Really Simple (to Steal) & Syndicate, RSS
Posted by Holly in Blunt Honesty, Design, Honest Marketing Methods
Imagine you have a blog that you consistently write fresh content for. It takes you time and effort. Then one day you do a little search in Google to check on your search engine rankings, and you discover that your content (nearly every post) is copied and used. Now you have competition online for the keywords you are targeting, but the competition is actually yourself in a way. It’s due to a person stealing your content and ranking just as high for all your hard work. Would that bother you? I think so.
I understand that people use an article here or an article there – provide an excerpt and link back to the source – that is ok. Some popular websites are created in that format – taking useful articles from a wide variety of websites (not one single website). It is not ok online to populate your website with only content that was created by one “real” website. It is stealing and it also negatively affects the search engine ranking and position for the source “real” website.
Copyscape Tool to Monitor Stolen Content
If you look at the bottom of my website, I put a little disclaimer graphic there – which states that my writing and work is copyrighted. You too can check for duplicate content and stolen content – at Copyscape. The website checks if anyone is stealing your content, and also provides you with little banners that state “Page Protected By COPYSCAPE Do Not Copy.”
When I was in the Army I went through numerous journalism courses, and they taught us about the importance of citing your sources. For example, if I want to quote or refer to something I learned on the Copyscape website, I would say, “According to the Copyscape website, yada yada.” And like I said earlier, it is ok to use excerpts from multiple sources and link back to them. But to take all of your website content from one single source – is just stealing and earning off of someone else’s work. Copyright does not mean you have the “right to copy.”
Secret Behind their Stealing – Automation
The way people are so-easily stealing content off of other websites and blogs is through automation. They are using a wordpress plugin that automatically pulls in entire posts off of someone’s RSS feeds and publishes them automatically to their blog.
What to do if Your Website Content is Plagiarized
According to the Copyscape website, there are numerous steps that should be taken if you discover your website content is being plagiarized. The first step would be to find contact information on the website owner and politely ask them to remove your content. If that doesn’t work – there are several key steps to take after that. To know how to respond to plagiarism, please read the steps to take from the Copyscape website here. Cases can become quite serious if the person plagiarizing doesn’t remove the content.
The Reason It’s So Easy to Steal Content Online
Apparently the reason it is so easy to steal content online is due to RSS feeds.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it does make it really simple to steal and syndicate.
I was pondering this – and as many people with blogs and websites know, it is important to have RSS feeds so that readers can stay posted with all your new content. I wonder if there is a way to have an RSS feed that is useable for the readers to view, but protected from being pulled into other blogs with their auto-blogging software and plugins. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on this? Or has this ever happened to you? Please share your thoughts and comments on this subject below. Thanks!
16 Responses to “Really Simple (to Steal) & Syndicate, RSS”
Leave a Reply
Cary Bergeron
11. Aug, 2009
This has happened to us on many occasions. I agree with the Copyscape idea as that is a good first line of defense.
If contacting the website owner doesn’t get you anywhere be sure to contact their hosting company. The hosting company will most likely want you to complete a DCMA form and submit it to them before they do anything about it.
Also, limit your RSS feed so that they are not full text. This is both a good and bad thing but if you have a problem you might need to do it for a while.
Holly
11. Aug, 2009
Great advice Cary – thank you. And thanks Jason for the comment. I have heard of that plugin when I was doing research on this topic.
Jason
11. Aug, 2009
I use a wordpress plugin called Caffiented Content that grabs YT vids, files, articles and RSS feed items, but never have I grabbed a whole site and put it on my site. This is where I make the bulk of my internet income is by putting up quick wordpress blogs and selling them in a week or two.
Great article Holly, it was a good read, very well written
Anna
11. Aug, 2009
You read my mind again, I was just talking about this yesterday and had been trying to sort it out. Two things –
1. When is it okay to use RSS feeds – such as excerpts with a link, particularly for a news-related blog.
2. Plagiarism – I occasionally accidentally find my poetry published on some other website with someone else’s name attached and of course no link to my site. And I am not even trying to find it. And I have found it ranking higher than the original posts by the actual author. I have been looking for some step-by-step approach to this. )I have sometimes reported it through the report feature in Google Webmaster tools, contacted the owner, etc., but it seems like it takes a lot of work and I could practically hire someone full-time for two weeks to track these things down and handle them …
On your question one thing that might not totally handle the problem but does help, is to go to your WordPress admin panel in the settings area, where there is an option to have syndication feeds show “full post” or “summary only.” If you set it on “summary,” it is at least harder to steal the whole post through the RSS feed. Ah it looks like Cary made the same suggestion above …
I am going to look at that link you posted, thanks very much. I have this on my list of projects to do … unfortunately I am afraid it will take a lot of time but I should do it!
C. Robert Dillon
11. Aug, 2009
Pot Pie Girl wrote an article on this awhile back where she had finally given up on fighting people stealing her posts via RSS and began to embrace the idea after she tweeked her feed
http://www.potpiegirl.com/2008/08/learn-to-love-rss-scrapers-i-do/
Mark Sierra at MeAndMyDrum.com
11. Aug, 2009
I wish I could remember how someone could prevent their feed from being imported to another one’s site. It was some time ago that I read where you could do that. Sorry, I wish I could be of more help on that point.
I agree with Cary’s advice to some degree. Like he said, it is good and bad, particularly for those who subscribe legitimately. Most of the time it bugs me to find truncated feeds in my reader, but will remain loyal to those who provide quality content (like your’s of course
).
