Scienceguide.net is a splogger. They stole my recent MIT article — lock, stock and picture — and posted it at http://www.scienceguide.net/mit-solar-energy-storage-project-puts-big-oil-notice. It was a little post, just a note about something I thought was cool, but I guess I have an intensely possessive nature or something.
Sooo … knowing there was little I could do about it, I did what another WordPress blogger did. I doctored the picture they linked to. The above is what I hope shows on their site now (with all the caching and everything, I’m not sure now what, if anything, is on their site). I hate to direct any traffic their way, but they don’t have any ads up so maybe they aren’t making any money yet. I know, it’s a petty, childish thing to do, but sploggers really piss me off. I feel a little better now that I’ve vented on their site.
By the way, while I was there, I checked some of their other posts, and it looked like all of them had been scraped off WordPress blogs.
If there’s a way to get a note into the actual text they swiped, someone more tech savvy than I will have to explain to me how to do it. Meantime, maybe I’ll start sticking a copyright notice or signature into every post. Eh, who am I kidding; there’s no real way to fight these guys, is there?
Note, 8/11/2008: It appears that ScienceGuide.net is hosted by GoDaddy.com. I finally drilled down far enough on the GoDaddy site to find some of their legal notices. There’s a link in there for reporting copyright violations. It looks like the denial of access to my stolen post is all that GoDaddy or Science Guide is willing to do. So I guess everybody on WordPress who has been scraped by ScienceGuide needs to report it to GoDaddy via this link. If enough people do it, maybe the site will be shut down.
Note, 8/13/2008: Progress! I just checked out ScienceGuide.net and they now have Google ads up. That means you can lodge complaints with Google. They do require either snail mail or fax, however. To read how to lodge a complaint with them, go here. Again, since access to my stolen post has been blocked, I don’t know if a complaint from me will accomplish anything, but I’m going to try.
© 2008 PiedType.com
Teeni just emailed me that the same thing happened to me. I don’t get it but your posting a picture there is AWESOME! I just went there and it appears they have deleted your text but kept the picture. This is b.s.
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Hmm, for a while my edited picture showed there. Then I looked and the pic was not showing up but the text was.
Wait, just went there and got, “ACCESS DENIED: You are not authorized to access this page. ” I’d say whatever you did worked like a charm 😉
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Last time I looked, I got the same message. Glad to hear you were denied too. I thought maybe they just blocked me or something.
They must be taught a lesson somehow.
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I’m not holding my breath. 🙁
Just what the world needs: More lazy idiots passing the brilliance of others off as their own. Sorry you got ganked, fair lady.
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‘Bout time I got the attention I deserve! 😆
That bastard got me too.
That lazy ass bastard.
There has to be something e can do about this.
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WP forums suggested sending a certain form letter to their service provider, etc., but even after running a Whois, I couldn’t figure out where to write.🙁
I have an Idea. Maybe if we inform people that there content has been stolen (as most probably will not know it has) and get them to demand that there content be removed from the site as well as company to the host of the site http://www.godaddy.com (found via this) maybe we could get the site shut down.
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Sorry this got hung up in Akismet. Yes, I got as far as godaddy, but couldn’t find a good place to lodge a complaint, other than by snail mail. I’ll keep looking, however.
I see this so much and I never had a clue what to do about it. Interesting response!
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I would never have thought of the picture thing if I hadn’t seen it mentioned somewhere in the WP forums. They even suggested starting every post with a picture; I assume that’s so you can do what I did. I’m glad it shut down access (I think) to the post they stole from me, but mine was just one of so many. 🙁
I did a google sarch an that lead me to this place whoishostingthis.com which told that scienceguide.net is hosted by godaddy.com
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Possible progress. See the note I put at the end of the post above.
They posted up an article of mine. I felt slightly flattered anyone thought my blog was worth stealing from. 🙂 (for the curious, the article was http://wilybadger.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/some-thoughts-on-chi/ )
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Oh, I know that feeling. I was ticked, but vaguely flattered too.
(and special thanks to Lone Wolf who was the one who told me abou tthe problem!)
Scienceguid.net appears to be down. Maybe some one actually got it shut down., hopefully.
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Oh that would be awesome if it’s permanent! 😆
Guess who’s back! Scienceguide.net the assholes back. Scraping WordPress.com blogs again. And still hosted by Godaddy.
Foe those who know nothing about copyright law (as I didn’t) I’ve about your rights to your work and what to do if your blog gets scraped.
http://wolfsden.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/scrapblogs-copyright-infringement-and-your-rights-to-your-work/
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*sigh* I thought we were done with those guys. 🙁
They guy scraped another one of my posts, so I sent a cease and desist letter to Godaddy.com. He took down my post but but the site itself is still up.
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That’s what happened when I complained. They took down my post and kept right on going. Sorry to hear they ripped you off again. 🙁
Looks like they haven’t taken anything of mine recently. I don’t know if I should feel insulted or not.
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One way to find out: send them a link and grovel for inclusion 😉
Maybe when enough people complain Godaddy will take it down. Hopefully. But this idiot will just find some other host.
But I still win, I set tit so the RSS feeds only show a summery so even if they scrap me they only get a peace of it. But I’ll have to use the <!–more–> on small posts which will cut off posts on my blog itself.
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I did that for a while, then got to thinking maybe it wasn’t worth it if it cost me any readers (I have so many!). Then I tried putting in a copyright line at the end of every post, but forgot it half the time. Then I decided I least I should include a picture every time so I could trip them up with that again. But digging up good art can take a lot more time than the post is worth. I think maybe you’re right about the feed. You don’t have to think about it, at least for longer posts. I get tired just thinking about the hassle.
I don’t like having to set it that way but I don’t want to have to deal with a bunch of scrap bloggers steeling my posts especially if its from another country or some host or ISP I can’t track down.
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Agreed.