I hate John Comokaz

Robert, I can't believe you apologized. This guys is one of the worst sploggers ever. He'll lie you into the ground to deny his splogging.

The same software with Elliott Back's name on it has been ripping content from my site, too. And there are others. I get pinged by at least a dozen scrapers a day now.

We ALL need to fight this crap by telling Google about incidents of feed scraping for AdSense. With luck, Google will turn off the AdSense accounts for these creeps and cut their revenue streams. You can find more details here: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answ...

You're a fucking moron for accusing him before taking 2 seconds to look into the matter.

The software Elliott Back wrote has one real purpose: to be sold to sploggers. That makes him part of the problem in my book.

I wonder how long it usually takes.

The Daily Mirror in the UK did steal a blog comment of mine without attribution, and so far out of context it needed its own passport to get home, but it was so ridiculous that I just let that go.

Haha, I hate John Comokaz too!

Account suspended. It seems it is no longer a problem :)

Dear I hate JOhn Comokaz,

I like bite size finger foods that have, "ZEST."

Signed,

Manbeast.

Found him. Cool! (not the copying part) Robert knows why.

Now if only you posted content worth stealing...

Ajay
sending you an email now.

Not, exactly the same, but the Web site Porkbusters.org steals content for its site. I discovered it, of course, when they lifted an entire post from my site. It had a link back to my site, um, but I had not given permission for anything, much less a complete lift of my words.

You'd think being run by two web non-novices, NZ Bear and Glenn Reynolds, they'd know better. I mentioned it at Press Think as a slight aside and NZ saw it and commented that he had assumed since they were a nonprofit, no one would mind.

I said it was an awfully strange assumption.

All this isn't just about money. I don't have advertising on my blog. It's about theft, and that's a pretty basic concept and construct of society - on or offline.

@Duncan and Robert,

I received a reply from Sitepoint saying they can't do anything about the auction. I have updated the post.

Thank you Robert for linking to my post.

@ Michael and others who think that the site is justified in stealing Robert's content:
I guess your site content has never been stolen because if it would have you wouldn't be supporting that site.

Also, I suggest you check out the personal category on that site which has a lot of my content. This is about my personal life which has been scraped off and publish as his own. I wonder if the owner of crazyfactor does the same things as I do?

@Duncan, I sent two emails to the host and got only one pathetic reply. No further replies have been received from then on.
I have even written to Sitepoint to take off the auction, but they have ignored the email totally.
And I have also written to Google Adsense, but I guess they won't do anything now that there are no ads on the site.

Check out my post about that Robert linked to.

Maybe a signed ping is the solution.

http://blogs.verisign.com/infrablog/2006/08/sto...

Robert, Robert, Robert...WTF? cmon man, you know how to do a whois search, I'd also hope you'd be doing more now than just apologizing to Elliot, I'd be sending him at least flowers and chocolates as well :-)

As for advice, Matt hits it in the comments: DMCA his service provider, and if they ignore it (they appear to be a reseller) do an IP check and DMCA the hosts upline, eventually you'll get the site taken down.

As for this need to vent about this stuff, it does nothing than leave you open to further attack (or in this case legal action for defamation), you're better off taking action behind the scenes, not in the public domain. If you need some advice drop either me or Jeremy an email, happy to help.

Gotta love Internet Utopia, such a fresh clean smell...

Splogs and content theft blogs are all over, more spammy fake blogs than real, it seems like sometimes...(wish someone would do a hard numbers study) and all indexed in Google and artformed at MSN Spaces. And once-alive-but-now-dead blogs, live on forever, turned into comment spam banks ahoy.

Bloglines doesn't trackback spam. Bloglines doesn't attempt to replace my UI with another one. Bloglines doesn't use my content as a link farm to link to specific sites.

This site is over the line. It's not even close to Bloglines. Bloglines is accepted by the commuity (and adds value to each feed). This site adds no value, and is pissing off lots of people who are emailing me saying "WTF?" is going on with trackback spam.

If he turned off the trackback spam I wouldn't really care about him, but there are other people who hate what he's doing with their content.

Also, bloglines is a site that's an obvious aggregator. This site is NOT an aggregator. It's just theft without any additional value.

Robert

I actually agree with you and, again, am certainly not defending this behavior.

Unfortunately, most community norms and behaviors change when the size of the community reaches some level of critical mass - look at USENET or email as specific glaring examples.

Commercializing anything seems to bring out uncontrolled 2nd and third order effects. Write books about wild profits on eBay and the effect may be that the sellers begin to outnumber the buyers. At least there, there are some set of rules, not just norms. Write books about blogging and mix in freely acccesible content with a bit of profit potential via adsense, the result will likely be that you'll get broader pushing of once respected community norms.

Good or bad, sometimes communities (and apparently Wordpress plugins) can grow beyond original intentions.

Booger

If all he were doing was copying my content I wouldn't care but he's trackback spamming everyone I link to. That's over the line. Also, if I were the only one that'd be cool but he's doing this to lots of other bloggers who DID NOT agree to have their content redistributed this way. It also breaks a LOT of community conventions (most other bloggers won't accept this behavior).

