How I Stopped Blog Content Theft

Posted by Jeff

on April 18, 2009

If you have an established blog with original content posted on a regular basis you too may be a victim of the lame and lazy. There may be many other ways to stop content theft from WordPress blogs, but I have found the easiest for me is to add little something to each new post.

If you are a regular reader here at WordPressMax you may have noticed the small copyright disclaimer on the top of all new posts now. Something that I’ll admit looks terrible but has stopped several lazy content thieves from using my posts on their spam blogs. What I have started doing is adding a copyright disclaimer to the very beginning of each new post and in the excerpt. But I only keep it there as long as the post is the latest. As I make new posts, which hasn’t been very often lately, I take the copyright disclaimer off the last post and put it on the newest one.

Since I use excerpts when making new posts I also put the copyright disclaimer in it as well. Again, remembering to remove it when making a new post. I guess you could keep the copyright notice in all posts but in my experience the lame, lazy content scraper thieves only take the latest post. I know its a bit of a pain to remember to remove the disclaimer from the last post when making a new one but I do so for the look and SEO of the blog. Here is the copyright disclaimer I used:

Copyright © 2009
This content feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. The use of this content feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, or on any other site than WordPresMax.com it makes the page you are viewing an infringement of the copyright and the owner of the site a thief.

Once I started using the copyright disclaimer the content scrapers stopped immediately. Now that I scared them off I think I will test the next post without the copyright disclaimer and see if they are gone for good.

If anyone has any other method to stop content thieves please share them with the readers.

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Comments

Comment by Nishadha on April 18, 2009 @ 11:10 am

If they are scrapping your content through your RSS feed then you can use a RSS feed signature.It only shows up in your RSS feed and looks like this (© Nishadha Silva – visit the blog Rumbling Lankan for more great content.) Rumbling Lankan is a link. You can modify it to your liking. Unfortunately the link in the plug in doesn’t seem to work . (http://www.smackfoo.com/plugins/sig2feed/), its a PHP file and if you can’t find it online contact me and I will mail it to you test out.

Comment by Lindsay @ Addiction Rehab Blog on April 18, 2009 @ 1:53 pm

Wow, I am very surprised that worked. I would not have figured they cared about copyright, given the practices they use.

Jeff Replied:
April 18th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

Yes it surprised me too. I didn’t expect it to stop so they were obviously being monitored.

Kevin Paquet Replied:
April 19th, 2009 at 8:34 am

I suppose that they only stopped because it included a link to this blog which isn’t quite nice for them, haha. But don’t really think that any of these content scrappers ever care about copyright infringement, because if they did really care they would not have even dared copying it at all, it would generally be copyright infringement anyway, with or without notice.

Comment by Rick S. on April 19, 2009 @ 11:45 am

You could try the RSSupplement plugin.

(http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rssupplement/)

It allows you write an excerpt in straight HTML that is completely separate from your blog-entry (it could include your copyright notice, anchored links, an actual summary of your post, etc.), and that goes into your RSS feed instead of your whole post or part of your post.

BTW, I’d leave the copyright notice in there.

PHPlist Web Hosting Replied:
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:58 am

Wooow,Looks great and good features too.Thanks so much for your time.And the install guide is also great!

PHPlist Web Hosting Replied:
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:59 am

Thanks for the info it ’s a great idea and copyright to comment

Comment by Haridwar on April 20, 2009 @ 5:38 pm

yes, the copyright thing is a surprise to me too, i guess we all learnt smthng today.

Comment by Web page designer on April 21, 2009 @ 12:48 am

Hi,

Content theft is a major problem encountered by good bloggers. I know there are many folks who use original content without giving you royalty for your work by giving back link to your original post and saying thanks for writing such a great post.

In your case, I would like to suggest you put widget of copyscape “this content is copyrighted” and another plug-in from Creative Commons. That will help you to save your original content. Below is the link. I hope it will help you.
http://www.copyscape.com/plagiarism.php, http://creativecommons.org/

Comment by VSO Business Success on April 21, 2009 @ 3:11 am

It’s very interesting experiment! I’ll look forward to results.

And I would like to mention alter opinion:
“If Your works are popular it’s really good! If someone copy them it’s good too. Even if it is done without money at all!”

