Please HP.... STOP OUR WORK being SCRAPED & STOLEN from HubPages!

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68
Pearldiverposted 12 years ago
How many more times are we expected to have to put up with Article Thieves who use HP solely as a place to easily Steal from and to enable those thieves to fill their own sites with our Original and Copyrighted articles/content/keywords that we published Here in good faith?

How about HP getting more aggressive with Content Thieves...
How about HP supporting its writing community and taking a harder line (or maybe just a line!) with scrapers on this site? There are many things that can be done.. yet for some reason in the past.. nothing has been directly done!

I don't expect to find a thief with a Google indexing Higher than my own on a New Article that I wrote and advised the copyright of and published on Hub Pages! That's just BS.. And it's also reason Why our traffic is also getting STOLEN... ENOUGH!!!

HERE Is a Site set up on 19/11/2011 specifically to publish stripped content from HP...

Talk Blog dot Info

Domain ID:D44166883-LRMS
Domain Name:TALKBLOG.INFO
Created On:19-Nov-2011 12:01:39 UTC
Last Updated On:19-Nov-2011 12:01:40 UTC
Expiration Date:19-Nov-2012 12:01:39 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:eNom, Inc. (R126-LRMS)
Registrant Email:8a060635bda749eebc0ca27de15c25be.protect@whoisguard.com
Registrant ID:441cee219445b5a7
Tech Email:8a060635bda749eebc0ca27de15c25be.protect@whoisguard.com
Name Server:DNS1.REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM
Name Server:DNS2.REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM
Name Server:DNS3.REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM
Name Server:DNS4.REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM
Name Server:DNS5.REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM

I am Sick of this BS..
The ENTIRE SITE is completely made up of HP Content - has been registered via a Nominee Register who has granted anominity via eNom and Whois.

THIS IS AN ILLEGAL SITE - Its Owner's Intent is To Publish Scraped and Stolen Content... just like the others, I have had to put up with during my time at HP...
I am No Longer Going All Out for Everyone on HP in regard to Stolen Content.. As (other than being a huge time consuming and thankless task) I am also Sick of Being Banned from HP for my efforts!
So... good luck everyone - check out your content and Kick Their Butts!

I suggest you Email the Registrar and advise them of the Theft Details (eNom, Inc. (R126-LRMS) ) AND the Low Life Thieves via Whois (Registrant Email address) and file DMCAs via the same..

AND HubPages Team.... I'm Sure we would All Appreciate it if you try Supporting our efforts huh?
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1. 90
  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  We need to stop this BS. I am so mad.
  
  This freaking person has taken the blinking time to copy 400+ pages of content and 1 page has about 10 articles that's more than 4000 articles all from HP.
  
  The titles are the same, even the voting options were copied along with photos, eBay and Amazon items.
  
  We need to do something. I think Google can do something. I don't know, I am just PISSED right now.
  
  I recognize a lot of hubs my many people I follow. Like Patty, Nell Rose, Habee and many more.
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  LuisEGonzalezposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for posting this. I checked the site and some of the titles I saw list hubs by name and even by author like Simone Smith. I also saw at least two of my hubs that were slightly modified but overall the same as in here.
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Team, are you able to advise us of any procedure that may already be in place or reasons for why there are not systems that address this specific topic?
  Thanks
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  capricornrisingposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Looks like with the help of a lot of posters on this thread, the problem was taken care of, and the offending site is now down. THANK YOU everyone.
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  Infobrowserposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Outrageous!
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6. 72
  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  oh PD I totally understand what you are saying, especially to see your own personal work of art copied and ranking higher. I am going there now to have a look. I never knew of this site. It really makes me angry. Big hugs from BP.
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  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  PD I can't find the link is it Talk Blog dot Info
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8. 82
  Marcy Goodfleischposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I agree this site should take steps to protect its writers. We generate revenue for the site, and writing is our profession. I have had my work ripped off before, and it's infuriating. A few years ago, I wrote about a paraplegic young boy, "Danny," whom my sons befriended. The story was published in a Chicken Soup book, and I later found it all over the Internet with statements that I'd given permission for its use. One person even posted a picture claiming it was me and the young boy in the story. The Internet has created serious misconceptions about copyright & ownership of material. Sites that use our content should develop ways to prevent downloads and copying.
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68
Pearldiverposted 12 years ago
Yep it IS BS!

And it is also BS that so many Think that we should Pussy Foot around and be NICE TO THESE LOW LIFEs!

When Strategically it calls for a Serious Attacking movement as opposed to hand-wringing!

This is the 4th Site in 2 years that I have attacked over STEALING OUR WORK - intentionally and for the express purpose of using that content fraudulently!

They are Acting Illegally
They are RAPING Our Content on HP knowingly.
They have Google accounts and ads.
They have access to HP - And no doubt accounts here (and IP Details)
They use a proxy registrar - eNom Inc
They have BLOCKED my IP address manually - so they are monitoring the traffic!
I believe the first part of their IP address is 174.35.??.??

THIS IS ONE REASON WHY - We lose our traffic!

- Perhaps I should have stated this and this perfect example in a recent thread in with Paul E.. was making suggestions on how we as writers could Improve and Maintain our traffic!

This REALLY Isn't The Time To Be Apathetic!
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1. 90
  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Something needs to be done. Why is is so easy to copy stuff. I know that there are websites that block their content from being copied so what HP needs to do is block our content so no one can copy.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It's not possible. If I can see your page in a browser, I can copy it. No matter what you do to thwart it, there is a way around it.
  
  What I WOULD like to see is better detection. EdWeirdo used to have a good service for that, but Panda killed most of the subscriptions so he canned it. His software would find copies that HP did not.
  
  Now that earnings have picked up again, maybe Edweirdo should reconsider. I know I'd subscribe again (though he'd need to do something about the 300 hub limitation he had).
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  Richieb799posted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Can't they write some sort of script like the disable 'right-click' on Wordpress? I don't know if this would cause problems in other areas mind...
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  sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Disabling right click is pointless.
  