Time for this guy to stop doing this.

"In Bloglines or other RSS aggregators my name is still on my stuff. This site doesn’t give me credit for my own work, which is TOTAL THEFT. Thanks for playing this game."

Just a technicality and I am certainly not defending the site in question but they do say this under each of your posts: "Original post by Robert Scoble" with a hyperlink back to your site.

As someone else pointed out, you've previously apparently previously posted on the topic o f full RSS feeds. Now that you perceive the "Scoble brand" as having value, your viewpoint about RSS openness seems to have changed. Big change from the earlier days...

This thread kind of reminds me of a friend that was all about open access to source code until he wrote something that actually was valuable. It isnt the law that I am referring to...it is the perceived reaction in different value environments. He thought it ok (despite the law) when the value of his code was low but had much the same sort of reaction when something representing his own value was at stake.

Like you say in your own post, "why complain now?"

Booger

What changed? He is spamming everyone I link to with trackback spam. He's also stealing other people's content (I've gotten several emails).

I have known about this guy for months and didn't say anything when it was just about me, but now that he's involved other people it's over the line.

I clearly see them giving attribution! Notice the tag line at the bottom where it says:

Original post by Robert Scoble and software by Elliott Back

You also clearly have given permission to re-use your content in this post

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/01/16.htm...

As you said we can do anything with it. If you didn't want us to have that right you would only publish descriptions or revert back to HTML.

You had it all right in that post, what's changed your position since?

Michael: no, you're not a lawyer. It's pretty obvious. You can't even keep Apples Apples and Oranges Oranges. Copyright law is pretty damn specific. And, this case is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than a news aggregator using my stuff the way the community has accepted. In Bloglines or other RSS aggregators my name is still on my stuff. This site doesn't give me credit for my own work, which is TOTAL THEFT. Thanks for playing this game.

Michael: funny thing about courts. You can't just sign over your rights this way. And, this is NOT ACCEPTED PRACTICE!!! Taking my content and putting your own name on it is CLEARLY NOT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT HERE.

Considering that Robert wrote this:

1) Put all your content into RSS like me and let the world do with your content what it likes.

In this post!

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/01/16.htm...

He not only implied consent by publishing in RSS he clearly stated what we could do with his conent! I seriously doubt that Robert has a copyright leg to satand on in court!

An no I'm not a lawer!

>>>It may not be the right thing to do but in this case I think it’s a perfectly legal fair use. You implied consent by distributing it in this fashion.

That's completely wrong. And yes, I'm a lawyer.

Better to remain silent than to remove all doubt, etc. etc.

Robert your missing the point. You chose to put 100% of your content into RSS. You chose to package it into a format that was designed for machine parsing and redistribution. If you don't want 100% of your content redistributed maybe you should limit yourself to summaries.

It may nto be the right thing to do but in this case I think it's a perfectly legal fair use. You implied consent by distributing it in this fashion.

By the way...

I only read your content from bloglines I almost never click through to your site. This isn't quite the same situation you're describing here but it's close. I'm not trying to make money off your content but obvisously Bloglines is even if I don't unserstand thier business model.

Ironically, I'm getting ripped off on this blog (http://www.accelzone.com/) by a customized version of my plugin...

I wouldn't blame Scoble that much, Elliot's homepage links to a number of really spammy looking things:

http://vioxx.elliottback.com/ (that's the worst)
http://msn-icons.elliottback.com/main.php
http://credit-card-information.elliottback.com/
http://celebrity-photos.elliottback.com/
http://universities.elliottback.com/

He seems to be trying to automate the creation of a ton of content pages, take advantage of WP's natural search engine advantage, and then use the trust from his domain (from the software he writes) to cash in via the really obnoxious adsense everywhere. Google seems to have indexed almost a million pages on his site. Probably not the type of content that Google wants their ads next to, though.

Also if he didn't have such a big ego and so aggressively link to himself in all his software he wouldn't have such a big problem in the first place. Seems like a smart kid otherwise.

Elliott,

What is the purpose of the adsense ID, Amazon ID auto replacement feature for then? Why is there an option to replace the original author?

It seems like an unscrupulous program written for unscrupulous purposes and therefore you, the author deserves some accountability.

Karl

Michael: just because you can copy things easily doesn't mean it's legal, or right, to do.

We have copyright laws for a reason.

If you don't want you content so easily redistributed maybe you should limit your RSS feed to summaries instaed of pushing 100% of you content.

I really don't get crying about what other people do with it when you are the one giving it away!

Do a little Google searching and you'll find that there are lots of software packages and plugins made to d exactly this kind of thing. Many of them even blatantly say they're designed to scrape content from other people's RSS feeds so the user of the software can make money with AdSense. This one is just the tip of the iceburg.

Actually, the find/replace function is a rather dumb regex replace and was created for stripping out ads in the first place. Some RSS searches, for example, will add all kinds of junk into their feeds, which is not relevant to content.

Beautiful!

What other ways can bloggers stop this crap? I just wrote about this new method for making money off of other folks' content, it's ridiculous!

http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/08/26/i-hate-bl...

