Not Delia

I’m an idiot and a thief for publishing this!

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Not Delia
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Why such a strange subject for a blog posting? It’s the Internet nasties at it again. The thieves and idiots who steal the work of people who do actually take the trouble to write original content for their blogs. I was totally fed up to find that yet again, some idiot had stolen my content and published it as being their own on Yahoo! Answers. The thief had the ranking of “top contributor”. Yeah, sure, we could all do that if we just steal stuff from elsewhere. Maybe I’ll just mirror all of Delia Online and claim it as my own. (Not really, that wouldn’t exactly be Not Delia.) But seriously, it’s very annoying when people steal your stuff. And, by the way, this posting is original content from http://www.notdelia.co.uk .

I’m all for sharing. I guest blog on other people’s blogs as they’re welcome to guest post on mine. But content theft is a different thing entirely. Any time I mention some top or popular chef, there’s a good chance that my content gets stolen. So here you go, thieves, dig in to this:

Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal. Oops, I forgot the usual mis-spelling of Gordon Ramsey (very popular keyword, that one). If I write anything about Gordon Ramsay, it gets picked up fairly quickly by the thieves. It’s quite similar if I say anything about Heston Blumenthal too.

OK, you get the idea. A lot of the time this isn’t even real people doing some sort of stupid cut’n’paste job. It’s all automated to pick up on key words such as Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal.

I was discussing this type of content theft with my friend Paul Johnson of A Luxury Travel Blog. We are both sick of people stealing our content, and using it elsewhere as their own. Paul took the initiative to post on his blog to see what results would come from this and whether he’d see the “I’m an idiot and a thief for publishing this” posting appearing elsewhere. I decided to join him in his efforts to expose these thieves and cheats.

Here’s Paul’s posting asking that other blog owners do the same:

A Luxury Travel Blog: "I’m an idiot (and a thief) for publishing this!"

If you see something that’s obviously been stolen, please join us in fighting against this theft. If you own a blog yourself, please also post along the lines of “I’m an idiot and a thief for publishing this”. Let’s get these thieving cheats shut down.

Thanks for reading. Please comment if you have anything to add.

Comments

4 responses to “I’m an idiot and a thief for publishing this!”

  1. Adi

    I forget the code now but there’s a service whereby you can add code to your webpages and if anyone does copy it into their own site you get a backlink inserted automatically. Obviously it won’t stop them pinching your work but it will at least give you some benefit from it.

  2. Mr Not Delia

    Thanks, Adi – we’ve now implemented that plugin on our WordPress blogs. 🙂

  3. Nate @ House of Annie

    Automated scraper sites don’t really care what you post; they just take it all and republish your content. About the only thing you can do to fix it is file a DMCA complaint with Google for AdSense TOS violations.

    The case where someone actually took your content and published it as their own on Yahoo! Answers – that is despicable! I hope you can get Yahoo! to can his *ss.

  4. Not Delia

    The trouble with reporting abuse to Yahoo! is that they make you jump through all sorts of hoops to PROVE that the content was yours in the first place.

    Have a look at this forum posting if you have time:

    http://www.aardvarkbusiness.net/chat/viewtopic.php?t=21217

    You’ll be welcome to join us on that forum if you like. (Don’t forget to introduce yourself in your first posting if you want to join. 🙂 ) You’ll find it’s a good forum with lots of ideas and help for those who take their blogs seriously.

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