  Wouldnt stop even the most amateur of scrapers
  
  Wait, it does have a point, annoying legitimate users.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Do you really think that people who steal would be stopped? Sure, maybe the least technical, but soon enough the forums at places that don't care would be full of 'Ez download script for Hubpages! $5.99" and they'd be right back at it,
  
  If your browser can read it, I can ALWAYS write a program to read it too.
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  capricornrisingposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Say, Pcunix, since you're my tech guru - a questions for my own edification, about content scrapers - they usually use bulk-scraper software or scripts, right? Would these still work against right-click disabler codes, if the thieves don't even bother going to the sites they're scraping, and just launch some sort of bulk-scraper? (I'm not a programmer, so I apologize for sounding like an idiot here.)
  
  Isn't there some kind of code to put into a page that will block bulk-scrapers, so that it's too big a bother for them to continue and they go elsewhere to harvest scripts?
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  WryLiltposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, right click disabling doesn't work against scraping programs, just manual copying and pasting.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  There are tools you can employ agains bulk scrapers.
  
  Imagine that you were watching your website logs. You see one ip address download a page. A second later it downloads another of your page, following links from the first. It keeps doing that and it is obviously doing it far too quickly to be a human reading it.
  
  You check the IP and see that it's not Google, Bing, Baidu or any other legitimate scraper. Deciding that it is not, you block their ip at the firewall. They have a few dozen pages, but now they are blocked.
  
  Except that they almost immediately come back with a different IP - today, tomorrow whatever. You keep blocking them, but they get smarter - they take one of your pages and then wait a minute or two - really, they aren't "waiting", they are off stealing from somebody else. Maybe the only take a little of your site each day, but in a week or two they have it all.
  
  Or, they simply don't bother visiting you at all - they get it from Google's caches.
  
  If your content can be read, it can be stolen.
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MelissaBarrettposted 12 years ago
Or, conversely, we could monitor our own writing. You know, like every freelance writer in the world has to do.
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  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  No one is suggesting that that exercise is Not pro-active..
  
  BUT.. if you consider the DEPTH and the SOURCE of the Problem...
  then clearly it is a JOINT Problem (for both the writers and the publishing site (HP)..) who effectively JOINTLY MARKET the Original Content, albeit within various TOS terms!
  
  As I said earlier.. This Is the 4th Site that has scraped my work at HP in the last 2 years... All of which time HP Could Have had Anti-Scraping software installed or developed on site..
  
  Arguing the value of such an exercise is, I suggest, a waste of time... given the frequency and intentional targeting of superior content by Inferior Article Thieves!
  
  I am sure the merits and the benefits of having Fresh, Original and Superior Content in itself justifies removing the ability of Article Thieves to rape it! Otherwise.. what is the point?
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  MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  And do you know the cost/time that would be involved in installing anti-scraping software? Do you know if it's even feasible? What would it take, in terms of site redesign? Would it interfere with the layout or clickability of ads?
  
  I don't know any of those answers and I'm guessing you don't either.
  
  So, maybe without the ranting and capitals... if you could make the suggestion and ask why it already isn't in place. There are generally reasons that things that seem like good ideas to us aren't already in place. If it hasn't already been brought up, then the "Hey, that sounds like a good idea" is more likely to happen in response to a reasonable post than a rant.
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It would depend on what kind of system HubPages would put in place. I've seen some sites use software that appends "data" such as a link back to anything that is copied and pasted.
  
  It works in such a way that it annoys copy and pasters in that they would have to manually edited out those links.
  
  I don't know how that system works with SEO, but it's virtually invisible to readers on our page and wouldn't change the format of our hubs.
  
  That said, I'm sure there are ways to program something to lift information off of HubPages without messy links popping up. Since these content thieves are most likely using automated software to pull from HubPages, their software probably already does this.
  
  The above thing (the copy and paste thing) would do a little to fight it.
  
  Would something like this affect our rankings in Google somehow?
  
  It might only fight against people who copy and paste and, even then, they can manually edit that stuff out.
  
  Those that do steal our content and don't edit the link out would essentially be giving us a link back. It wouldn't be helpful for SEO because dupe content can kill you in Google, but it can help hubbers find their stolen content. (Backlinks show up in Webmaster Tools in Google.)
  
  My thought is that if a script like this doesn't hurt SEO and the dev time isn't significant, then I think it would be kind of nice to have it.
  
  I would pay for it. He could make it paid only, in fact, so as to allow himself to pay for the Yahoo thing he needed to. Enough hubbers would recommend it that it might pay for itself. I don't know how much Yahoo charges for use of their search engines in that matter.
  
  I made an offer to take the project off his hands, but I think I scared him away with.. "I just want to play with the code." It's his baby, though, so I can understand it. Plus, I think he's a Pythonista (err Pythonisto in his case) and sadly, I'm a Rubyist. I wanted to use it as an opp to either learn Python or rewrite it in Ruby. I sort of have something like it written in Ruby, but his didn't break search engine TOS.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  And I'm a Perl guy, so I don't like either of them :-)
  
  But I think he went overboard with it anyway, finding too many false positives.
  
  Google is the one who really should be doing this for us in WebMaster Tools. They have already done the work and it is their judgment that we care about anyway. They are so annoying with what they leave out of WMT!
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I took a course in Perl. It made me so frustrated that I blogged about how just ugh frustrated Perl made me. brian d foy ended up emailing me (my blog ended up on perl ironman. oops) asking me not to quit Perl. As well as another Russian gentleman from CPAN who I ended up meeting for coffee. I didn't quit, though... I'll pick it up again someday. I've learned my lesson, though... suffer silently.
  
  Yeah, I would get a lot of false positives, particularly from backlinks.
  
