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SOPA: Alt view - You need to be Shakespeare or Picasso to Avoid Content Scraping

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mahesh2k:
My friend has gardening blog and she regularly posts text, owned images and videos in her blog. There are some personal images related to her family and friends in that blog. She found her blog scraped by one black hat author who refuses to take down the content. I understand that SOPA/PIPA/ACTA are bad but scraping content that includes your personal property and replying arrogantly to content owner increases the power of SOPA/ACTA/PIPA lobby. I'll not be surprised if many bloggers/content owners support SOPA/PIPA due to this type of abuse.

Here's what she received as a reply for the DMCA take down notice sent to hostgator. I don't know what hostgator did to that site as of now (it looks up for now).

"We've got your copyright complaint by the hosting service. We are not based on U.S.A. and not obligated by United State's laws. But we've got respect for other website and intellectual properties. The content which was related to your complaint was added to our website by our volunteer editors. For us a public content that's opened to world wide web is not copyright protected unless it has a literatural value or including a specific sciencetific reasearch. Any text content is not copyrighted material if it's redistribution of public knowledge without highly literature value. But we are willing to add your name to the document if you permit, or if you will not give permition we will edit the content page properly if you can prove us that you are the copyright owner more than DMCA records. We want to know this is legally your intellectual property in a non-digital legal registered document."

--- End quote ---

Check the bolded part. You need to be Picasso or Shakespeare or some apple or MS in order to have your content taken down. Sad isn't it? I also came across similar case where blackhat folks refuse to take down personal images and are challenging the original author to prove that in court. So you have to prove that you own your personal images, relations as shown in blog in order for these scrapers to take content down?It's definitely not cool and something that is giving boost to SOPA/PIPA/ACTA.

Name of the site is : newhealthtips.com ( If you're aware of blackhat stuff then it doesn't take long time for you to realize that this is yet another scraper site).

Renegade:
I've had content stolen, and am fully aware of scraper sites. I can't get behind SOPA or other legislation like it.

Yes, it sucks when you get scraped. But, that's not a reason to suppress free speech.

There are other blackhat ways to deal with blackhats. ;)

40hz:

There are other blackhat ways to deal with blackhats. ;)

-Renegade (January 27, 2012, 05:53 AM)
--- End quote ---

Don't you mean 'asshats' rather than 'blackhats' when referring to scrapers? ;) :)

40hz:
She could make a complaint to the domain registrar, which is a US company. They won't do anything. But it gives them a heads-up about it. If enough people complain they sometimes stop accepting domain requests from the party named. Also the webhost if it is a US or Euro operation. Most have policies about acceptable use and practices. Content scraping is usually forbidden. As is openly defying DMCA notices. Unfortunately, most heavy-duty scrapers host their own servers for exactly that reason.

But to the point, there's nothing which makes you have to accept a DMCA at face value since there are so many bogus ones filed. Asking for proof of copyright is something I'm surprised more sites and hosts don't request. I guess they just feel it's easier to do a CYA and act immediately on receiving notice.

I've had content I've created scraped.  

It's annoying.

You get over it eventually.

In your friend's case it might be beneficial to try to get a link plus her name added to the article. At least that way she'll get some exposure value out of it. Maybe people who see the scraped article will then discover her website.

Hardly ideal, or even fair, but it's still better than nothing. Especially since the scrapers realize (correctly) that there's little most people can do about it.
 :)

mahesh2k:
@Ren, I'm not supporting SOPA in the way it is mixed with political motives. But original intention of SOPA was to protect someone's intellectual property. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Freedom of expression doesn't mean stealing and if it means that there should be open stealing then I guess we're inviting flawed socialism with broken communist and capitalist model all in one by crushing authors/artists revenue model.

@40hz, problem is that the images and content clearly shows that it is her property. I mean it's obvious that your pic is YOUR pic which is hosted on your blog, right? If any scraper is copying that content and asking you to prove that if it's your property (even after getting an email from the same scraped domain email) then it is offensive. Hostgator removed that content from above site and is taking further action on webmaster. Problem with giving proofs to such scraper is that, if you look at their scraped sites content, there is no need for giving any proof to thieves. It's like giving proof to murderer who is standing next to the corpse with blood on his clothes and knife.

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