I've been hearing about content scraping. How can I avoid this? I know being on the internet is my choice, but I don't agree with "lifting" content and placing on a website without permission. Is it even worth it to contact the administrator or find out who to contact? Help...
How to avoid content scraping?
(3 posts) (3 voices)
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Hi Ralph
How funny that you'd ask that today! Rebecca and I were just talking about that at lunch yesterday, and another forum member is dealing with this problem too.
Sadly there is very little that you can do. If you find your content on another site, your first line of defense is to contact the site owner and ask them to remove it BUT most of the time I've found that it's difficult, if not impossible, to get contact information in order to make the request.
If you've thoroughly scoured their website and just can't find any way to contact them, try http://allwhois.com/ - look up the domain name to see if you can get a contact email address for the domain owner. But don't be surprised if they've used Private Registration - if they are deliberately making it impossible to contact them, they may have taken that step also. If that's the case, your last choice is to complain to their web hosting company, and ask that they take down the site. Understand that they may not be legally bound to do so.
You can also report them to Google and other search engines, no guarantees that they'll do anything, but it's another tactic to try.
Aside from that there isn't much you can do, unless you're made of money and can afford to hire a lawyer to pursue it for you......
I've found a lot of my content all over the web, in places I haven't authorized to use it..... I contact site owners when I can, and the rest I don't worry about. You can choose to spend all your time policing and worrying, and being upset, or you can keep moving forward.
Posted 1 year ago # -
This seems to be a hot topic this week. I read an article about content scraping on a freelance writing site. The person who wrote the article seems to believe that you can "squash" it, but you could spend time trying to do that.
Like Trisha said, you can contact the person and ask them to remove your post, but they probably have private registration. I guess the positive side is that someone goes to your blog and then finds your post somewhere else, it gives you "double" exposure. They can always contact you and ask if you are the originator of the article. Content scraping could work to your benefit. That sounds strange, but anything's possible!
Posted 1 year ago #
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