  Perhaps they will eventually, Webmaster tools has definitely changed a lot over the years. Right now all I do is manually search Google for strings of text from my hubs, but the more hubs you have, the more difficult it is. And I could be spending that time writing more hubs.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yeah, tell me about it. I have over 4,000 pages I'd need to check. I can cut that down to the most likely to be pirated, but it still is a major amount of work and not something reasonable to do manually.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I just took a look at Copyscape's API. It's pretty simple. I'm going to write something up for my site that builds a list of my most active pages from logs and uses that API to check them. I'll add in my most recent pages too and just run it every month from cron.
  
  It would hardly be difficult to do something similar for Hubs.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Supposedly HP had something in place like that, still communicates that it does via the red copyright symbol, but it doesn't? Does the wheel need to be reinvented, or is the wheel there but not greased?
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It never worked well and I'm not even sure it works at all now. Now it seems like it only checks when you publish.
  
  I use Copyscape Premium and check a few hundred every month. It finds things.. oh my does it find things..
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  What I'm saying is that HP had this concept in mind a long time ago; they promoted it (by communicating it via the "my account" page), but have let the ball drop.
  
  So I'd like to know from HP...whaddup with that?
  
  Clearly the technology and know-how are there for HP to provide this duplicate content checking to members. And not at a price. Although, I would be willing to pay a price if the dupe content checking also came with automated DMCA notices being sent to the right places.
  
  So many miles to go before I sleep....
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SomewayOuttaHereposted 12 years ago
sorry to read it's happening again PD...
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  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yep.. me too Someway... And interestingly.. so is are the cynical defensive responses to having the Problem Highlighted Online Again!
  
  I don't believe having the best interests of hard working writers in mind, is something that requires In Fighting - In any respect!
  That Simply emphasizes the concerns! - If viewed objectively!
  
  @Pcunix.. Detection is a Major part of the problem - As is Action in Taking Down the Content and the Sites that house it.
  Edweirdo's program helped... but then so did a large group of knowledgeable hubbers who were here before and helped save a lot of people, a lot of a grief!
  
  IP Addresses and the Personal Account Details of the thieves are also crucial to sorting the problem... Generally most major thieves (during the last 2 years) have had HP accounts.. and therefore HP have their details! But I guess you also consider this to be a pro-active aspect of Detection?
  
  @MB... Clearly the well balanced criticism that you put forward - precludes the ability to read the PASSION in what I Do Not Consider to be a RANT!
  I don't believe that people who RANT (as you negatively put it!).. generally Know What They are talking about!
  I'm sure that I have given some indication throughout my presence on this site.. that I do seem to know what I'm talking about.. irrespective of the inabilities of some to understand my Accent or my Passion!
  I believe it is quite possible that I knew enough about the theft of Documents from this site.. to actually inform others here that their hard work is At Risk!
  I don't believe I need a 'cloaked' Personal Attack or general attempt to humiliate me cynically, to be considered by that party as an appropriate response to a Heads Up! That merely serves as a diversion to the fact that Content is Being Stolen From Here Again! Save the negativity for the thieves, not the party who passionately considered others (including your entities) here and yet again brought it to everyone's attention!
  
  @ Luis... Good on you.. file your notices and keep a note of the URLs that they have in regard to your content
  
  Oh and BTW... the Last Major Thief 68articles bla bla.. are 100% back in action again and have been for sometime.. so it might be prudent to also check for content copies there. Isn't the Net a wonderful place for Free Enterprise?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I don't think people are being cynical or defensive. It's just that some people don't think Writing in Capital Letters is as effective as being calm and rational about the subject.
  
  Do you have some suggestions as to how HubPages takes action to have content taken down, when they can't legally file DMCAs?
  
  So what should they do with those details, apart from preventing those people joining HubPages again (which I believe they already do, as I've seen people complaining about their IP addresses being blocked in the past)?
  
  I think what Mel is saying is that, even if you don't think you're ranting, that's how it comes across. I'm afraid it does sound like a rant to me, even though I appreciate the passion, and the serious message, within it. And I do understand the frustration that fuels it.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  What Mel is saying is: They [HP] could tell you that your work is being copied... and it would be great to have added functionality in that area.
  
  And I agree.
  
  Where's the rant?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I was addressing PearlDiver, who seemed to be getting upset that others were expressing reservations about what HP can do. He interprets that variously as a personal attack on him, or as defensiveness.
  
  It's great to see some of the reasoned,useful debate going on in the rest of this thread - but from the HP team's point of view, the start of the thread makes it look somewhat hysterical, which means it's more likely to get written off as a rant.
  
  I think it might be worth starting a new thread with the intention of collecting constructive ideas which HubPages could use - then maybe they'll give us an explanation as to why they can't do them?
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I think this thread is fine the way it is. HP is looking. They're just not saying anything. I also don't think PD was being defensive or taking anything as a personal attack. I'm as frustrated as he is. I just don't write in caps.
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Actually he said both those things in one of his posts, but that's not the point.
  
  I have started a new thread to consolidate all the suggestions made thus far. If they are all in one post, perhaps we can embarrass HP into responding to it?
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SirDentposted 12 years ago
Content thieves are no different than thieves who would come into your home and steal from you. I saw the total number of pages at 460. I do hope HP is able to figure something out to take care of this type of problem.
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Jason Menayanposted 12 years ago
Unfortunately, since we don't own Hubs (you do), filing DMCA complaints has to be done by you, asserting your own copyright for the content that you own that's been copied. (We are legally unable to do so.)

Maybe if enough DMCA complaints are filed, then the site will pull down all content that was copied without authorization.
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1. 81
  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  HP used to add the red copyright symbol next to a Hub that was found copied elsewhere. However, I just found 26 copies across only two of my hubs, and some of those copies have been around for quite some time. Is HP no longer doing this kind of duplicate content notification?
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Of course.
  
  But a place HP might be able to help is negotiating better rates with a place like Copyscape for their api usage. You could then resell that to us or even provide it free to people who meet some specific goal.
  