Comment by SEO Bookmarking on April 21, 2009 @ 10:34 am

Thanks for the article. Stopping theft is always a good thing. I have bookmarked this article over at the SEO Social Bookmarking website.

Comment by Spot @ Cool Websites on April 21, 2009 @ 10:48 pm

Like others, I’m surprised this worked too.

When you publish a new post do you have to manually go back to the last one and remove the copyright language? Or is that system automated?

Jeff Replied:
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:34 am

Yes I manually remove the copyright on the last post when making a new one.

Comment by aerobics on April 22, 2009 @ 12:32 am

Thanks for the article.the copyright thing is a surprise to me too.

Comment by Eren@ homemaking encouragement on April 22, 2009 @ 12:49 am

There’s also the RSS footer plug in that helps because it gives us a link. It is truly annoying that people have no ethics and do this. We can try to prevent it but there’s always some bad apple somewhere.
All the best,
Eren

Comment by Joel Mclaughlin on April 22, 2009 @ 11:48 am

That is a great idea. Also Google’s guidelines say that if content is duplicated on the internet that you should link to the original post to show where the content came from – so this should help you maintain your value if people duplicate your content with your copyright link.

Comment by Hal on April 22, 2009 @ 1:56 pm

You have a lot of rules and notices on your blog. I don’t agree with any of this. It is tacky to put a copyright notice at the top of every post. Imagine that in magazines and newspapers. I would drop my subscriptions to such publications.

The Leave a Comment rules are incredibly restrictive and from what I read (I can’t believe I actually read all that) this comment may never appear.

That said, I never steal content. I always give credit where credit is due. However, others do, and will continue no matter what you put at the top of your posts. This is like saying you have found the answer to spam. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Jeff Replied:
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Wow Hal, it seems you don’t like much except talking down to people and trying to prove how smart and right you are. You come off a bit defensive like I personally accused you of stealing content. Are you one of the lame and lazy?

If you think my blog is tacky then you didn’t need to read any of it. I certainly don’t care if you subscribe or not. If you look closely you will see that the name of the site is not called “I Hope I Can Please An Asshole Named Hal”.

I restrict comments because a lot of my posts are guides and I need to keep the posts from turning into a full fledged forum. And this particular post title is called ” How I Stopped Blog Content Theft”. Notice the word “I” in there? Not the ultimate way to stop comment spam. Thanks for coming by and spreading all your cheer. Now go away and piss off someone else.

Ted Werth Replied:
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:01 pm

hahahah that is a great response. Looks like Hal brought a knife to a gunfight.

“the name of the site is not called “I Hope I Can Please An Asshole Named Hal”.”

I’m going to be laughing at that comment all day.

Jeff Replied:
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:14 pm

Thanks Ted, glad you’re not another Hal!

Comment by Morgan on April 23, 2009 @ 5:28 am

I never thought copyright disclaimer would work out. So, I must try this from now on. Thank you for sharing.

Comment by Deejee on April 24, 2009 @ 4:42 am

I also thought disclaimers never worked out.
What if you found out someone is copying your blog. And that someone is in China.

It’s a big big problem and no solution found yet

Comment by myows on April 25, 2009 @ 10:16 am

Fairly interesting, albeit slightly barbaric, technique to stop content theft.

Jeff Replied:
April 25th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

“Barbaric”… lol

Comment by myows on April 25, 2009 @ 9:27 pm

Well you know, it’s a bit like photographer’s or logo designers placing huge watermarks on top of their work.

Sure, it curbs down content theft, but also has a negative effect on honest visitors who don’t get to see the work in all it’s grandeur.
( although you can remove watermarks if you have photoshop and 1 hour to waste )

I also find it a little counter-productive that you have to manually remove the copyright notice on previous posts.

Anyway, content scrapping must be fought against !

Comment by Pesta Blogger 2009` on April 26, 2009 @ 11:34 am

Great Idea.. i never thought like that Before.. It’s very Usefull

Comment by kim adair on April 26, 2009 @ 7:50 pm

I wish people would not be so lazy, and create their own content, or pay the pros to create for you! I am not a writer by any means, but I do get the job done, or outsource it, simple enough!

Comment by Real Estate Buenos Aires on April 27, 2009 @ 3:10 pm

Great topic! There should be a way to stop and prevent these attitudes. I donk know how should it work when you post a comment, just saying that is copyright protected should be enought?

