UPDATE: AUTOMATTIC ACTION TAKEN
Action against opportunistic blog scraping monetizers has been taken. See Matt’s comment below: “We put an anti-Bitacle check in, but it doesn’t effect normal readers.”
Podz advised bloggers – “It is checking for and blocking them specifically. They change, so does the block so if you see any new stuff on there just let us know through feedback. Posted: 2006-09-25 16:10:48″
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When I was new to blogging I lifted the entire text of some news reports and placed them in my blog with links and trackbacks to the original sources. With the assistance of other bloggers it didn’t take me long to determine that this was bad form. Blogging protocol alllowed for me to compose an introduction and lift a teaser from the original with a link and trackback.
Naturally, the idea of scooping someone’s original creation without permission and not attributing it to it’s creator would have been a breach of copywrite law and ethics and I knew that. But apparently the folks at Bitacle, a combination search engine and feed aggregator outfit operating out of Spain, could care less about ethics, protocol or copywrite. The person behind Bitacle is apparently a guy named Jesus Angelo Glez and the site similarity to the NetVibes has not gone unnoticed.
Bitacle specializes in ripping the content of blogs and even entire blogs without permission by using rss feeds. Once the content has been successfully sucked through the feeds it’s then regurgitated onto their own sites and monetized with google adsense ads from which Bitacle draws a profit.
The Bitacle problem was first reported in November 2005 but I was not a blogger at that time. The first I heard about this was on September 20th when Vivian Paige brought the matter forward to Moderator drmike on the WordPress.com forum.
In the past three days many bloggers like this one, have made reports of their entire blog sites being blog scraped by bitacle. It seems a wide array of bloggers from the notable bloggers like Robert Scoble and Shel Israel and mommy bloggers . The Bitacle blow off has been submitted to Digg and a special stop Bitacle blogsite has also been established.
Amy Gahran has found some interesting information, note the dissenting opinion of Jeremiah Owyang
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/09/21/im-being-cloned/
This morning a Bitacle Blocker plug-in was created for WordPress and made available for downloading.
A short description in english language follows:
This is a modified version of the is a modified version of the Feed Copyrighter Plugin written by Angsuman. It blocks bitacle’s access to your RSS feed, if you do not want bitacle to republish your entries and add advertisements to them. If the user-agent or the referer of the RSS-feed request contains the text »bitacle«, your content will not be delivered in the RSS-feed, instead there is the message…
NOTICE: Bitacle is a website, which steals contents just to add unwanted advertisements to them. Bitacle is an organzied copyright infringement. Please read the orignial blog …
This afternoon in the same wordpress.com forum thread Podz announced, “Matt has made a change but it needs a few hours to check the effect.”
At this point complaints have been made to Bitacle’s webhost ono.es and to Google AdWords and to the the ISP and other authorities. However, the Bitacle debacle has yet to play out and there is a minority, who do not find Bitacle behaviour reprenhensible, so keep tuned for further developments.
Tags: blogging ethics and protocols, copywrite, splogs, blogging opinions, blogging stories, rss feeds
Thank you for your informative article. I am watching this topic with interest. Looks like you have done your research!
I have a scad of other references in my email in box but if you look closely at your feed stats you will notice that Matt has already taken direct action to protect our content from blog scraping monetizers. Please read the update I just posted above.
“Our WordPress.com feeds have been switched from full text to summarize and this minimizes their usefulness to sploggers like Bitacle.”
Where did you hear this? It’s not true. We put an anti-Bitacle check in, but it doesn’t effect normal readers.
I posted this wholesale. If you’d prefer a snippet, let me know via comments.
[...] TimeThief normally objects to blogs that republish the entire posts of other blogs, but I think in this case she’ll give me a bye. If not, ********************************************************************** [...]
Edited: to remove incorrect information
@ Matt
I read it here in the first sentence http://wank.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/psa-some-more-design-wank/
my apologies for posting something that wasn’t true. I’ll correct this immediately.
@raincoaster
(1) Would you please go and check my blog and take note of Matt’s comment on my blog update. “We put an anti-Bitacle check in, but it doesn’t effect normal readers.”
(2) Would you please make the appropriate changes to what you have posted here? Specifically I expect you to remove all my text after the link above at “here’s her post”. I prefer that your readers use the link on your blog to click through to mine to read my post.
Thanks, in advance, for your co-operation.
[...] This has done little to abate the backlash and, as more and more bloggers are finding their material posted on Bitacle, the chorus has grown louder. They have been called thieves, a massive splogger, accused of having blown blogger ethics and much more. [...]
What is the IP?
@raincoaster:You’ll find the IP in the forum thread (link provided in the post) and also in one other link (Valerie’s) included in the posting.
TT: Change made. There’s also a sort of petition at Stopbitacle and I posted that.
When will you be available for the creamed corn wrestling? Had some ticket inquiries already.
EDIT: @raincoaster
Yes, I do know about the petition and good on you for spreading the word. And as for the other, I’m a plain speaking country girl on the business end of a hay fork. I do not consent to anyone scraping my blog for any “corny” reason and then making “hay” from it. TT
Well beyond believing anything you read on wank, you probably just misread that.
She set her own feed to have just excerpts, it’s certainly not something we would do system-wide.
The check simply serves some different content to Bitacle than it would to normal folks.
Matt – I just checked Bitacle and they are still grabbing all of my content. The only thing they have done differently is to show the blog source and to indicate that I own the copyright.
Yes, I changed the setting myself, sorry for the confusion.
I am now going to write to Bitacle to demand my share of whatever pennies they are making from the ads they have slapped on my feed. Wish me luck
@that girl again
You’re not alone when it comes to thinking the best way to get Bitacle is to report them to Adsense and demand your share of the advertising loot. http://www.kbcafe.com/spam/?guid=20060927070530
Valerie reports: “There are many people who have already contacted Google – no results yet, but we are working on it!” And you can see all the comments she has received here http://spoken-for.org/archives/2006/09/21/1685/#comments
I don’t fully understand… so these bloggers put fake Copyrights on?
@free willy
No. There are people pretending to be bloggers. They do not write their own material at all. Instead they get blogs and cover them with advertising that they get paid for. Next without getting permission they simply rip off other blogger’s content and put it on their own blogs with a link back to the original poster. This is not ethical and it is against the law. However, copywrite law applies to the country they are located in. Basically it would cost a fortune to prosecute them for doing this so some get away with it.