Bloggers: you getting copied? Sentinel is your solutions

It looks great, but I just registered and I’m running it now. I basically can’t make the interface do anything–none of the buttons or tabs seem to work, and there’s no error messages. Even the Help link doesn’t work. I tried two different browsers, and the results were the same.

So, a big -1 for Blogwerx Sentinel from me.

How do you plan to go about bringing them down though? There are a number of people copying my content but what do you do about it? I seem to recall you complaining about splogs copying your content in the past as well but didn’t have an answer to it.

As a side note, it can be hard to tell the difference between splogs and full text link blogs these days. They both copy content and add nothing except extra links around the content. I’m actually not sure how I’d define the difference.

Hi. I’m new. I did notice that I am getting “ping-backs” and when I click on them, it is a site that copied my material. Is this what you mean?

How worried should I be about this type of thing if I am just starting? Does this service cost money?? Cause, I don’t really have any.

Let me know what I should do. Thanks.

Catherine: it’s free, at least at some level. Yeah, that’s what I mean. Any site that copies your stuff in an automated way should be shut down.

I see it tracks plagiarism, but their claim that “… tell Sentinel who’s allowed to have your content and who isn’t. Add trusted sites to the white list, others to the black list.” sounds a bit far fetched. How do you suggest the community ‘pull a site down’?

Also, there are a million sites out there stealing content from Wikipedia, and I don’t see the Wikipedia search results being penalized in Google, to the contrary.

Nice idea though.

why write a single word when you can copy others work.
this is a typical thought of bloggers who copy and i am one of them
http://www.futurebells.com/blog

chief visionary officer? Where do they come up with these titles?

Robert – interesting. I just registered my blog – but there was no confirmation at all that I was the owner of my blog. Perhaps I could sign up and take over ownership of Scobleizer?

Really though – they should do something like Analytics or MyBlogLog does – give you code to put in a post or in the root of your web site to verify you are who you say you are.

Rob

I’m having the same problems as commenter #1 – it just doesn’t work.

Robert – are you sure you weren’t being scammed here (and then getting us scammed?). Nearly every link on this site points back to the index page. No big hope of anything coming from getting right back to a page that does nothing!?!?

Did you vet this company at all before you linked to it? No being mean – just curious – since it’s very odd you link to a site that seems to offer nothing beyond collecting my email address…

Rob

Actually, Tony announced this tool about… oh… three or four months ago on another comment thread on Scoble’s blog.

I had my doubts about it, since there’s no great way of fighting spam just as Bayesian filters fail these days. But Blogwerx was pretty adamant about their “new algorithm” working back then. I’m not saying that their product doesn’t work, but I’m one of the cynical ones that isn’t impressed currently with the “beta” interface that doesn’t work currently.

Darmoon – not surprised that it’s not fully functional – but nothing appears to function. And it it’s been four months since you first heard of the, and nothing funtions yet, I’m curious why. And even more curious why Robert links to a site that really isn’t offering anything right now – unless I am just missing the secret hidded link that brings m some functionality? Not trying to be an ass (comes naturally) – but “where’s the beef”?

Rob

I wonder if this has any potential downsides for people who run aggregators like me?

Allan Drake – not in it’s current form

Rob

So far, from what I’ve seen… it’s pretty much vaporware. Considering like Rob said, every link goes to http://www.blogwerx.com/sentinel/#

Should make for an amusing blog post actually.

It doesn’t mask my password when I’m logging in?

Scoble,

On the one hand, this service could be handy, must like Akismet and so on.

On the other hand, you are wrong on so many levels :
- you said “Any site that copies your stuff in an automated way should be shut down.” : if you believe in this just a second, then don’t post a RSS feed, and make it hard to scrap your web page
- you also said “one guy created more than 600,000 sites without writing a single word of content” : tell me how your GR shared items fit into that too. Are not you republishing content from others? Sure, the way you view it as, by sharing items, you are intentionally voting for something that may be of interest to your readers. But in REALITY, that would hold true if you were just linking, not republishing their content under Google’s umbrella. Whether you want it or not, you are siding the evil side here too…

Let me know what you think.

I too started using GR to share items, but I find it too easy and certainly a lack of respect for the authors behind the posts.

Scoble,

On the one hand, this service could be handy, much like Akismet and so on.

On the other hand, you are wrong on so many levels :
- you said “Any site that copies your stuff in an automated way should be shut down.” : if you believe in this just a second, then don’t post a RSS feed, and make it hard to scrap your web page
- you also said “one guy created more than 600,000 sites without writing a single word of content” : tell me how your GR shared items fit into that too. Are not you republishing content from others? Sure, the way you view it as, by sharing items, you are intentionally voting for something that may be of interest to your readers. But in REALITY, that would hold true if you were just linking, not republishing their content under Google’s umbrella. Whether you want it or not, you are siding the evil side here too…

Let me know what you think.

I too started using GR to share items, but I find it too easy and certainly a lack of respect for the authors behind the posts.

It might be a great product but the company show a shocking disregard for the basic rules of password handling or bulk email.

See my post on the subject: http://blog.dave.org.uk/archives/001197.html

But knowing who steels my content is not everything – and definitely it is not enough to shut down the websites. Example: I know who is steeling our content, I went to the website with lots of Amazon ads and no contacts, I was looking for the owner everywhere and finally had to go to his provider. But that did not help, either. They still steel our posts – even interviews and such (very personal things, I mean).
So now that I know even earlier – will it actually help me?

Rob: I haven’t used it yet, so don’t know how good the service is. I just was reporting the pitch as told to me in the hallway at Demo.

Svetlana: he claims that Sentinel will help you do a report to the ISP via abuse@ and help get these sites taken down. That’s why this tool was interesting to me.

It’s difficult, isn’t it – we had a run in with a site that published my wife’s poetry (without permission) a year or so back.

In the end we gave up the fight because they tried to make us jump through 50 hoops to prove the work was hers.

>Are not you republishing content from others?

Not in an automated way. I’m manually picking posts by hand and I don’t repost every post from ANY blog.

If you are just republishing someone else’s content you should be shut down. That’s like stealing someone else’s homework in high school.

RSS enables new kinds of services, like TechMeme and RSS readers like Google Reader. Those services add value and don’t just copy a single blogger’s entire content to a new URL and slap Google ads on it.

>Are not you republishing content from others?

Not in an automated way. I’m manually picking posts by hand and I don’t repost every post from ANY blog.

If you are just republishing someone else’s content you should be shut down. That’s like stealing someone else’s homework in high school.

RSS enables new kinds of services, like TechMeme and RSS readers like Google Reader. Those services add value and don’t just copy a single blogger’s entire content to a new URL and slap Google ads on it.