in some cases I do, especially when my content appears on porn, drug, or other “inappropriate” ad-filled sites. I’m usually too busy chasing down abusers who rip off my full post content, something I’m fully within my rights to defend.
What I’m doing is removing their ability to use my blog as a source of links and page rank reference. I’m removing their ability to get readers from my blog. I’m cutting off the trickle of income and benefit they might get from my blog. They’re abusing my content, but I don’t have to give them anything else.
We all have a line in the sand we draw, standing behind it with our integrity like a shield before us, saying “This line you shall not cross.” I’ve decided that my blog will draw a line in cement and not permit any more “interesting posthere’s an excerpt”, worthless blogs into my blog’s door.
If you are using a feed scraping WordPress Plugin or tool, you have been warned. Stay away from my blog.