I hate John Comokaz
UPDATE: Looked like Elliott Back was the author of that site, but now I learn he just wrote the software (Elliott just called me and says he’s not involved). This guy John Comokaz (stickybuns@gmail.com) is bothering Elliott too, by dragging his Elliott’s name through the mud. I just did a whois lookup and found the guy who does the crazyfactor site is John Comokaz.
Anyway, now that I have more facts I see that John Comokaz is doing CrazyFactor which is stealing my content without proper attribution, spamming blogs via trackbacks, and doing other crappy things. Anything we can do about this guy?
Sorry to Elliott Back. I should have done a whois to start with.
Powered By 
August 27th, 2006 at 10:41 am
The funny part is that Elliott’s site reprinted this particular post as well.
Booger
August 27th, 2006 at 10:47 am
Not only is this particular post on his site as well but his email addy is avaiable on the “Quality RSS Feeds” link.
Booger
August 27th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Looks like any adsense ads are now removed from his site.
Good catch.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Jeremiah: they are still on ElliotBack.com.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:21 am
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 :)
August 27th, 2006 at 11:32 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:35 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:36 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:38 am
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
August 27th, 2006 at 11:40 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:41 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:43 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Umm it’s a proxy, you better apologize, or call your lawyers…
August 27th, 2006 at 11:48 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Christopher: done. I’m sorry. Elliott’s name was all over it, so thought he was involved and/or benefiting from this splog.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:52 am
DMCA his host.
Email google.
Email him.
Email his registrar.
That should handle it ;)
Matt
August 27th, 2006 at 11:53 am
[...] Slammed by Scoble Posted in Blogging, My Blog, Spam by Elliott Back on August 27th, 2006. [Del.icio.us] Earlier today Robert Scoble wrote a post slamming for being a spammer: Hey, Google AdSense team: Elliott Back is breaking your rules. He is reprinting my content (and, I’ve come to learn, other people’s content) without permission. He is spamming everyone’s trackbacks (to have my content show up in people’s blogs I link to, which drives traffic over to his Web site). He is causing damage to the Internet. Please remove Google’s ads from his page and remove the incentive to do this kind of stuff. I have NOT given him permission to reprint my stuff in whole. You’ll notice that this is a splog written by Elliott Back and you’re just helping him profit off of this kind of behavior. [...]
August 27th, 2006 at 11:56 am
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:59 am
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…
August 27th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Okay, Elliot responded while I was typing that last comment. Clears things a bit.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Robert@21: Could be that AdSense is considering his site tainted by association (links back from sploggers) though of course that’s just speculation.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
@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.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
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:)
August 27th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
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?
August 27th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
BTW, the URL for the Skyline Auction is http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/auction/1071
August 27th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
[...] I didn’t receive a reply from any of the authors, though I did find a post by Robert Scoble (not sure if he found out because of my email or just otherwise). [...]
August 27th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
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
August 27th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
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-bloggards/
Seems like we should be able to sue them or report them to the advertising companies they are subscribed to.
Doug
August 27th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
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!
August 27th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
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
August 27th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Ironically, I’m getting ripped off on this blog (http://www.accelzone.com/) by a customized version of my plugin…
August 27th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
>>>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.
August 27th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
[...] Scobelizer: I hate John Comokaz [...]
August 27th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
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.html#a9213
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!
August 27th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
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.html#a9213
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?
August 27th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
“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
August 27th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
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
August 27th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Maybe a signed ping is the solution.
http://blogs.verisign.com/infrablog/2006/08/stopping_blog_spam_1.php
August 27th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
@Duncan and Robert,
I received a reply from Sitepoint saying they can’t do anything about the auction. I have updated the post.
August 27th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
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.
August 27th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Ajay
sending you an email now.
August 27th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Now if only you posted content worth stealing…
August 27th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Found him. Cool! (not the copying part) Robert knows why.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:45 am
Dear I hate JOhn Comokaz,
I like bite size finger foods that have, “ZEST.”
Signed,
Manbeast.
August 28th, 2006 at 3:29 am
Account suspended. It seems it is no longer a problem :)
August 28th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Haha, I hate John Comokaz too!
August 28th, 2006 at 8:18 am
[...] Finally Scobleapologized [...]
August 28th, 2006 at 8:42 am
[...] In this issue I’m talking about Darren Rowse, Performancing, 9rules/b5media, The Daily Telegraph, The Blog Herald and Robert Scoble. [...]
August 28th, 2006 at 9:15 am
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.
August 28th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
[...] A commenter on Scoble’s post complained about four of my sites, calling them spammy and auto-generated. Ignoring some of off-context commentary on me as a person, Matt wrote: I wouldn’t blame Scoble that much, Elliot’s [sic] homepage links to a number of really spammy looking things: [...]
August 30th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
The software Elliott Back wrote has one real purpose: to be sold to sploggers. That makes him part of the problem in my book.
September 4th, 2006 at 1:12 am
[...] It appears that Robert Scoble has just shut down CrazyFactor a site that was ripping his feed. [...]
September 10th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
You’re a fucking moron for accusing him before taking 2 seconds to look into the matter.
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:16 am
[...] Respond to Complaints Quickly: Though major players, such as Robert Scoble, are able to get their Adsense complaints attended to quickly (even without a DMCA notice or even the correct party), most of us have to wait days before receiving any kind of reply, if one is forthcoming at all. Google’s slow and lackluster response time is legendary in this area. Sites that violate Adsense terms are often allowed to continue for weeks or months before being shut down. Worse still, with all of the metrics Adsense provides, Google should be able to track suspicious patterns in traffic volume, type and location. Though such features are rumored, there are still far too many spam bloggers using Adsense to assume that they are effective. [...]
March 26th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
[...] Error: As Rob Scoble found out when he accused Elliott Back of plagiarism, it’s easy to make a mistake and point the finger at the wrong person. Not only does this cause a major embarrassment to both [...]
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
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/answer.py?answer=18386
June 30th, 2007 at 11:17 am
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.