Seems like we should be able to sue them or report them to the advertising companies they are subscribed to.

Doug

So Elliot wrote a piece of software designed to duplicate a blog via RSS, and even has functions to swap adsense ID's and amazon associates ID's from the orginal blog and replace them with the hihackers. So he creates software that creates splogs that all link back to him. 9rules folks are constantly getting hijacked by that software, and it always points at Elliot, great for promotional purposes. In many ways Elliot has created a virus, one that is spread via social engineering and that software he wrote should be treated as such.

karl

Even Comokaz sounds fake (kamakaze?).

Robert, I wondered if you had gotten my email on the Telegraph thing, but I'm glad you hung back and watched a bit.

If the explanation is legit, it's still incredibly problematic for a newspaper from a content management standpoint.

BTW, the URL for the Skyline Auction is http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/1071

Hi Robert,

Thanks for following up on my email (if that is what led you to CrazyFactor.

I've written to other authors but no one seems to have been doing anything.

I've also written to Bitesites.com Hosting, where the two sites are hosted.

Additionally have written to Sitepoint about the auctions.

Unfortunately, I guess they don't care about small guys like me :(

Maybe you can do something about it?

Robert, crazyfactor has two extra posts titled, "Note to the Google AdSense team" and "Note to the Google AdSense team, it's time to "do no evil"", written by you after this particular post. Those two posts have not yet shown up on your blog.

Further, those posts do have you writing style. Are you writing special posts for crazyfactor:)

@23: Nah, Google ads are still up on his blog. If Google actually made a decision they would have been gone. If Google can turn off and on people's advertising without due process that's an even bigger story.

Robert@21: Could be that AdSense is considering his site tainted by association (links back from sploggers) though of course that's just speculation.

Though I think Elliot gets a bit of the blame for releasing the plugin this other site is using, as he himself acknowledged on the blog post announcing AutoPost.

Bill: interesting. Elliott is now claiming that Google blocked ads on his site today (on his blog). I've been looking at that site every 15 minutes though and never saw Google ads disappear from his site. Weird. Lots of accusations going around. For the record, I corrected my post. Anyway, I'm off to learn how to do my first DCMA takedown.

Okay, Elliot responded while I was typing that last comment. Clears things a bit.

Hey again :D I'm not angry or anything, and I'm glad you issued an update. It's good that this is getting sorted out. As for the actual spammer, someone is hosting him, and he has some ISP. Send a DMCA notice to them, and he'll get taken down in no time...

Robert, Elliot is a college student I've emailed with a few times since he built a few WordPress plugins. I don't think he means to be terribly malicious but instead is trying to make a little cash by playing at the margins of the rules, doing something we see constantly these days. I don't think Elliot is in the right but he's far from alone.

DMCA his host.
Email google.
Email him.
Email his registrar.

That should handle it ;)
Matt

Christopher: done. I'm sorry. Elliott's name was all over it, so thought he was involved and/or benefiting from this splog.

Elliott: I'm sorry and I fixed the post.

David: did you see the update on that? It was a mistake by an editor. Lame, but not scumballish.

The guy who is doing crazyfactor.com is a real scumbag.

Umm it's a proxy, you better apologize, or call your lawyers...

Scob,
If you are looking for actual vile check out the Daily Telegraph. They copy pasted a blogger into a newspaper blog.

That's scumballish.

Robert,
Please correct the post. Elliot is not a scumbag. He's actually one of the more respected Z-Listers.

A real standup guy liked by a lot of blogging networks/new media underlings.

Hey Robert,

You've just committed libel. That's not my blog. Before you slam something like this, I sugged doing a WHOIS to lookup the information on who actually owns the blog. It so happens that he's using an aggregation plugin for Wordpress that I wrote and GPL released, but that's it.

Use WHOIS before making assumptions - this guy used fake WHOIS info (address is fake).

Elliott's a standup guy - I'm sure he has nothing to do with this.

Matt

David: OK. But this guy links back to Elliot's site so I thought they were joined. Certainly he should be concerned about his own name being dragged through the mud. It'd be nice to see him here say that there's no partnership between these two sites.

David Brunelle: I used the "nofollow" attribute so he won't get any Google Juice from my link. I don't think the traffic will matter anyway.

Check the webhosting details. It's not Elliot Back. It's software he's written that is being used by spammers.

Check your facts Scob. Check your facts. Especially before you call the guy out. Aren't you a VP of something.

I'm going to stand up for Elliot here. He wrote the software but I cant verify that its his site. I use that republishing software for a few of my blogs to aggregate content into one central location.

Back of Elliot Back he's a good chump.

Robert - by linking to this guy, didn't you likely just send a ton of traffic his way? And definitely give his sites some more Google Juice?

Maybe a better way would have been to simply type the URL rather than link to this joker? Just a thought.

Maybe Matt Cutts will see this post and take some action :)

Jeremiah: they are still on ElliotBack.com.

Looks like any adsense ads are now removed from his site.

Good catch.

Not only is this particular post on his site as well but his email addy is avaiable on the "Quality RSS Feeds" link.

Booger

The funny part is that Elliott's site reprinted this particular post as well.

Booger