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Bitacle?

  1. leighm
    Member

    Related question: Is it possible to break a link to a blog that's linking to you solely as a means of collecting hits?

    That IS what this site is doing, isn't it?
    homebizblog.info/health/index.php?entry=entry060920-230600
    It has no content related to anything on my site. It's dedicated (apparently) to the enjoyment and purchase of ... flowers, furniture, and informs one how to avoid razor burn (?!?)

    The link to my blog is the text "The “Can’t Win For Losing” Files " at the end of the first entry

  2. valerie
    Member

    Leighm - The only way to remove that link to your site would be to contact them and ask them to take it down or to hack them and remove it yourself. But, of course, deleting your post would also break the link, but you don't exactly want to do that.

    I'm not sure I understand, though, I don't think they can promote their site by linking to you (unless it trackbacks and you can delete that), if anything, it will promote you. Maybe they just thought your post was useful?

  3. raincoaster
    Member

    If you're really peeved at them you could delete the post, then re-post it, although this will kill all other links to that post as well.

    Valerie's right; they can't suck readers away from you by linking to you. But by linking they DO promote you in search engine rankings.

    I see no harm in letting people link to you; it's their blog, you have better things to do than to try to control what other people say/think/do about your blog. Doesn't look like they're commercializing it, so I say no harm, no foul.

  4. vivianpaige
    Member

    Let me point out that whatever is being done here to block Bitacle AIN"T WORKING! My latest posts are there.http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/tm-jviux0/181?usrmode=1

  5. lorelle
    Member

    As are mine. Here is today's post in excerpt form, but that is because I changed my feeds to only excerpts. If it was set to full, like the others, they would get full posts and I'd be really unhappy.

  6. timethief
    Member

    Three days ago it seemed to me that the most effective way we have of dealing with bitacle and similar clones was to reduce our feeds. I took the same action when I posted this:
    Thwarting bitacle. IMO there are some things we wordpress.com bloggers can do to thwart bitacle.
    (1) dashboard -> options -> reading -> set rss Syndication Feeds to "summary" rather than "full text".
    (2) when writing articles deliberately use the "more tag" because if you use the <--more--> feature, it will cut off posts in RSS feeds.

  7. lorelle
    Member

    Unfortunately, those efforts also thwart non-abusive fans of our sites, and cause trauma for those who give permission for their full content feeds to be republished elsewhere. By turning your feeds into excerpts, bitacle publishes the excerpts, which does come under fair use, but they still present your excerpt as if it is their own content, with ads, digg links, and comments. Such commercial usage of even excerpts is against the copyright policies of many bloggers, even those on WordPress.com.

    The only way to kill bitacle is by legal action, direct action (emails to bitacle, bitacle's host, Google and advertisers), mass publicity, and access to our htaccess file (not available in WordPress.com blogs).

    Hopefully, WordPress.com staff will come up with a way to cut bitacle off from WordPress.com blog scrapping, especially if enough WordPress.com bloggers complain. So start complaining, folks. Let your opinions be heard.

  8. podz
    Member

    Voices have been heard and swamping feedback or support will only make it harder for me to help others.

    Bitacle realised what we were doing and changed tactics. We can and will change again but then it starts again.

  9. drmike
    Member

    Podz, while I'm thankful that you, matt and the rest of the staff are on top of the case, I will suggest again that contacting the host of bitacle may be a better way of doing. They do have a TOS (item 6.1 - prohibits the activity of reproducing without rights given) in place that prohibits this website from existing on their network. (At least that's how I read it. My Spanish is horrible.)

    Moderator hat time - OK, folks. Podz and staff have spoken. They're aware of the situation and are acting on it. Let's move on. :)

  10. bugsngasgal
    Member

    Just found this forum topic as I have discovered another one of these phony blogs stealing my content. The fake blog is at http://www.ohiomedicaldirectorsassn.org and so far I've just posted responses with my own URL in them. There doesn't seem to be a person in there and I don't know how to stop them from what they're doing. They are also using WordPress.

  11. dirkgently
    Member

    HAHAHA You have to love it, first "Matt has made some changes and they will take effect soon" yeah right....the effect will be zero. Yet another example of banning an IP to help the community but no doubt it'll be decided that some other crazy solution will work better........and have no effect.

    You (as a group) seem to think that getting a couple of the bigger bloggers involved will help tip the balance....that just sounds like a pathetic schoolkids line of "I'll get my big brother on you" to me. What difference does it make if the admins are not willing to make the changes needed?

    If the admins do decide to block an IP, then wow....spam = OK, stealing = not OK....at least we're narrowing down what can and can't be considered a banning offense here. Now the sarcastic part of my response is over, onto the serious point.

    Why don't you all blog about this company including their abuse email as a mailto tag and registration details...so THOSE blogs appear on THEIR site. Hardly a great advert for your own site huh?

  12. engtech
    Member

    The thing about IP blocking is it is such a case of whack-a-mole. There's 100s if not thousands of these RSS scrapers out there. I can write one in under 10 lines of code.

  13. drmike
    Member

    For reference, they're using wordpress from http://wordpress.org Two different things.

    The site is hosted in the Czech Republic in casablanca.cz space. You can try complaining politely via email to abuse at casablanca.cz but I'd be surprised if you get a repsonse.

    And when did we block an IP for spamming? Weren't you complaining dirk last week that they weren't doing so?

  14. dirkgently
    Member

    The solution offered was blocking the domain name provided in the email (which most would have told ya wouldn't do anything to help solve it) so no.....no IP was banned, the spam still comes through despite being touted as a "solution".

    As a result, I am curious what is a banning offense....it seems that spammers are welcome, yet thieves are not.....what other categories do we have? I also wonder if the changes made to block this company are going to be as ingeniously brilliant in their conception and result as the spam blocking, or if they will actually have some effect this time.

  15. sundripjournals
    Member

    It seems that the blog http://www.toptouristtraps.com
    has been scrapping from WordPress blogs that are attached to the name AUSTIN. If your name has anything at all to do with Austin then this blog snatches the topic. Not only do they snatch the entry they set up categories so that when they steal yet another of your entries from the WordPress feed they can put it in the proper stolen category. For instance, anything I've written on "art" or anything I've written on "PTSD" or specifically named categories like "art by black women" all get filed just as if it were his. No, the blog isn't hosted on WordPress but they are taking advantage of WordPress feeds which in my opinion means it harms the users of WordPress and the people of WordPress would be kind to try and help resolve it. I'm offended hugely that no real help has been offered.
    Thank you for new themes, for new gravitas and the like but when it comes to harder issues it seems we have few if any solutions.

    Austin of Sundrip Journals

  16. sundripjournals
    Member

    that link should be austin.toptouristtraps.com

    the other link is their squatting page.

  17. timethief
    Member

    Hi there,
    This thread is strictly for "Bitacle" and your post to it isn't about "Bitacle". If you are looking for instructions for how to proceed after a blog scraper has stolen you blog contents you will find them in this thread http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=17307
    Happy blogging :)

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