The last few days have been interesting with regards to finding a vast quantity of my work hosted on other sites.  I’m not just talking about a post here or an image there.  I’m talking about my entire site being republished elsewhere.

The first such offender, something called smz-catbehavior, has been redistributing my entire site for quite a while.  I’d already contacted them about this approximately a month ago.  Let’s be clear on this: they weren’t just redistributing the content; they were repackaging the entire site and hosting it elsewhere in order to generate ad revenue from Google.  Simply look at the front page of xenogere, strip out the current theme so it’s all boring text, and you have the idea of what they were doing.  Everything was there, from my blogroll to the recent comments list to every other bit of content.

Do you think they responded when I contacted them about this?  Of course not.  They went right on doing what they were doing.

Well, they’re not doing it anymore.  I’ve blocked both their domain and IP address from accessing the server.  Now when I go to the page where they had my site hosted, it’s blank save the message “You Are Banned” which I’ve so generously provided.

Since they were using Google ad services, I also contacted Google about this.  After all, the ad TOS state clearly that you can’t utilize the content of others for use with content-driven advertisements.  What do you think Google did about it?

Not a damn thing.  In fact, you’d think I was the criminal.  They sent me a blow-off message telling me they wouldn’t even look at it unless I jumped through hoops like a circus poodle, provided my dental records, signed over life and limb, and so on and so forth.  Pathetic!

Did it matter that my copyright notice was clearly shown on this other site, a notice that states in no uncertain terms that any site other than xenogere that shows the content is guilty of copyright infringement and several other crimes?  Nope.  Google didn’t care.  They’re more interested in protecting their revenue streams than in protecting intellectual property and enforcing legal rights.

Then I found a Chinese company that’s doing the same thing.  In fact, they’ve setup a multitude of domains (e.g., duvetcover4, montgomerycounty4, giftcertificate4, etc.) that they use to pull content from other sites.  Why?  Once again, they’re using Google’s ad services.  By pulling content from a plethora of sites, they get content-driven advertisement revenue without having to generate a single bit of content.

Once again, Google didn’t care.  Despite having a feedback option for their ads that specifically includes an item that says a site is using Google’s ad technology with someone else’s content, Google’s immediate response is to again put the impetus on me to push a rope uphill in order to enforce and protect my rights and content.  So what’s the use of having that feedback option if they have no intention of doing anything about it?

And again, these sites had pulled everything, including my own copyright notice, so all Google had to do was look at each page to see this:

Copyright © 2002-2007 jason at xenogere (http://www.xenogere.com)

This syndication feed is intended only for personal non-commercial use. If you are reading this material on a site other than xenogere, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me so I can enforce my ownership rights.

Now let’s understand one thing: that’s a pretty damn clear notice.  If it shows up on any other site, there’s no question about what’s happening or who owns the content.

But Google doesn’t care about such blatantly illegal activities.  They only care about money.  So they sent me blow-off notices for each ad feedback form I submitted.

Whatever.

I’m presently working through all of these sites and giving them the same shaft I gave smz-catbehavior.  That is to say, I’m blocking them at the server level.  I’m doing so by domain and IP address, so it’s possible I’ll shoot some legitimate sites, services, or users in the process.  Oh well.

I’ll closely monitor the logs to see if that happens.  If it does, I’ll try to work around it.  The only problem is that, especially with this Chinese company, they’re using innumerable domains to maximize content theft and ad revenue.  It’s impossible to think I can find every domain and stop them since they’ll be able to register and utilize more sites than I can find and block.