Today's Fresh Blogs...

• WordPress and Comment Spam

  Published: July 24, 2007, 3:56 pm

  Tags: Prevention, Personal Experiences, Articles, Akismet, Automattic, Comment Spam, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Copyright Law, Plagiarism, Scraping, Spam, Spam Blogs, Wordpress

  that reCAPTCHA counts the spam as it eats as spam in Wordpress, that could explain why Akismet seems to be so accurate. Still, what intrigues me most is that no spam has gotten all of the way through. It seems logical that reCAPTCHA is blocking the spam that actually uses the form, which was the spam getting through from time to time, while

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• Protecting the Comment Feed

  Published: August 1, 2007, 2:51 pm

  Tags: Prevention, Articles, Atom, Comments, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Feed, Plagiarism, Rss, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Wordpress

  of little use to scrapers. Spammers need dependable, lengthy, keyword-rich feeds to scrape and most comment feeds simply do not meet that bill. However, scraping and spam blogging is a constantly evolving art. As Webmasters grow more and more wise to the problem of RSS scraping and scrapers’ thirst for new material continues to grow, the

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• Plagiarism Today Turns Two

  Published: August 2, 2007, 2:24 pm

  Tags: Housekeeping, Personal, Articles, Anniversary, Birthday, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Plagiarism, Plagiarism Today, Scrapers, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Two

  patrol the Web, especially blogs, looking for posts about content theft or plagiarism and offering help. By May in 2006, this labor had already produced some fruits. I had already found allies in the craft blogging community as well as among sex bloggers. However, it would be another group, sports bloggers that would provide the biggest boost

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• A Scrape of a Scrape

  Published: August 7, 2007, 11:07 am

  Tags: Prevention, Personal Experiences, Articles, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Ie7, Plagiarism, Rss, Scraping, Spam, Spam Blogging, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  up each other’s blogs. What makes this situation somewhat unique is that we were able to follow the trail since both scraper sites link to their original source. However, it shows the potential for a post to get scraped again and again as its copies get picked up by other spambots. In short, every feed your work appears on can, and

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• Autodiscovery and RSS Scraping

  Published: September 5, 2007, 2:49 pm

  Tags: Prevention, Articles, Autodiscovery, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Plagiarism, Rss, Scraping, Spam, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  do much good either. Spammer Autodiscovery The problem with disabling autodiscovery is that spammers don’t use it any more than ordinary users do. In fact, many spammers never even see your original site when they scrape your feed. Large spam sites and spam networks get their blog posts and RSS feeds the same way search engines such

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• Legal and Ethical Link Blogging

  Published: September 12, 2007, 6:04 pm

  Tags: Legal Issues, Articles, News, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Duncan Riley, Google, Google Reader, Plagiarism, Robert Scoble, Rss, Scoble, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogging, Splogs, Techcrunch

  They’ve allowed Blogspot to become a spam haven, have turned Adsense into the monetization method of choice for those spammers and have done little to stop the abuse of their services for copyright violations. Their linkblog service, to me, is just another slap in the face. If Google had paused to think about how Webmasters might

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• Article Marketing: Death By Spam?

  Published: September 19, 2007, 3:02 pm

  Tags: Prevention, Punditry, Legal Issues, Articles, Article Marketing, Content Theft, Copyright, Copyright Infringement, Ezine Articles, Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Plagiarism, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  in mostly backlinks from spam blogs. Scott Allen recently uncovered an entire spam blog network based upon copying articles from article directories and removing attribution, thus violating the publisher terms for those sites. Finally, one admitted blackhat has crafted a WordPress plugin that is designed to extend the original entry by a set

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• Modified Scraping on the Rise

  Published: November 8, 2007, 5:33 pm

  Tags: Articles, Legal Issues, News, Personal Experiences, Prevention, Blogspot, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Duplicate Content, Google, Plagiarism, Rss, Scraping, Search Engine Spam, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Synonymized, Thesaurus

  before being reposted on a spam Blogspot blog. What started out as a rare phenomenon is now turning into a regular occurrence. Unfortunately, as the tactics of spammers change, so must the tactics of those who seek to protect their content and this calls for a new look at how we protect our works on the Web. Background The technology behind