  It's not so horrible for me to pay $15 to check 300 hubs, but I'd like to pay less. If I could pay less and check a few hundred more from my other sites, I'd be even happier, but that might be a lot to ask :-)
  
  What'd I'd envision here would be something similar to the statistics page where you could check off what you wanted to do and perhaps even say "do that every month".
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  SweetiePieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  There are several sites that do that for free:
  
  articlechecker.com
  grammarly.com
  
  Or just old fashion Google. I checked these against Copyscape, and came up with the same results.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Those free sites are not very useful when you want to check hundreds or thousands of pages as I do. I have to buy credits from Copyscape and submit an XML file that contains what I want checked. They charge 5 cents per page - I have well over 4,000 pages that I would LIKE to check, but I can only afford to check the most popular.
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  SweetiePieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I have 351 hubs, and 12 blogs. I am a busy bee too. I just do not have time to fiddle with every single one.
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  SilverGenesposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Google is very quick to respond and after I filed a report for something similar, they removed the site from their listings within hours. It is still online but not in Google. I guess using this method will require going through all the major search engines and trying to have the sites de-listed. Meanwhile, it would be helpful if the copy and paste function was removed from HP.
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wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Pearldiver. I looked for a while last night for any copies of my hubs, but got fed up. There doesn't seem to be a way to search in that debacle, either. Anyone have a good search method I'm not aware of?

I encourage everyone to take a look, because as Jason said, if enough DMCAs are filed, we have a good shot at shutting down this jerk... or jerks.

Again, I personally want to thank PD for letting us all know. It's nice to see someone in the community keeping an eye on things for us. If you knew him you'd know he's not ranting, nor does he have anything but the best of intentions for all of us.
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  Mark Ewbieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  +1. I am surprised that HP does not take this much more seriously. Surely they are losing income too? They definitely lose a little reputation in my opinion - we're writers - look after us and our content.
  
  I am 100% behind what PD does and has done, and I can fully understand any annoyance he feels.
  
  Hp should have someone full time on this.
  
  And to everyone else. If you get a high score on here you will get copied. That 'Hubber' following you may just want a reminder of his next piece to copy.
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  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Amen I triple this notion.
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  logic,commonsenseposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Praying again in the forums?
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  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I find myself once again on my knees.......
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  logic,commonsenseposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Now I'm getting excited!
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  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  LMAO I tend to stir up these emotions in people.....x
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  hey girl miss you
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  blondepoetposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Oh it is but my darling wifey xxx
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habeeposted 12 years ago
I can't find the site. ??
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  talkblog.info
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  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Habee, I found at least one of your hubs there. Can't remember the title now but it has something to do with The English Language or Literature.
  
  I saw a hub on horses and feel sure it's yours too.
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  habeeposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Okay, I found it...I think.
  
  Maybe not. All I see are links to airport shuttles, buses, and taxis.
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  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  The site is talkblog.info
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rebekahELLEposted 12 years ago
ahh, the lowest of the low, that's just wrong.

no names, nothing, even a poem with all rights reserved copied at the bottom. sic
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Sally's Troveposted 12 years ago
@PD, thanks for starting this thread. I had been assuming that HP was notifying us of duplicate content, so I wasn't doing the checking I should have been. So far this morning I've filed 10 DMCAs across only two of my hubs. I have no idea what the total damage is yet. This is very discouraging.
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rmcrayneposted 12 years ago
I didn't see any signs of monetization on Talk Blog. What's their angle? So far the articles I've checked have been hubs published in the last 2 weeks.
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  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Rmcrayne, I noticed the same thing, no ads. I think they are waiting, hoping to get a lot of traffic then rent ad spaces.
  
  I have a friend with a website that says it pays more than placing ads from advertisers.
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  brittanytoddposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Do you think it's a person who got banned and wants revenge? Maybe I've been reading too many comics, but I just think this is horrible! We should all report this site.
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  rmcrayneposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Everything I checked was published here between "11 days ago" and "2 weeks ago". Interesting that the search function does not seem to work. No matter what search term I typed, it took me to the same page.
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SweetiePieposted 12 years ago
A large number of my hubs that are being copied are not even being caught by the duplication checker. I have to watch out for spikes in traffic, and then do a Google search to check.
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leahleflerposted 12 years ago
This is a good reminder for me- I just checked a few hubs and found them copied elsewhere (not on talkblog, but on other sites). DMCA notices are being submitted. Ugh.

Fortunately, I only have a little over 100 hubs. It would be nice if the "duplicate" checker on HP actually worked - it has never detected anyone duplicating my work. I usually end up copying text from one of my articles into google, and then I see what sites come up with the exact same text. That would be impossible with a large number of hubs, though (too time consuming).
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ThePracticalMommyposted 12 years ago
A simple question (okay, more like a few): by directly checking this site, are we giving it the traffic it might be looking for? How can we check without inadvertantly giving these scraping sites more traffic? Is it only by using the other sites some of you mentioned?

I feel like I am missing something or perhaps I am not understanding...
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againsttheoddsposted 12 years ago
There are many ways to counter scraping methods. One simple one would be to monitor traffic logs and if you see an ip address that visits/downloads large amounts of hubs in a period of time then they should be blocked/checked further. I like the other idea of making links where it would require a lot of manual editing making mass copying unfeasible. Other ideas exist as well as long as these don't affect legit SEO rankings it should be done for who wants to write a lot of content just to have it copied.
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Sally's Troveposted 12 years ago
PD has alerted us to talkblog.info, and I would like to alert you all to an entity called Joaquin Rozo, aka joaquinrozo, aka joaquin77me. This mystery scraper has posted at least two of my hubs (I haven't gone through all the damage yet) to an amazing number of sites. Thanks to the diligence and concern of one of these site's administrators (who responded swiftly to my DMCA notice), this scraper's content is coming from, at least in part, contentcrooner.com's feed. Now I'm on that trail. Mercy.
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  brittanytoddposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for getting to the bottom of this and doing what you can.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I'm a dog on a hot trail.
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Jerrico Usherposted 12 years ago
HP is doing all they can do to stop scraping/stealing of our content- they have a system that literally watches our work and tells us when it's been "copied" anywhere (answering from the feed so if this is redundant sorry).