Irish Tom
11. Aug, 2009
Hi Holly
This was quite an interesting topic and one I was aware of with unscrupulous people stealing other peoples info.
It has opened my eyes and I will certainly use Copyscape.
I also found the article PotPieGirl wrote quite useful as well. Thank you Robert. I have been receiving her newsletters for a few months and she gives some interesting subjects. I like the way she has gotten around the problem.
On another note, I am someone who knows very little about Squidoo, and I found her info very useful including the new ebook released she had a review of on her site.
I have never used Squidoo, but am going to log in and see what it is all about.
I know it is one of the “lens” that Holly covers in her book.
It is amazing that every time I log on either to this site or the new forum, I come away with pages of notes!
Thanks again for all the info. I even feel like an expert..LOL.
Cheers
Tom
Holly
11. Aug, 2009
Thanks Guys. I found PotPieGirl’s recommended plugin and installed it. It seems to be just what I needed.
Basically you install the plugin and create some additional text that you want appended to the end of your articles (the articles they rip from the RSS feeds). So you could say, “This article was orginally written by Holly Mann at her Make Money Online blog.” Or something like that. But the neat thing is – that I made a similar RSS footer with the plugin, and hyperlinked several words to my websites (with anchor text, for those who know a little about SEO).
Basically, when the person is stealing my content, they are also going to have real live links to my sites – which can possibly help with the search engines and clarify that they did not write it. The only downside is that if they actually moderate what they steal, they could delete it. Usually though, these splog (spam blogs) are full of auto-generated stuff.
The plugin download page is here: http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer/. Thanks guys for the tips – very useful Robert!
Dave in Lawrence
12. Aug, 2009
Wow Holly… What a horrid thing to deal with.
I believe you are “boolean conversant” aren’t you?
Have you looked into doing something with Yahoo Pipes?
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
It’s an extraordinarily powerful tool that lets you gather/modify data feeds and has massive power and flexibility.
There are TONS of boolean operators and modifiers… and you can create custom feeds. I haven’t done a whole bunch with it, and have only used it as a way to sort news feeds on topics I am researching, but I suspect you could use it to port an output RSS feed of your blog.
My partner and I sell Direct Mail print marketing products… and we see our design work ripped off a few times a year on youtube… You tube will pull it down at our request, and tag that link as “Removed due to copyright claim by etc…”
Which kinda puts a little infringment “egg on the face” of the video author.
Anyway… You have a sharp mind and skillsett with coding stuff… I expect if anyone can do cool things with Yahoo Pipes it will be you… love to see what you think of Y.P.
Regards,
Dave “the verbose” from Lawrence
Normal Joe
12. Aug, 2009
Yeah man, I see this stuff all the time…I’m not sure of any way to do it other than what is mentioned here..I know there is a plugin that adds the copyright info to your rss feeds, so peeps know it’s stolen lol.
crazy though to have a site ONLY posting content from one site, that’s down right crazy…I’ll roll on over and smack someone with a soggy sammich for that!
Bill Vlasak
12. Aug, 2009
I have even encountered scraping of my own blog which is relatively new.So on your advice I went over to PotPie’s site and read her view,commented and got the plug-in.
Installation was easy and at first saw no changes on my blog.Then the ‘..doh” hit me,so I went to one of my RSS feeds and sure enough ,al lthe posts on the page had a anti theft message with a link back to my blog and the referenced post.
This system isn.t foolproof against single copy/paste plagiarists but will put the brakes onto automatic scrapers.Even the search engines will not penalize the true authors’ site because they will read the backlinks.
Since yu already had great comments prior to this on I wanted to test the plug in first.
Highly recommended by this techi [tekki]
Bill Vlasak
12. Aug, 2009
Is it something I said ?My comment disappeared…Anyways,I read both blog posts and downloaded and easily installed the rss-fiiter plug-in.At first I saw nothing untilt thewell-dih moment and I checked the rss feeds.Sure enogh ,every post or partial post had an extra line linking back to my post item on my blog with an anti theft ‘hint’.
Search engines should see the difference and not penalize the original authors.
Dave in Lawrence
12. Aug, 2009
Yeah NJ… someone mirroring content on one site… that’s pretty stunning.
It kinda boggles the mind. There is certain “free for all” mentality on the internet with a pretty sizeable percentage of users, that if you CAN “take” content online, then it’s okay to do so.
I talked to a guy on the phone last year that had stolen our artwork, and our copy VERBATIM, and ended up cussing me out because I wanted him to cease and desist.
I was flabbergasted. I guess every playground has it’s bully’s.
It’s hard wrapping my mind around someone stealing all the content from this site… how disheartening.
I’m not wild about lawyers and leveraging the “legal option”… but a good lawyer can be a good thing… under the right circumstances.
Dave “das verbose”
Holly
14. Aug, 2009
Thanks everyone for your comments. Dave, I am going to checkout yahoo pipes – sounds very interesting.
Bill, I just checked in the comments moderation area and one of your comments was put into the spam area for some reason but I removed it from there.
I’m glad you have the plugin installed now – it does help in what seemed like a hopeless or helpless situation.
CJ
11. Mar, 2010
I don’t use RSS because of the fact that so many people can just steal your content. Nothings more annoying than seeing your work on someone else’s site
Chris
16. Feb, 2011
I’ve heard of RSS scraping but never new (before now) just how it worked. I’ve never had it happen to me (guess that means my aren’t as interesting as everyone else’s). LOL. But I’ve downloaded the WP plugin that Holly and PotPieGirl recommended, so if they do copy my work I’ll still get credit for it.