Three Sticks — Personal Development for Christians

I discovered the world of splogging approximately 1 week ago. During my regular log review, I realized that my article, Joining the Open Source Tidal Wave: Part 2, had been stolen by another website. I was able to tell because the image referenced in the site was being called by the other website.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I was at first surprised and then dumbfounded as to what to do next. Despite living in a world of spyware, malware, viruses and other threats, I naively expected that blogging would be relatively safe from criminals. I mean who wants to steal a bunch of articles about mom’s home made pie. Of course, I quickly discovered through some quick and dirty googling that splogs and splogging are a relatively new and growing problem in the blogosphere.

For those of you who are new to splogging here is a quick introduction. Splogs are websites where criminals place content stolen from the RSS feeds of other blogs without the permission of the authors. These criminals place ads on these new aggregated sites and create an instant money making machine. There is a huge debate in the blogosphere of what to do about these criminal some bloggers feel like going after each site is a waste of time and others feel like it’s necessary to draw a line in the sand and say no more. You can read more about the debate here.

In the course of my research, I also discovered Planets, which are legitimate aggregators of content. Planets are aggregation sites where the content is aggregated via RSS feeds and Planet software. The Planet web feed aggregator software is FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) maintained by Jeff Waugh and Scott James Remnant. Sites that use the Planet software often contain the word Planet in their name such as Planet GNOME.

Although Planet aggregators are benign and beneficial its clear that the Planet software or software like it is being used by criminals to steal original content from many bloggers. In my case, the first site to steal my Joining the Open Source Tidal Wave: Part Article, was titled Planet Fedora XXX (I see no need to send more people to that site or to legitimize it by providing it with a link from my blog). The criminal operating the splog was masquerading the site as a legitimate Planet.

How do you know if your content has been misappropriated by a splogger or was simply included in a legitimate Planet?

Here’s the difference between a Splog and a Planet.

Splog:

1. Steals content with no notice to the original author
2. Does not provide a means of contact to contact the site owner (often the contact and about pages are broken links)
3. There is no means to remove your site from the splog…errr Planet

Planet:

1. Author is notified if they are automatically included in the Planet (this should rarely occur)
2. There is a way to get in contact with operator of the Planet
3. There is a straight forward way to have your site removed/added from/to the Planet

Often splogs masquerade as legitimate blogs, but still steal content such as the latest site to steal my now oft stolen Joining the Open Source Tidal Wave: Part 2. Even though it looks like a blog, it will have the same characteristics of a splog mentioned earlier.

How do you fight sploggers? Well, if you want to fight back Lorelle’s article is the most detailed I’ve seen for how to go after sploggers. If you want to prevent your articles from being stolen bookmark or subscribe to this site because I’ll be back with an article that explains the steps I’ve taken to prevent sploggers from stealing my content. Of course, like any contest the tools to steal content and prevent it from being stolen will continue to evolve.

Update

Since posting this article I’ve found some additional resources that may help you identify splogs.

• How to Spot a Splog

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