From there it's out of their hands and into yours- you'll never stop it so long as the web is a public place but you can fight it- it's tedious and there are no shortcut answers other than hiring a lawyer to watch and take the fight on for you- some actually do this- if I had the money I sure would... luckily, your article is still in Google's eyes the original and will always be the ranking one not the copies.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  But their checker doesn't do a very good job. Those of us who use other checkers often find copying that HP has not noticed.
  
  You really cannot depend upon HP to find stolen content.
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  SilverGenesposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Actually, I've found it works in the opposite way. If a hub is copied after being on HP it does not show up as duplicate. If, however, it is posted on HP after being on another site, then it does prompt the duplicate flag. Writers on HP need that to work the other way around.
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  Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I've been notified about copyright infringement (red c circled) AFTER a hub was originally published on hp, I think your wrong about that one- it's working perfectly and in the right direction. If you publish a hub and someone copies it, they find it- I'm sure there are circumstances that bypass their checks. I've noticed some of my content that was copied (before moving to hp from another site) I checked on copyscape and nothing showed up but HP found an instance CS didn't- I'm not sure what they use to find dupes but I doubt it's only copyscape.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  An important point about the contributions to this thread is that HP is NOT doing all they can to tell us when our work has been copied. I think they used to, in the past, with that red copyright symbol, but that's not happening now.
  
  If notification of copyright infringement is something that HP can no longer do for the articles on its site, then it needs to remove that symbol at the bottom of the "my account" page.
  
  Or it needs to re-institute the checking it had done in the past.
  
  Which is it, HP?
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  Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I understand your argument but realize it's not HP's job to watch our content- it's ours. If they owned it (i.e. we couldn't keep our copyright) then maybe they'd be responsible but realistically speaking, they are allowing you to host and earn from your content- they are not required to hold your hand and secure your copyright- I personally think it's rediculous to "expect" otherwise- but that's just MY view.
  
  They offer a courtesy with the dupe checking but realize it costs them money to do this too, are you willing to give them 2% more of your page views to cover expenses? Regardless, there isn't much they can legally do anyway like Jason said.
  
  Most other sites do nothing to tell you when your content is copied. I think people have this entitlement that HP should do everything for them and that's just not the way it is. I believe they are doing all they can, but nothing is foolproof- ot even copyscape I'm finding. Hubbing is a business (yours) as is the responsibility- they are merely offering you an opportunity and that does not mean they "have to" hold your hubs and contents hands when the bad guys come but yet they do many things to assist you in this. just my 2 cents. For what it's worth. I know most of you won't agree with me but it had to be said.
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Stacie Lposted 12 years ago
here's a HUB quote..they are either a member or are so stupid to copy s hubbers own experiences word for word

Tribute To My Fabulous First 100 Followers

November 29th, 2011
Posted in B-SIDE
Write comment

A month ago, after reading several hubs back to back I realized it was time to set goals for my work on HubPages. Well tonight, fittingly on Thanksgiving weekend, the first of those goals has been met. I have reached my first hundred followers. I am thankful for every one of you.

http://talkblog.info/2011/11/tribute-to … followers/

Does anyone recognize this one?
i also found some ebay ads on a few hubs..sheesh!
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  brittanytoddposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I searched it on Google and it's from this hub:
  http://tirelesstraveler.hubpages.com/hu … -Followers
  
  TirelessTraveler's hub: "A Tribute to my Fabulous First 100 Followers" (just in case the link gets snipped.
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  rmcrayneposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  All you have to do is type the titles in the search bar here at HubPages since everything was copied, including titles.
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SweetiePieposted 12 years ago
A lot of these scraper sites are hosted out of China, which has different ideas about what is considered plagiarism. I was reading awhile back about how some Chinese bloggers want more accountability for bloggers and advertisers, who pretty much take content from other places, and just insert their brand/name. I had one Chinese website copying jewelry hubs and inserting the word shoes where necklaces went. Then, the word shoes was hyperlinked to their online mall selling shoes. I really thought this particular guy had a foot fetish, as it made no sense at all what he was doing.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  What a gem, SweetiePie. The same thing happened to me with my hub about bringing houseplants indoors for the winter...I said nothing about sheds, but sure enough, sheds were worked into the text. The site that did that didn't appear to be from China, but who knows? We're all global now.
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  SweetiePieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  The scrapers that target me are all out of China, and I think it was a particular guy because I found his name on a lot of the domains. He was really obsessed with shoes, and even though I was annoyed, I sort of made me laugh after awhile. You would have to be a little off to copy jewelry hubs for the purpose of promoting shoes.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Love it!
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  SweetiePieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It is funny now . Back when it first happened I was irritated, but eventually I had to see the humor in it.
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melbelposted 12 years ago
Do we have any legal ground against Chinese content scrapers? Ive heard that Chinese laws make the subject very sticky.
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melbelposted 12 years ago
HubPages would have to pay Yahoo search in order to use their search engines via scripts in order to check for dupes. I don't know the price, but it's why Edweirdo quit what he was doing. It's against TOS of search engines to programmatically comb through their SERPs unless you pay and I think yahoo is the only one who allows it... for a price of course.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I just wish the tools were smarter. As I said, I'm using Copyscape Premium, which is 5 cents a search.
  
