Dealing with plagiarism
So lately, when I log into the administration portion of my blog, I've been noticing more and more links from a single domain and the titles are generally the same as my latest blog post... I browsed over and sure enough, someone is grabbing my blog posts via WP-Autoblog and posting them on their site. The site in this case, which I've noticed is stealing feeds from a good number of the Security Bloggers Network sites, is newtechtransfer.com.
There weren't any posts on effectively blocking WP-Autoblog that I could find anywhere and after a little bit of searching I found the suggestion to send a DMCA Cease and Desist Request. There is a template available here. I updated the template to properly reflect me and my website, and sent it off to abuse and support for both the domain in question and their hosting provider estdomains.com.
The problem I realized is that I most likely won't get anywhere... based on the email addresses provided in the whois (which are .ru), I'm guessing that there's no legal way of getting the information removed. I've provided the whois information under the Read More link so that it wouldn't clutter the main page.
The second point of interest was the response I got from the abuse and support email addresses. The hosting provider's response was:
Dear Customer,
Due to the huge wave of spam we receive and in order to improve
the speed and quality of the work of our support team we decided
to stop receiving emails.To get in touch with us please feel free to raise support ticket at
Best regards,
Estdomains, Inc Support Team
The text was also repeated in Russian. So I also submitted my Cease and Desist request via their support form.
So my question to the blogging community is, how do you deal with these sorts of problems? Images of vigilante justice keep going through my head, all the affected parties lynching the culprits in a small dirty town reminiscent of every bad western ever made. The problem here is that this *IS* a problem. This can affect search engine ranking and placement, this can affect site traffic and it's just plain irritating. There has to be something that can be done, but the question is: What?
[UPDATE]
It appears as though the letter worked. All content has been removed from newtechtransfer.com.
Whois Information:
Checking server [whois.crsnic.net]
Checking server [whois.estdomains.com]
Results:
Registration Service Provided By: ESTDOMAINS INC
Contact: +1.3027224217
Website: http://www.estdomains.comDomain Name: NEWTECHTRANSFER.COM
Registrant:
EMELINE GROUP LIMITED
Tamara Frolova (223@bk.ru)
Akara Bldg
24 De Castro Str
Wickhams Cay I
ROADTOWN
Tortola,1001
VG
Tel. +7.8129636023Creation Date: 30-Nov-2006
Expiration Date: 30-Nov-2008Domain servers in listed order:
ns2.dir-us.com
ns1.dir-us.comAdministrative Contact:
EMELINE GROUP LIMITED
Tamara Frolova (223@bk.ru)
Akara Bldg
24 De Castro Str
Wickhams Cay I
ROADTOWN
Tortola,1001
VG
Tel. +7.8129636023Technical Contact:
SUN TRANSPORT CHEMICAL Ltd
Vasiliev Aleksandr (ie223@bk.ru)
22 Notting Hill Gate
Suite 26
London
,SW05 3JR
GB
Tel. +7.8129561763Billing Contact:
SUN TRANSPORT CHEMICAL Ltd
Vasiliev Aleksandr (ie223@bk.ru)
22 Notting Hill Gate
Suite 26
London
,SW05 3JR
GB
Tel. +7.8129561763Status:ACTIVE
“The problem here is that this *IS* a problem. This can affect search engine ranking and placement, this can affect site traffic and it’s just plain irritating.”
although i too have encountered instances of folks scraping my content and putting it on their own site i’ve never really considered it a problem… i started to, when i encountered it the first time, but took a hard look at why i felt that way and i decided that the motives behind those feelings (in my case at least) weren’t ones that i could be genuinely proud of… i decided i care more that the information gets read than about where it gets read…
but each person and each blog is different… i seem to recall paperghost doing something with very disturbing images…
I can see your opinion and it’s more the principal behind it that anything else… Generally these sites are hosting exploits and using the content to draw people in, or they are making money of ads… That’s why I have problems with it.. The more of them that get shutdown the better…
well if it’s exploits there’s an entirely different angle of attack – i seem to recall there are groups like MIRT for getting sites like that shut down… at least when they’re not undergoing a DDoS themselves…
Unfortunately Estdomains is notorious for hosting all kind of shady content (including malware and phising sites) and being very unresponsive to takedown notices.
Yeah, they do it with mine too. Having said that, there’s not much on there today, maybe it’s worked…
Indeed all of the content does seem to be gone… Strike a blow for the good guys
Estdomains not only hosts shady content (many registrars/hosters do that), they are especially friendly to the ne’erdogooders; almost a service in the sector. It’s not that they are unresponsive to the requests to address situations, so much as it seems they intentionally disregard them and in some cases another organization I’ve worked with reports that they’re almost certain the complaints get passed on to the offending estdomains customers as information rather than complaints (keeping tabs on victims, etc.)
Don’t be surprised to find the content at another site “sooner than later” — and most likely another Est Domain site. As soon as one is shut down, twice as many open again.
What ticks me off is the jerks who play this game and load the content of others on their heavily AdSense-supported sites.