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• workFRIENDLY: An Accidental Scraper

  Published: November 9, 2007, 4:07 pm

  Tags: Articles, Dmca, Legal Issues, News, Prevention, Anonymouse, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Fair Use Dmca, Google, Google Cache, Plagiarism, Proxies, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Workfriendly

  removed. You can also report spam results if you see workFRIENDLY urls in the results of other searches you perform. Though not an ideal solution, it is at least a workable one and can serve as a stopgap until a more permanent answer, or at least some decisive action from Google, takes place. Conclusions I want to be clear that I do not think

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• CAPTCHAs and the DMCA

  Published: November 14, 2007, 1:08 pm

  Tags: Articles, Dmca, Legal Issues, Prevention, Anti Circumvention, Captchas, Chilling Effects, Comment Spam, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Hotlinking, Plagiarism, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  a form of protection against spammers and bots but might also themselves be protected under the DMCA. A Tricky Application CAPTCHAs are one of the most popular forms of site protection. They are used by everyone from Google to brand new blogs. Obviously, any additional legal protection CAPTCHAs can get will be a very big deal. However, the TM

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• Google's Shell Games

  Published: November 16, 2007, 4:24 pm

  Tags: Articles, Dmca, Legal Issues, Punditry, Adsense, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Google, Plagiarism, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogging, Splogs, Viacom, Youtube

  to keep making money on the spam blogs. Considering they provide the hosting, promotion and revenue stream with their Blogspot, search and Adsense products respectively, Google seems to be a spammer’s best friend. Sadly, this “do the absolute minimum” policy when dealing with scraping seems to be a mere extension of that. Even

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• Massive Trackback/Comment Spam Attack

  Published: November 20, 2007, 12:22 pm

  Tags: Articles, News, Personal Experiences, Blurty, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Copyright Law, Google Groups, Greatestjournal, Multiply, Opendiary, Oracle, Spam, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  dozens, if not hundreds, of spam sites and sending out massive amounts of comment and trackback spam to promote them. But while there is little unusual about the technique other then the sheer volume, hundreds of messages at this site alone, there are other elements of this attack that are unusual and may be a sign of what is to come in the

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• Update: Trackback/Comment Spam

  Published: November 21, 2007, 1:16 pm

  Tags: Articles, Products, Akismet, Captcha, Comment Spam, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Defensio, Plagiarism, Recaptcha, Spam, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Trackback Spam

  has already caught over 200 spam comments. If this pace is maintained, then that will represent well over 600 spam comments and trackbacks today. Though it is reCAPTCHA, and not Defensio, stopping the comments. what is stunning is the increase in activity this represents. Typically this site has gotten its fair share of comment spam, but it has

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• Making the Switch: Going From Partial to Full Feeds

  Published: November 28, 2007, 3:20 pm

  Tags: Articles, Prevention, Products, Antileech, Blogger, Blogging, Content Theft, Copyfeed, Copyright Infringement, Digital Fingerprinting, Full Feeds, Partial Feeds, Plagiarism, Rss, Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogs, Wordpress

  going away. As more and more spammers get into the game and the tools they use improve in effectiveness, the problem is only going to get worse. Because of this, RSS feeds are going to remain vulnerable and bloggers will continue to seek out ways to protect them. However, readers have come to expect and demand full RSS feeds. Some will not

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• The FeedBurner Question

  Published: December 5, 2007, 1:44 pm

  Tags: Articles, Prevention, Products, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Copyright Law, Feedburner, Feeds, Plagiarism, Rss, Rss Scraping, Spam Blogs, Splogs

  must-have for anyone using a Blogspost, WordPress.com, or other free blogging service. Since you don’t have direct control over your feed to begin with, you sacrifice nothing by using FeedBurner and gain a wealth of information and tools. But for those of us with our own servers, the choice is more difficult. FeedBurner might make sense on

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