Last week, two fellow bloggers alerted me that my posts had been lifted by a splog. I've encountered this in the past, but usually it's something like "Ms. Fancypants had an interesting post about X. Here's an excerpt... " (Then they copy a few sentences from my post and move onto the next one.)
I was a bit dismayed to discover that this splog had reproduced at least half a dozen posts verbatim. In their entirety. Including the photos I'd carefully selected to comply with the Creative Commons license. And without any attribution to yours truly.
Not cool.
My first impulse was to leave comments on all of the stolen posts letting the blog administrator know that if they wanted to use my posts, they'd need to do so with attribution. Not surprisingly, those comments are still "awaiting moderation."
Next I searched the blog for contact information. Nada. So, I logged onto WhoIs.com to see if they had any info on this domain. They did, and it was some random web administrator in Canada. Fortunately, my Skype plan covers unlimited calls to the US and Canada, but when I called I got an automated message instructing me to log onto some website to get in touch with the website administrator.
That website assured me that my message would be relayed to the website administrator, but because of privacy issues, they are not obligated to respond. Yeah... I'm sure they'll get right on that and remove the stolen content...
A little more digging revealed that WhoIs.com also has a form where you can report inaccurate database information. Technically, I don't know if this information is accurate or not, but the fact that they make themselves so inaccessible reeks of spam to me. So I reported them.
I know you're all dying to see this splog for yourselves, but I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. If I link to them, then you'll click on the link and their traffic will spike. So you'll just have to trust me on this (and I'll be interested to see if this post gets splogged, too).
Honestly, I don't expect anything to come out of my efforts. I did it more as an experiment and because one of the fellow bloggers suggested that this might make an interesting post. It seems that the World Wide Web is much like the old Wild West in that there really isn't an authority figure to police these things. It's a totally new content model (blogging in general, not just splogs). But at the same time, I doubt that splogs will ever make a dent in my readership or my ability to earn a living, because savvy internet readers (and even search engines) can tell the difference.
What do you think? How have you dealt with splogs? And how do you feel about the general lack of content boundaries online?