Scraped Content: How Do I Report It?

• Email webmaster
• Google spam report
• AdSense DMCA Complaint

ReBlogging: The new pest

Voyager:

Though I agree with Markus in principle, there's a lot more to the story.

First, since most spam blogs on are on autopilot, there is no real way to contact the Webmaster. No email address is offered, if it is, it likely isn't checked and, in general, it is impossible to get a response.

What you need to decide is this: Is it more important to stop the spammer or to get your work taken down?

If you decide the former. File a DMCA notice with Adsense or whoever is hosting ads on the site. There are only a few major ad networks and most have policies against this type of thing and a means to report it. Sadly, most require a full DMCA notice (template on my site) and many will force you to send it via mail or fax (including Adsense and Adbrite).

If it is the latter, locate the site's hosting and file a DMCA notice with them. That is usually pretty easy to do and if you post some of the scraper links I'll gladly figure it out for you. Once again I have a stock DMCA notice on my site that you can use.

What I would do next is post here or email me at jonathan at plagiarismtoday dot com with some of the links. I can research them for you and I'll get back to you about who the hosts/advertisers are and where to consider sending in your notices.

Also, if you decide to send your notices to the host first, don't bother sending any to the ad networks. By the time the ad networks respond, the work will be taken down and they will have nothing they can do.

Hope this helps and I look forward to hearing from you!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Profuse thank-you's for your advice. I'll have to work over it in more detail later, as I have a commitment very soon, but I'm glad that Twitter turned out to be useful for something.

One of the sites (tutorials.mzwriter.com; I won't link for anti-SEO reasons) seems to have copied the entire archives of several blogs, including my own; many of the categories are unique as far as I've seen to my blog, and their post contents match exactly with what I posted on my own site.

The other, propelelr.com, is hosting excerpts as part of a very strange pornographic campaign, and if I interpret the WHOIS queries correctly is hosted by 1and1 Internet and registered in Russia.

I know that mzwriter is using Google AdSense, and I have filed a feedback complaint with Google, though I expect no action from them. I managed to find an email on that site, and am drafting an as-formal-as-I-can-muster email to send. The other's address was obtained from WHOIS, and may or may not be accurate, but it is a Gmail account.

I'm following this issue in multiple locations now, and will be looking at all advice I receive. Thanks again for your time, and I'll definitely take action after consulting with friends and family.

Voyager: Twitter... useful... in the same sentence. I'm glad I was sitting down.

Anyway, down to the plagiarists real fast.

tutorials.mzwriter.com is hosted at ThePlanet. I've worked with them literally dozens of times before, always with great success. The email address to file a DMCA notice there is copyright at thepanet dot com.

Looking at the site, I only see Adsense ads at this time. You can file a DMCA complaint to Adsense by visiting this link:

http://www.google.com/adsense_dmca.html

propelelr.com is obviously a typo spam domain that is trying to siphon traffic off the social news site propeller.com. It appears to be hosted in the UK by a company known as HQHOST. I"m unsure where you saw 1&1 but that is possible considering 1&1 does work in the UK.

You can report the abuse here: abuse at hqhost dot net

Here I would focus more on reporting the spam than the copyright violation. Though the UK does have laws requiring hosts to remove any infringing material, there may be fair use and fair dealing issues here.

Still, I suspect the host would shut this site down if they knew what was there.

I wouldn't bother with the advertisers here. Though you could certainly report them to adultfriendfinder and nichepass, I don't know if it would do much good. Both sites have sketchy records here. But you can still try if you want.

That should about cover those two. I hope that helps!

Let me know how things develop and if I can do anything further to assist!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Re Twitter being useful, it's interesting that I found your user account by just searching for "copyright" in the users.

Now, I saw the 1and1 name in the WHOIS for mzwriter.com; my mistake. It's listed as several of the contact names, aside from the initial "Shahid Siddique" from Delhi, India. But I'll most certainly try ThePlanet first, since you sound extremely sure. (I'm assuming you meant copyright at theplanet dot com.)

I found HQHost nameservers listed in the WHOIS for propelelr, and I also found the abuse at hqhost dot net address earlier today. Thanks for confirming my hunch (you're going to have to point me to an article on PlagiarismToday describing how to reliably get all this info). Looks like I'll hold onto my draft letters to the site webmasters (or the addresses I think are right) for now and deal with the hosts. hostgator.com is listed as both of the nameservers for mzwriter, though, so I'll put them on a backup list.

As for advertisers, I'll wait on that. If I see repeat offenses (probably hard in the online world) I'll go after those accounts, but for now, hosts are sufficient.

Thanks again for looking into this further. I'm new to this online plagiarism thing, and having a guide is very helpful.

Voyagerfan5761

Edit: I'm assuming I should use my real name in the letters, even though it's not mentioned anywhere on the infringed site?

I've been copying and pasting infringing URLs since my last post almost 90 minutes ago. Do I really have to give them a list of every single URL and title? I have over 250 posts they could have copied!

So Twitter has a search feature? There I was thinking it wasn't useful for anything beyond my witty sayings.

