Splog Alert
31. May 2007 – 17:42 byI have just got a pingback to the Google Gears article from a blog called Google Gears Blog. Oh happy days, Google links to one of my articles. Not really, how could I have been so self-absorbed? 
It’s a splog, of course, and it has nothing to do with Google. And while splogs are not a novelty by any means I am sick of them. As you can guess, I won’t link to that blog and the pingback is deleted already. That blog is aggregating (via Technorati) blog articles dealing with Google Gears, displaying excerpts of the articles, and of course ads from AdSense. The About page and the blogroll aren’t even customised in any way; still from a standard installation of a WordPress theme. It’s just surprising that Gears has just launched and there is a splog already trying to make money from it and especially from other bloggers’ work.
All my articles are CreativeCommons licensed (attribution, non-commercial share-alike). Should I change the license (which will just apply for forthcoming articles)? Is there anything else I (and other bloggers) can do?
6 Responses to “Splog Alert”
you don’t have to change your licence. NC means noncommercial. that’s quite clear, isn’t it. and using adsense = commercial.
what you can do: contact google through the adsense and tell them that this account is based on/using a splog to earn money. they’ll check it out and shut down the adsenseaccount. this will go there it hurts the spammer.
only and best way imho
By marcel weiss on May 31, 2007
Thanks, I have contacted Google. Hopefully something will change.
By Carsten Pötter on May 31, 2007
Changing your license won’t have any effect, these spammers copy even from copyrighted blogs. What you can do though, is contact them personally, or their ISP, with the request to remove your content immediately. You can threaten to undertake legal steps if they don’t remove your content in for example 72 hours. Do a whois search (search “whois” in Google) for their domain to get the e-mail address of their ISP (often ISPs also have a specific address for spam complaints like abuse@domain.com). I have already done this quite some times, and, depending on the ISP, this may work or not.
By JW on May 31, 2007
I should have thought about a whois search before. Let’s see if the guy will respond to my mail. Also I am curious about Google’s reaction.
By Carsten Pötter on May 31, 2007
Carsten, Personally I copyright everything. I own it…not negotiable. The intellectual property is mine. Having worked with a few publishers and writing pros…they will tell you to copyright everything.
By Ev Nucci on Jun 1, 2007
CreativeCommons licenses don’t take away the copyright; they make it more liberal in some ways. Nevertheless, the guy running that site has taken down my content.
By Carsten Pötter on Jun 1, 2007