  It stupidly thinks that I care if one of my hub titles is over in the sidebar of somebody else's hubs. Sure, it doesn't take much time to realize that and move on, but when you are checking hundreds of pages, wasted time adds up.
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Maralexaposted 12 years ago
Because I dislike this sort of thing so much, I went to talkblog.info and randomly searched some pages. These are some of the results I got:

Western Short Story : Tam the Tall Tale Teller #118 Page 457

More of My Favorite Hubbers….They Are Awesome…You Should Read! Page 450

Advice for Beginner Online Writers About Article Writing and Your Online Persona Page 440

Increase Web Visibility With Search Engine Optimization page 435

Kindle Fire – A Quick Look! Page 459

Pay It Forward- My Story! Page 406

That gal done did me in

The Page numbers indicate the page on talkblog.in. This was just a quick look. This site was created by a Chinese site creator.
Maybe HubPages could do something "in bulk"????

Hope this helps.
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  Jason Marovichposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  @Maralexa @PD - Thank you, both. They are quite thorough, I have a grand total of ten hubs and they've got one of mine...nice.
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Cardisaposted 12 years ago
I signed up with Copyscape premier today and my email report was not good. I just finished filing a DMCA complaint and have more to do. I am so stressed right now.

I tried contacting some hubbers about hubs I found but I have my stuff to deal with and totally having a headache. I have never experienced this before so it's kind of a shock! I was really hoping those content thieves would bypass me.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I think it's really nice to let hubber friends know what's going on, but the scope of this is huge, and you have to take care of yourself. I had no idea how large the problem was until today (made my apologies and excuses for not checking into this more thoroughly earlier on in this thread).
  
  I was hoping the content thieves would bypass me too, but no dice!
  
  To PD's original point, and in counterpoint to Jason's comment, this IS an HP problem. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and what's bad for the goose, well, fill in the blanks.
  
  I would like HP to take a leadership stance on this and add meaningful communication about what their leadership is. Really, if all of our stuff gets scraped like this, then what does that say about the HP site?
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  MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  As of December 11th, 2011, there are
  
  1,215,289 PUBLISHED HUBS
  230,520 PUBLISHED USERS
  
  I wonder how many staff HP has...
  
  In addition, you realize that HP does not claim ownership to YOUR (read again please) YOUR articles. The copyright belongs to you, and as such, it is your responsibility to defend it.
  
  This really is the way that the "real" writing world works.
  
  HP may have a vested interest in defending your copyright, but you need to realize that anything they do to help is not legally required. You can ask nicely, you can even remind them that it is in their best interest to help, but in the end you are really asking them to protect YOUR butt. You might want to remember that when you are making demands.
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  Cardisaposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  The email I sent to one website bounced and Whois isn't helping me and Google, well it keeps telling me it's not a valid URL. What am I to do? This website has two of my best hubs.
  
  (1)Then Brain Foods to include in your diet
  (2) The Health benefits of eating Pumpkin
  
  Forgive my grammar and spelling I have no strength. I feel helpless.
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SweetiePieposted 12 years ago
The part about asking them to protect your butt is a bit harsh. I have been on Hubpages for almost five years now, and when the community was smaller, we always looked out for each other. Also, the copy checker used to work better about a year ago, and that is what people are concerned about. I have 12 blogs of my own, I am working on a book, so I do check my own work as much as I can. I also let others know when people copy their work, as much as I can. With a community spirit we can help each other. It does not have always be you against the world so to speak.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  TY, SweetiePie, you said it so much more nicely than I would have.
  
  HP isn't about a hubber looking for protection or whining about the course that writing on the net is taking, but HP is or should be about being a business and cultivating a market base. When HP authors come to the point where, when they write here their stuff gets scraped, then that is an HP corporate issue. It's bad for business.
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  SweetiePieposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I agree with you 100%.
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  Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I'm starting to think I should add a "protecting your copy on HP or elsewhere" section to my book lol.
  
  Many people simply have no clue what to do or all the intricacies of how to defend their copyright and I'm assuming that this is why so many are passionate about trying to "force" HP to "do something" when it's their responsibility (the user not HP)...
  
  One thing I notice is that it seems to be 1. the inexperienced users or newbies to writing for clickcome, or 2. hubbers who have been here a while but have never had to defend (or successfully found their efforts successful) that are telling HP to do something.
  
  Fact is the more experienced hubbers know the game and appreciate that HP doing anything is a bonus- appreciate it don't mock it with entitlement you don't have the right to have.
  
  perhaps someone can write a hub about the intricacies and steps of protecting your work after it's stolen? I could do it but time is limited and I already wrote a hub about what "I" do- it would be a good idea to set this up so it's not just a hub about hubpages content protection/fighting for your rights but overall content (so you can still garnish "clicks" from non-hubpages account holders). I may write this section to cover as many potential hurdles as possible i.e. china- breaking down the great wall - lol...
  
  I love hubbers passion- don't always agree with your rants (and I have a few of my own you don't agree with too) but love that you guys voice things- win, lose, or draw
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  MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I'm all about helping each other out and joint efforts. And yes, it is bad for HP's business too. However, when you demand that they "take a leadership role" you are implying that it is their responsibility. It isn't. It is the writers. If they give help, be grateful for it. But don't expect them to carry a burden that is not theirs.
  
  HP is essentially acting as an agent. Yes, an agent does have a interest in a writer's work and yes, they lose money if the writer loses money. However, there is no single agent in this world that actively tracks all of his client's work to make sure it isn't being duplicated.
  
  That is why it is, and always has been, the writer's job to either maintain rights and guard them themselves or sell rights and give that responsibility to someone else. You can't have it both ways.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  That's the point, Melissa.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  No, it wasn't.
  
  The point was essentially "Be nice when asking someone to do you a favor." Or maybe it was "Take responsibility for your own work" or possibly "If you are going to write for money, please learn something about the business aspect of it"
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againsttheoddsposted 12 years ago
I'm pretty new so I don't have a handle on what HP already does. For example, I've never seen this copyright violation warning that some say is already in place. However, there are things they can do that you as the writer won't be able to do simply because you don't have access to the logs or the capability to blacklist ips like you would if it was your own site. You couldn't see that a bot just stopped by and accessed 1000 hubs in 1 minute. That type of stuff should and can be looked at if not already.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, exactly. I think. I don't have the net/SEO savvy that you seem to have, but what you say makes sense.
  
