{"id":174,"date":"2007-06-11T19:02:37","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T23:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/2007\/06\/11\/victory-in-my-battle-against-feed-scraping-content-thief-4comedycom\/"},"modified":"2018-05-15T16:54:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T20:54:58","slug":"victory-in-my-battle-against-feed-scraping-content-thief-4comedycom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/2007\/06\/11\/victory-in-my-battle-against-feed-scraping-content-thief-4comedycom\/","title":{"rendered":"Victory In My Battle Against Feed Scraping Content Thief 4Comedy.com (Updated)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week when I was bitching\u00a0about 4Comedy.com’s stealing my humor blog’s content,<\/a> I had\u00a0no idea I was dealing with a “feed\u00a0scraper” site. All I knew was that I was being ripped off — every time I posted in this humor blog<\/a>, my entire post appeared on 4Comedy.com\u00a0within minutes.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was a very pissed off blogger.<\/p>\n

So what did I do?\u00a0 First I posted comments at 4Comedy.com\u00a0demanding that its thievery stop.\u00a0 At least I tried to.\u00a0 But not surprisingly, my comments never appeared there.<\/p>\n

Next I reported its copyright violations to\u00a0Google AdSense<\/a>, via a link at 4comedy.com’s site.\u00a0 The following\u00a0day I received an email telling me how to formally report a Google AdSense<\/a> DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)\u00a0Infringement Complaint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the procedure involved tons of time-consuming\u00a0work, requiring me to assemble\u00a0all sorts of documentation of 4Comedy.com’s \u00a0many infringements.\u00a0 \u00a0Then (I’m told) this documentation is forwarded to the alleged infringer.\u00a0 And after that, heaven-only-knows-what happens.<\/p>\n

I responded to Google’s email\u00a0with a\u00a0request\u00a0for some accelerated action.\u00a0 My justification was that in this post http:\/\/4comedy.com\/?p=463, 4comedy.com had reproduced this post, in which I called it a content thief.<\/a><\/p>\n

I didn’t receive any response to my email, but\u00a0apparently it got their attention.\u00a0 How do I know?\u00a0 Because today the Google AdSense\u00a0text ads<\/a> disappeared from the top of 4Comedy.com’s site.\u00a0 Hallelujah!<\/p>\n

But I’m getting ahead of myself. While I was waiting\u00a0to hear from Google, I did some research on how to deal with RSS feed\u00a0scraping content thieves.\u00a0 And I found some great resources,\u00a0 including:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0AntiLeech, a plugin that “helps prevent content theft by sploggers”<\/a> and\u00a0 a detailed article explaining the benefits of\u00a0AntiLeech Splog Stopper: Fighting Back Against Content Thieves;<\/a><\/p>\n

2. An\u00a0interesting article with the enticing title How to stop rss scrapers from stealing your content plus revenge;<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

3. A\u00a0tutorial, Blocking bad bots and site rippers (aka offline browsers)<\/a>;<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0An article entitled\u00a0How you can stop dirty feedscrapers in 3 easy steps;<\/a>\u00a0and<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0This\u00a0article about\u00a0Attacking scrapers and content thieves legally.<\/a><\/p>\n

I found the material posted at all of those links very informative, and I’m planning to give that\u00a0AntiLeech plugin\u00a0a try.\u00a0 But I was feeling a bit lazy and I was looking for some instant gratification.\u00a0 And, happily,\u00a0I found it: A commenter named Robert<\/a> posted the following suggestion here:<\/a><\/p>\n

Alternatively, to curl up even less unproductive work, add this line to .htaccess:
\nDeny from 74.52.58.162
\nWhich would even allow you to block a whole range of IP addresses in case it proves necessary\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Armed with this simple-sounding solution, I decided to try it.\u00a0 My first step was to identify 4Comedy.com’s IP.\u00a0 So I checked its trackback data, which identified its IP as\u00a0 74.53.110.146.\u00a0 I then confirmed\u00a0the IP number by pinging 4comedy.com, using my computer’s Run function:\u00a0 ping 4comedy.com.\u00a0 Next I checked my logs and verified that 4comedy.com’s IP was routinely showing up there.<\/p>\n

Now that I had\u00a0the infringer’s IP,\u00a0I added this code to my .htaccess file:<\/p>\n

Deny from 74.53.110.146<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, I\u00a0FTPed the revised .htaccess\u00a0file and, like magic, 4Comedy.com’s content thievery came to a halt:\u00a0MadKane.com has been freed from the slings and arrows of 4Comedy.com’s feed scraping infringements.<\/p>\n

Of course,\u00a0that low-life feed scraper is\u00a0still taking material from\u00a0other sites like Comedy Central.<\/a> Hey Comedy Central!\u00a0 Try this. You’ll like it.<\/p>\n

UPDATE WITH ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:<\/strong>\u00a0As I learn about additional good resources on this topic, I’ll be adding them here.\u00a0 Feel free to make suggestions via a comment to this post.<\/p>\n

a: What To Do When Someone Steals Your\u00a0Content<\/a> is a must read.<\/p>\n

b: Dnsstuff.com<\/a>\u00a0is a source of many fine tools, including a “DNS Lookup\u201d tool — helpful in ascertaining IP addresses.<\/p>\n

c. Plagiarism Today<\/a> is an excellent source of information about plagiarism, content theft, and copyright issues online.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 2:<\/strong> 4Comedy.com seems to have disappeared.\u00a0 I can only hope it stays that way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UPDATE 3:<\/strong> 4Comedy.com is now\u00a0resolving to a different domain — domainnamesbusiness.info\/4comedy\/index.php.\u00a0But the IP is the same, so my blog should still be\u00a0protected from its feed scraping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week when I was bitching\u00a0about 4Comedy.com’s stealing my humor blog’s content, I had\u00a0no idea I was dealing with a “feed\u00a0scraper” site. All I knew was that I was being ripped off — every time I posted in this humor blog, my entire post appeared on 4Comedy.com\u00a0within minutes.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,82],"tags":[949,955,957,950,952,954,953,948,4959,951,958,5159,956,959],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright-infringement","category-feed-scraping","tag-4comedycom","tag-antileech-plugin","tag-bad-bots","tag-content-thief","tag-copyright-violations","tag-digital-millenneum-copyright-act","tag-dmca","tag-feed-scrapers","tag-feed-scraping","tag-google-adsense","tag-htaccess-file","tag-plagiarism","tag-rss-feed-scraping","tag-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40402,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/40402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/humor_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}