Content Thieving Splog is OFFLINE! — The Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Well isn't this interesting…

Yesterday I ranted about a splog that was stealing content from my (and many others) blogs.

This morning I filed a complaint with Goolge's AdSense abuse and began my quest to hunt down Mr. Splogger and his domain host.

The goal in finding direct contact info was to find out where to file a DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement. The "DMCA" is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (of 1998). Title II of the DMCA:

creates a safe harbor for online service providers (OSPs, including ISPs) against copyright liability if they adhere to and qualify for certain prescribed safe harbor guidelines and promptly block access to allegedly infringing material (or remove such material from their systems) if they receive a notification claiming infringement from a copyright holder or the copyright holder's agent. (Wikipedia)

A WHOIS search of Mr. Splogger's domain quickly revealed who registered the splog domain. Shockingly, emails and calls to that individual went unanswered. The WHOIS showed the domain was hosted by YellowFiber.net. Frustration quickly set in however, when voice mails and emails to YellowFiber went unanswered. The fax number shown on YellowFibers site was also non-functional.

I noticed however that YellowFiber is a subsidy of MoveClicks LLC. Using the *fabulous* site whois.domaintools.com and searching the IP address resulted in an actual name and phone number for someone in the YellowFiber "abuse department" — one Zack Thompson (no relation). I called Zack's number. No answer, no indication on the voice mail that it was even the right number. So I hung up in disgust.

Less than 30 seconds later, my phone rings. It was Zack! We had a 20 second conversation. He said "Submit a DMCA to abuse@YellowFiber.net and we'll take care of it". 15 minutes later I got a form response with a case number, login and password so I could see the status of the complaint.

And a little less than five hours later, http:// realestate . wognews . com (and its sister splog debt . wognews) are no more (they've been replaced by a pic of some borderline underage girl holding a sign that says "I love WOG!". Yes, she is clothed. And no, I will not comment on the attractiveness of said female. She is young. I am old. 'Nuff said).

I don't know if it was YellowFiber, Google, my polite yet quite firm emails and voice mails to the splogger, or just coincidence, but I'll take it. One more vermin off-line — at least for now.

If any of my actions caused the downfall of these two splogs, then the Plagiarism Today site gets a LOT of credit. That place is a wealth of knowledge. Thanks Jonathan!

If YellowFiber took them down, then good on them!

If anyone is interested, here is my DMCA Notice. Feel free to use it if you need it!

Now, back to business!

[tags]splog defeated, YellowFiber, Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey[/tags]

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April Groves

Way to get it done, Jay

Michael Krotchie

Nice work Jay, and extra kudos for laying out exactly what you had to do to make it happen. I'm sure it will help out a lot of other bloggers!

Jonathan Bailey

You're very welcome for all o the help that my site was able to provide. I'm glad it was of service.

To answer your question about who did what, I took a look at the main site and it is showing the domain default page. That is typical of when a host yanks a site.

However, the subdomain, the one with the image, is interesting as the link is giving a 200 (ok) code. My guess is that, when the host took down the main site the splogger quickly threw that up on the subdomains to avoid having them removed in the same manner.

All in all though, it appears to be a smashing victory. Also, I'll be sure to add Yellowfiber to my DMCA list.

I'm glad that this ended well. Please let me know if I can help with a case in the future!

Maurice (TheCaymanHost)

Jay, thanks for dropping by and leaving your kind words.

I wish I'd had this article to refer to a while back when I posted about content scraping and RSS feeds.

Excellent post with an amusing undertone and some great resources and the right outcome. It's a shame to have to take the time to report these misuses but it proves that it is often worth the effort......

I found a site the other day that had completely ripped off a section of html from one of my pages and pasted it straight into their own. I had to laugh because it was chock full of affiliate links and by some miracle it generated a sale for me :-)

now, let's see where's that feed of yours for scraping? Just kidding ;-)

Ed Cassady

Good job,

Jay, your swift action may keep others from doing the same thing. When my site was scraped, with advice from the Hot Tub, I got the other agent to remove everything but the scraped title and keywords.

Phil

Predictably, the "underaged" girl image they've posted is ripped off from a porn site (except the WOG bit, which they of course have added).

Missy Caulk

Thanks saved to Delicious, came here from AG post. Great information.

Alex@Broker Price Opinion

I was a victim a couple times now. At least have the humility to change the content a little. The funny thing is google hasn't got them with the duplicate content.

Sean@Super Pocket Bikes

According to an article on Web Pro News about 33% off all blogs in the blogosphere are spam blogs. It's a very high but realistic number and it shows that the battle with spam blogs with scraped content will be though.

P.S. This girl is Raven Riley if someone was curious.