  I'd like to know that I can write here with HP taking their percentage, while I take mine, but the split in percentage I pay is for their managing a site that makes it worthwhile for me to make an effort.
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againsttheoddsposted 12 years ago
my hubscore just dropped about 10 pts since my initial response, hope HP isn't taking this the wrong way.
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  MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Hubber score is automated... no one quite understands it, but I don't think it gets offended easily
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  No. You are new,with few hubs. Over time, it will stabilize and move around less.
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  CloudExplorerposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Wow if hubpages took note of every single response, that would mean my hubscore should be through the roof, lol.
  
  Well actually I've read so many hubs in three months it feels like I've read ten books or more. Your hub score must relate to your hubtivity overall, because as soon as I get off of hubpages for more than 3 days it drops a great deal, as well as I guess its like Pcunix said, due to to being so new to hubpages.
  
  I also think that the longer your on here, the harder it may become for your score to drop, because I think its also a measure amongst all our fellow hubbers hubtivity as well.
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melbelposted 12 years ago
Well, HubPages legally cannot file DMCAs FOR their users. It's not that they don't want to, I'm sure they would LOVE to, as copied hubs does hurt them too. However, they actually have absolutely NO legal ground to do so, because the copyright belongs to you, the writer.

The staff can file DMCAs for their own hubs because are the authors of their own hubs. They have absolutely no legal ground over any other person's hubs and thus cannot do anything in that area.

Now someone said some of Simone's hubs are being copied by that site. She can do something, but only about her own hubs that are being copied. She legally cannot say anything for anyone else.

They could tell you that your work is being copied... and it would be great to have added functionality in that area.
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  HP did tell you that in the past. It seems that this "functionality" is not working now.
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Richieb799posted 12 years ago
I suppose right-click would not stop some bots from stealing stuff, only last week I had to submit DMCA complaints to Host Gator and Adsense, then the owner removed my stuff
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sunforgedposted 12 years ago
Considering how often these issues are reported, i dont expect hp will ever be changing their policy of inaction.

The dmca point is valid, but not identifying scraper behaviour is a technical failure on their end.

Submitting a dmca is not by any means the only method a webmaster can use to protect their content and servers. If hp would to put the time and effort into publically spanking a few of these large scraper sites built solely on materials from its servers, perhaps the pirate community wouldnt consider our work to be such easy pickings ,
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Serious question - explain what you mean by "publicly spanking"?
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Not necessarily. There are a number of things you can do, as a scraper, to make your efforts appear realistic.
  
  When I was learning to program, I had a project where I had to create something that appeared realistic. I wrote my script in such a way that I could make it look like it was a person surfing the web instead of a script.
  
  I made it look as if the "person" was using Firefox on Linux. Also, since a script would comb a site very quickly, you'd have to slow it down. You could easily do this with a sleep function which would cause the script to sleep for x seconds. Since x would be the same amount of time every interval.. "Run script" wait 2 seconds "run script" wait 2 second "run script", what they could do is use a random number generator to have it sleep for random amounts of time. And all that would be easy as pie.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, except that if you wait between grabs, you waste time and you don't escape detection - if you pull 4,000 pages from my site, I know you are a bot no matter how long you take to do it,
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  What about IP spoofing or something? Just running ideas here. I'm not a scraper, I swear!
  
  Aside from a random day of lots of traffic which would show up on my radar for sure.
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  You can't really do much with ip spoofing if you are trying to download content. It has to go somewhere real..
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  melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Another problem for the script would be that it would most likely be programmed to visit links in a logical order, such as a list of other hubs (suggested reads, hubs of commenters, etc) it could grab as it runs through a given hub.
  
  And, yeah, I guess really HOW much effort is a programmer going to put in to bypass a system that HP might have in place? With the amount of skill it could take, the person could get a real job.
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  Rising Carenposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Actually, that's very easy. If a scripter goes for the basic, it'd take maybe 2 hours to code. With some complexity, maybe 4 hours.
  
  Have the script load up the hub of the day, locate one of the related hubs and store in array. Pick first hub in list, scrape, remove itself from array, add its related hubs to array. Set the max array size to 500 or 1000 to stop stack overflow. Run until a quota is reached or an error occurs. If you've ever written a program to solve a maze, it's essentially the same.
  
  To have it more random, it can use the latest hub and every time a set interval, switch to choosing urls from hot or best.
  
  Easy peasy stuff and can easily be adapted for multiple websites so a scraper can reduce his scrape load per website by having a rotation. Using perl, which is great at text parsing (and therefore url/text parsing), it'd be just too easy.
  
  And if HP tries to locate scrapers through usage, the quotas, time limits, and rotation limits can easily be changed.
  
  Also, even without any of these measure in place, to HP it would only like a person frantically viewing pages. Downloads wouldn't be tracked since your browser downloads the HTML of a page and that can be saved and parsed through the program with no additional load on HP's server. HP could only determine a potential scraper by how many pages its IP loads per minute.
  
  With IP spoofing, which can also easily be set through other programs that are already available online, the rotations could be set to fit the approximate time of an IP spoofing cycle and thus make it seem like different users are viewing a page.
  
  So instead of pulling 4000 pages straight up, the script could pull 100 pages per site per IP over time.
  
  Prevention is futile. HP would be better just trying to focus on how to detect it after the fact.
  
  And to whoever suggested removing right click, that'd only prevent beginners. Anyone using a script doesn't need right click at all, just needs the page to load.
  
