Fighting Splogs

Last month, in the Yirmumah Has A Posse post, I wrote about content being stolen from my Super Unit 5000 site, and reposted elsewhere. It turns out, there is an official name for this activity, called blog scraping. Where automated software scans blogs, searching for and copying content. Scraping is essentially is stealing content that is not owned by the individual initiating the scraping process.

There is something you can do about splogs. You could try and report them SplogSpot. It's a splog blacklisting service. Or, report splogs using AdSense to Google. If you see a site violating the AdSense terms, you can now file an anonymous spam report. To file a report, click on the "Ads by Google". In the form on the next page, include the term "spamreport" and put in a short reason about why you feel the site is violating the AdSense terms or policies.

But why should I have to do this? For SplogSpot, it doesn't shut down the offending sites, so I'm not sure how effective these things are. And for Adsense, Google should be the police for abuse of their system. Why should I do it for them? I've got better things to do all day.

Ok, so the site is reported, now what? I think a better approach, would be to come up with a way to take advantage of these automated theives. Take for instance, the comic I've drawn about Yirmumah, by DJ Coffman. The scrapers are lazy. They usually don't take the time to edit any images that are associated with the post. So don't beat em, join em. If you can put some kind of marking that identifies you as the author, or creator of the image, at least they don't get away without some mention of you.

A Super Unit 5000 comic recap:

Strip #1; Alec Baldwin had some celebrity dirt tossed into the internet laundry machine, he's got to take any work he can get now. He's been D-Listed to a 'secret judge' for the Comic Book Challenge.
Strip #2: Alec Baldwin is star-struck by Drew Price, the King of Webcomics. Alec asks Drew to sign his boobies. Alec Baldwin has pretty much made a career out of being perfect. But sweet Jesus, he's hairy! For good measure, I've drawn him with a third nipple.
Strip #3: Drew Price repeats "Naked Bea Arthur" three times, ala Beetlejuice which Alec Baldwin starred in. To further damage Baldwins' perfect appearance, he has a Kuato! This is sounding like a comic drawn by Dennis Miller. Please stop me, before I sub-reference again.
Strip #4: The appearance of a naked Bea Arthur, drawn in the style of Beetlejuice. Turns out, all four of these comis were just a dream. Yeah, cheesy ending. But I had to bring these comics to an abrupt end. DJ Coffman is returning to draw more strips.