Comment by seo services on May 1, 2009 @ 2:53 am

Very well explained, i think thier are so many softwares in the market to protect blog contents, this idea seems to be good….

Comment by vasthub on May 2, 2009 @ 10:52 am

good topic..! it is not easy to stop the theft content and I was surprise too that ‘copyright’ can stop that… in the other hand I am sure that people in online business will give a bad appreciate to the blog with ‘copy paste content..’

Comment by cheap car hire venice airport on May 4, 2009 @ 6:12 am

Very well explained yes it is right that everyone cannot stop content theft, so i think their would be a some kind of software to solve the problem of content thefting….

Comment by boyfriend birthday gift ideas on May 12, 2009 @ 2:26 am

I think by adding disclaimer we still can’t stop content stealer in action. Many people even don’t care about warning, but search engine will punish them.

Comment by Small Laptop Computers on May 13, 2009 @ 10:06 pm

If someone steals your content but you continue to develop value added content and develop “authority” within the Google algorithm, won’t you, the original creator of the content come out on top in the end. It seems to me the thief who is lazy will never out perform the content creator. Am I wrong?

Comment by friendlyin on May 16, 2009 @ 12:34 am

if someone stolen your blog content, may be it because u have a good conetent on it. even u must be bored or angry with it, on the other side, u must be happy, coz u had created something good, that makes others want it too.

Comment by New Yorker on May 20, 2009 @ 2:44 pm

With professional web content if you can prove it is you intellectual property, you can have the offender removed from the Yahoo index and presumably the Google index as well… I’ve never attempted to have a page removed from the Google index but I have many times from Yahoo and and it does work. You have to fill out an extensive form to claim and verify your claim to the content and work with lawyers in the infringement department.

College Studying Replied:
June 15th, 2009 at 4:41 am

With spammers and plagiarists becoming more prolific and more aggressive than ever, content theft is no longer a matter of “if”, but “when”.

Comment by photorobot on May 24, 2009 @ 8:04 am

It is often that content stealer use specialized web services for grabbing (e.g. y pipes), so it is also a good idea to configure your robots.txt. Again it wouldn`t stop stealing at all, but will make it harder to do on automatic basis.

Comment by Windshield Chip Repair on May 25, 2009 @ 11:14 am

I agree scrapers are a big problem, almost as much as comment spammers.

I personally use ‘rss footer’ plugin and that a) provides me with a link b) easier to find the scrapers and file a take down notice.

Comment by Jimmy MRR2 on June 4, 2009 @ 7:52 pm

Sometimes content theft not so bad. I have heard a case that somebody earn from it when the steal content is included with his referral links.

Comment by Marton on June 11, 2009 @ 12:37 am

The copyright is a great idea.

Comment by Tamiflu on June 20, 2009 @ 4:04 am

I’ll keep this stuff in mind. I’m not that evil about my content, but I have some posts in my blog that are fairly unique. I guess I’ll use your advice. Thanks.

Comment by Hostmonster on July 1, 2009 @ 11:20 am

Haha, I am not sure if you have really stopped the content theft because according to Google, there are 907 results for “How I Stopped Blog Content Theft”! :p I guess at least 10% of them are scrapper sites!

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&q=%22How+I+Stopped+Blog+Content+Theft%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=O_rihVrCmqk

Comment by Free Microsoft Points on August 1, 2009 @ 5:12 pm

Wow I must admit this is a clever idea. It will definitely stop some content theft, but not all of it unfortunately, as there is no way to do so. At least I know that my content has less of a chance of appearing on someone elses site or blog. Thanks.

Comment by DQ on August 31, 2009 @ 6:10 am

I don’t think professional spammers care about breaching copyright laws. I know a spammer, who can copy a site’s content over to his site using his script. In that case the copyright notice won’t scare him off.

You could rather add Javascript to your site, which stops a user to copy paste anything. But i don’t recommend it.

Once your original article has been crawled by Search Engines, after that if anyone copies your work, Google would know, whose content is original.

And to get Google to crawl your new content quickly, use Google Sitemaps.

Comment by Event Planner San Fransico on February 4, 2010 @ 9:12 pm

I think having disclaimers and copyright laws visible on the site is of great help in preventing theft of data or pictures. As most of the people would think before getting into the illicit activity

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