I've triple-checked mzwriter and it is definitely ThePlanet. However, the reason you're seeing Hostgator is... wait for it... Hostgator uses ThePlanet's infrastructure.

Since TP controls the servers, the are responsible for receiving the notice and will likely just forward it on to HG. However, it is best to start at the top though, just because DNS is very unreliable. A lot of spammers use DNS servers at one place and use them to point to a site elsewhere.

For a tool to help you cut through the muck, use domaintools.com. It's not perfect but it is easy to use. Just punch in the domain, scroll down to the server information and you should have the info you need there. If you need more information, click the red "W".

I need to update my guide on how to do this to include that information.

To answer your other questions. Yes, you should use your real name as doing otherwise could invalidate your notice.

As far as how many links to paste, the DMCA says you only need to submit a "representative" list. Now, what constitutes representative I have no clue. But just submit a reasonable number and walk away. You can always file a second one later if needed.

The only time to send all of the URLs is if you're dealing with Google, they refuse to accept anything but a fax and you want to see if you can break their machine.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/10/17/dmca-from-hell-pdf-and-bitacle-update/

Hope this helps!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Wish I'd seen this an hour ago. I already finished finding all the links I could on the problem site. Can I just submit my base blog URL, then, for the original works demonstration? Rather than going through and pasting another 200+ links... Did I also waste my time re-typing all the titles in a list? What is the difference between "Allegedly Infringing items or materials" and "List IN DETAIL the URL(s) or Work(s) you are requesting to be removed"?

Though for once I'd love to tell you that you wasted your time, you didn't. The titles are important because some pages on your site or theirs could have multiple works, some of which might not be involved.

The difference is that the first is the titles of the works and the latter is the URLs where they plagiarist posted the works.

You've given me some thought on how to improve my own DMCA instructions, I see an overhaul on my site in the future!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

Before I commit myself to copying two hundred URLs from my blog dashboard, do I need to provide all that, or would giving the two sites where the items were originally posted work?

Just to clarify, I used Windows Live Spaces (back when it was MSN Spaces) before my current Blogger blog, and I copied the old posts to the new one, changing the dates, so they were really originally posted there. The Space is still up, so it's really the original work. I think.

Just trying to avoid another hour or two of right-clicks and Ctrl-V...

Once again, you only have to provide a representative list of the works. However, if you provided a full list of URLs on the infringing site, you should probably match that with your original URLs. You can not send DMCA agents scrounging through your site for proof, they tend to not like that and often times bounce back notices as false.

In regards to which site is the original, either can be. It might be better to use the older site, just so they can see the original dates, but it isn't necessary. If it is easier to work with your Blogger Blog, feel free to use it instead.

All in all, it might be time to cutback the number of URLs reported to a more reasonable level.

Hope this helps!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

As far as I know, I'm done. I picked up just shy of 250 URLs, including about 15 duplicates from my old blog. I noted that posts were moved, just to give as much info as possible.

I actually used Blogger's control panel to match the dates from the old blog, so that's a non-issue.

Now the only question remaining is, do they really need an address and phone number? If they do for sure, I'll put them in the letter, but I don't want to have extra info floating around. What's been your experience with The Planet?

Thanks again for all your help! Now I'm going to end up submitting this the day before Thanksgiving... Bad timing.

The DMCA is pretty clear on this one, you need to provide adequate information for them to contact you. You definitely need to include the address and email or the notice will likely be rejected.

The good news is that you don't have to worry about that information getting out. ThePlanet does not submit notices to a third party, like Google does, and even then all personal information is blotted out.

I can understand your reservations but don't worry about it too much. I've never had a problem with that information being leaked and, one would think, with so many hundreds of notices filed it would have happened by now if there were a real risk.

Hope this helps!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

And with that, I'm ready to submit. It's a little annoying, because my address is likely to change soon, but I guess they can have the current one. I hope they aren't put off by a screening prompt on the phone; my number asks who's calling -- it's GrandCentral.

Thanks again for all your help! Now that I've got this one out of the way, propelelr.com should be pretty easy.

I'll be watching your RSS feed for any new stuff. Cheers!

I wouldn't worry too much about them or anyone else calling or contacting you. It doesn't happen.

That is mostly in the event that the person you're filing a notice against decides he or she wants to take action against you, in this case, that is practically nil considering the clearcut abuse.

I doubt you'll hear anything from them about this.

Good luck with it and please let me know what happens!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

I'll be sure to. I sent it yesterday morning, so I don't expect a response really until next week. The office is probably off for Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be back here with another post when I get a response (I know, I'm so optimistic :D ).

I don't know when, but it looks like The Planet got rid of that content. At least, the few sample links I checked were gone. WordPress or whatever they're using at mzwriter says that no posts matched my criteria. Thanks for the help!

Awesome, took a bit longer than I would have liked, a little bit over a week, but I'm glad its done! Hopefully this will remain the case. Keep an eye on the site for a few days to make sure it doesn't come back, which is very rare but possible.

Other than that, pat yourself on the back and have a stiff energy drink to celebrate!

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com