Keep fighting the good fight

I have just come across someone linking to me, on ‘Blog Mall’
http://blogmall.net/blogs/wheelbarrow/8925/
They’ve not used the whole post, and have linked to the original post, but I still think it’s weird, and don’t like it!
Is there anything I can do about it?
It hasn’t got any adsense, and only a couple of what look like advertising links in the header. No email address or anything about who they are.
Is this what we call a ’spamblog’?? It looks like it!

Thanks,

Simone

It’s also important to only use a part of the content (ie a quote) unless you have permission to do otherwise.

Kathleen – thanks for that – I’m going to get rid of the picture – it seems to be causing more trouble than it’s worth :-)

Now, I’m stuck with spamblogs that look like search engines and Google is actually indexing them. These fake search engine results are showing up under our trademark names.

It’s very frustrating.

A very amateur mistake and completely unnecessary for the spammer’s goals. The real spammer just scrapes fragments that will never violate copyright. He doesn’t care about quality content, only keyword density so no need to take the risk of grabbing complete articles.

That depends on the spammer. I had trouble with one person who started republishing content from about five good blogs on “his” blog, via an automated RSS scraper. The site’s whois was masked, but I was able to use the “advertise…” link on his AdWords ads to track him down.

All it took was one polite yet firm email to get him to stop stealing my content. Had that failed, I would have filed a DMCA copyright infringement complaint with Google – not hard at all.

It’s important to realize what you’re up against with the spammers. Everything they have is disposable/re-creatable/automated, including their Adsense account…banned from Adsense…form a new corporation and get a new one…no problem. If you’re a fan of Star Trek Generations…they are the Borg.

Personally I had to abandon my hand coded Smart Money Daily site because I it was being destroyed by comment spam. I realized that all I could do was to find a way to prevent it getting their in the first place. Since moving to WordPress 2.x I’ve had very little problem with comment spam.

You scooped me! Grrr, I was working on an article about this very issue and you beat me to the publish button. I guess thats why you make the big bucks. Anyway, two tidbits of info:
- according to jensense who heard it from matt cutts, use the keyword ’spamreport’ in the form to tell google what you think to have your issue forwarded tot he right google dept, and;
- In an email from google, they state, “In the future, to allow us to investigate any issues more efficiently, you can email our specialists directly at adsense-abuse@google.com.”

So there are two methods to report an individual. As a side note, in my experience reporting spam sites to google does get their ads removed.

[devils advocate ]
If you look at that flicker member’s other pictures it is obvious he did not take the picture and likely “borrowed” it from somewhere else. If you are not getting your images from stock houses or individuals then you can not be assured you are not violating someones copyright. As someone who writes a digital photography blog you should be more than aware of copyright restrictions and use due dilligence to determine usage of images that are not yours.

You dilligently fight those who copy your websites, content, and those who violate your copyright. What if others did the same to you? (question for all of us, not just Darren).
[/devils advocate]

- This is both a question of Law and Ethics. Legally you may never be prosecuted for use of the image, morally you have to judge yourself.