Sunday, September 16, 2007

A Particularly Outrageous Content Scraper

Thanks to Katie from Thyme for Cooking and Nicole from Pinch My Salt who alerted me this morning that the site below was stealing my content. (They both found it through Google Alerts because I had linked to their recipes in my post. This is yet another reason why it's so great to link to your fellow bloggers!)

http: //cooking-tips.googlelinks.net/

(I have put a space after the colon so it doesn't create a link for them.)

What makes this particularly outrageous is that this person has gone through many of my posts and changed the words "Kalyn's Kitchen" to "Chris' Kitchen." However they were not smart enough to change the html so it is still a link to my blog.

I have left comments on the posts that are mine asking to have them removed immediately. In looking around the site I found this list of posts with many titles I recognize from other blogs:

http: //cooking-tips.googlelinks.net/sitemap/

(Again, a space after the colon to prevent a link.)

I would recommend you look at the list to see if there are things of yours being taken by this jerk, and if so leave a comment. There does not appear to be any other way to contact them.

(Another Edit: Here is somewhere to report stolen material on a wordpress blog. I have now reported this site to Wordpress besides leaving the comments.)

This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

EDIT:
A very happy edit! In the time it took me to leave about ten comments on their site (I was actually leaving them immediately after they posted my stuff which probably freaked them out) they have started removing my posts. I hope everyone else who finds their stuff there will also take action.

EDIT AGAIN:
Spoke too soon. Even after they deleted the earlier posts I had left comments on they continued to post more of my stuff. Totally unethical and disgusting!

EDIT AGAIN:
It appears that many people have probably been contacting them today, because now the site appears to have no posts at all. Hooray!

9 comments:

Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) said...

Kalyn, I did leave a comment there about one of the recent posts I recognized from your site, pointing out that the content was copied from your blog. Awful. Thanks for the alert.

Kalyn Denny said...

Thanks Lydia! Also thanks to Pille from Nami Nami who also alerted me that she noticed my content.

Susan Voisin said...

Kalyn, when I looked at it just now, almost all of the current front page is filled with your posts! And strangely--and a little scary--s/he's taken many posts from a blogger who is writing about her husband's time in a hospital. Perhaps someone else can recognize the blogger and let her know--it's not at all about cooking and contains a lot of personal detail.

Kalyn Denny said...

I am further shocked that this person has continued to take my content even after they have obviously gotten my comments and deleted the earlier ones. This is just disgusting.

I've notified the two bloggers whose content I recognized, but I do hope someone else will recognize the one Susan saw and let that blogger know.

Also, thanks to Barbara from Tigers and Strawberries who also let me know she saw it. What a great network we have!

Susan Voisin said...

I found the other blog whose content is being stolen--it's Cooking with Anne--and notified her via a comment. I have to think that an automated program is doing this. Posts are appearing too quickly on that blog; even just cutting and pasting takes longer than that.

Aurore said...

I also sent an email to Elise from Simply Recipe whose content has also been stolen.

I don't really see the point of doing that. There isn't even ad on the blog.

Curt McAdams said...

Their post from today:
Cooking Tips: Ignorance Is Bliss
Filed under: Cooking Tips — admin @ 3:34 am

For those upset about what transpired here in the past few hours, let me assure you that problem has been taken care of. For those of you who think the law is here to help you for “copyrighted” material written on a blog on the free world wide web, let me enlighten you.

Contacting my host isn’t solving the problem, but rest assured, they are quick to take care of a complaint from an outsider. But you contacting them had nothing to do with the post removal. That was the administrator itself. Sorry for your so called victory, but you might as well be dancing to the rain gods.

Scrapping from other blogs and other sources isn’t infringing on any copyright law that exist. In a real court, if you decided to take it to that, I would be liable for nothing, you’d look like a child and we’d all go along with our way.

.....

They seem to think nothing could happen to them legally if they continue.

Anonymous said...

I also wondered what the point of the site was, considering no advertising... (I too got a ping back from a WHB link, thought it looked suss and went over to Kalyn's kitchen, where thankfully many others had already notified Kalyn)

I recently had a not-quite-scraping incident - a site called www. makesalad .com is basically 'quoting' large sections of other people's posts, with a link, but still.. it too looks automated, set up to look like a 'real' blogger who has found some interesting sites and is linking to them, but that is the only content of the site.

it was covered in advertising, so I put in a complaint via the 'report a violation' page at google ads. so far their response has been "we'll investigate, but unfortunately we can't discuss it with you (privacy of that 'blogger')". I guess it's just good that people do keep an eye out and let each other know....

Kalyn Denny said...

One final comment from me to say I was so touched by how many different people notified me that they saw my stuff on this site. What a great community we have to keep an eye out for each other like this. Thanks everybody!