  Note: I'm not a content scraper. I'm just a CS and Math major. I do use scripts for stuff, but not for theft - just to analyze keywords Google Adwords gave me from the CSV files. Oh, and to analyze the English and French languages for these books I'm trying to write. In case you're wondering, no I don't make scripts for others (especially if it's not legit) so don't bother asking.
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  sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  currently the bar is set at 0 , there will always be rogue programmers that have either more time or skill then what a small outfit like hp can handle.
  
  doesnt mean zero effort should be put into combating it.often these types are just script kiddies playing with other peoples toys
  
  this isnt a "content scraper" ... but take a peek at the methods used to hide its use and footprint:
  
  http://www.scrapebox.com/
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Richieb799posted 12 years ago
Even Ezine falls victim to scraped content and we know how strict they are...
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  If you mean EzineArticles, the whole purpose of having an article on EA is so that it CAN be copied (with its links intact, of course).
  
  What EA doesn't do is check whether the content is being taken WITHOUT the links, and I guess that is difficult to do, given that they encourage copying otherwise so there are so many copies out there.
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  sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Huh? As in they publish scraped materials?
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  Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  no they have a rule that if you publish there you HAVE TO allow others even non members to copy your content so long as they leave in your links, this is basically using a "syndication" model but it's flaw is it depends on the "honor system" and there's no real way to moderate it (it can be good though if people actually follow the rules and include your link but more than not it's like putting your content and copyright in harms way) -
  
  In my experience 99.9% of the people who take your content break the one part of this rule that makes this lucrative for the publisher- they try to get away with just saying your name, no link back, no traffic generated to you from their site- when I catch these sob's I make it my mission to pull that content down.
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Richieb799posted 12 years ago
Yes I forgot about the links part but do you think people scraping with bots include these links?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Some do. I've used a Wordpress plugin that uploaded EzineArticles to your blog - it included the links.
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  Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  most don't as they are making money from the content and don't want you to leave their site to read the "real" authors blog... I love eza for it's traffic potential but copyright you may as well give it away there...
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  Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Some of them are easy to fool though. I have a couple of other domains that redirect to my site. They tend to miss those, thinking they are not internal links.
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missoliveposted 12 years ago
I am commenting so my followers can see this. I just visited the site and did find SEVERAL hubs that I recognize. The website is talkblog.info

It is a Wordpress blog. WordPress has a digital DMCA form here - if you spot your hub file immediately

you can use this link to file digitally - http://automattic.com/dmca/

best of luck to all involved!
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  Sally's Troveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It appears that the form is only for Wordpress.com blogs, not Wordpress.org. Talkblog.info is a Wordpress.org site.
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  missoliveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Sally's Trove - I see that -
  will need to try a different route - I just found one of mine
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SomewayOuttaHereposted 12 years ago
hey PD...you must be busy cleaning up what you can
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  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  It's really interesting watching how Pirates work Someway!
  
  I always feel it's sad when these types of threads get pirated also..
  
  I always wonder Why certain pirates feel the need to ride roughshod over the efforts of others who take the time to Stand Up Against Article Thieves!
  
  I remember the work that Sunforged and I have done in the past with Stolen Content Thieves... From his posts on this thread... need I say more?
  
  Ummm
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LeanManposted 12 years ago
The "your hub has been copied" and little red copy-write symbol is spatted across a few of my hubs, but only a couple actually show details when I click the copied hubs option ... I have filled DMCAs against a couple and they have been removed - but the tool also highlights other hubs where my hubs are in their feeds!!
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Cardisaposted 12 years ago
Any advice on what to do on my situation guys?

I can't seem to file the DMCA with Google, what am I to do?
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  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  In my Original Post on this thread I gave the required information to Take Down this Site and the Stolen Content. BUT Use the Full R-126 ID that I posted.
  
  This is NOT some Chinese site that no one can sort out!
  
  This site appears to be HOSTED in California!
  
  If I lived in the US I would simply pick up the phone and TELL HP's competitor - Demand Media Inc. to STOP Raping HP Content and Hosting Article Thieves via Demand Media's division - eNom.com - Some Will Recall Sunforged doing exactly that Last Time!
  
  Their Ph # 425.274.4500
  
  And/Or...
  
  Address your DMCAs to The Web Master: Sales@enom.com
  
  THAT'S (not Ranting) What I meant by HP taking some sort of Direct Action!
  This is a Competitor that just happens to host and register the site that is stealing our content! - As I said I don't live in the US.. But as a Competent Businessman, I do know what Direct Strategic Action is... it is the next level UP from what HP's competitor has done by aiding Article Thieves to destroy the value of our work here!
  
  BTW... To be able to have your Site Registered via eNom.com.. one MUST have a Reseller Agency or equivalent with eNom.com! Which Means that VIA that party's agreement (TOS) with eNom.com... eNom Controls and Monitors TalkBlogs performance!
  They (enom) have the SAME Ability to respond to a DMCA as any Registrar.
  SO..... Direct your Concerns at their Host... HPs Competitor - Demand Media Inc.
  
  Come to think of it.... Don't Some of the Writers here have a Relationship also with Demand Media? (or Studios)
  I hope that's NOT the reason Why our efforts have been rubbished!
  reply report
0
SirDentposted 12 years ago
Found a phone number for them if no one has tried it yet. 16613102107
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1. 0
  SirDentposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  A quick search of the phone number in google lands me at https://www.google.com/search?gcx=w& … 613102107.
  
  I called the number and got a recording but it was hard to make out the name of the company. It sounded like Nancies.com.
  reply report
2. 59
  A Troubled Manposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Principle cities with the 661 area code in Southern California...
  
  Bakersfield, Palmdale, Santa Clarita, Lancaster
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91
wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
Well, I found one of mine and no doubt there are more. If you have any hubs on the first few pages of the "hot" category, beware. I'm now going to track down the rest and file my DMCAs. From what I gather, here is the relevant information:

It is not a Chinese Site. - I think it is Pakistani (like the others)
It is hosted in California by eNom.com
It was registered by eNom.com - a division of DemandStudios no less!

ALL notifications and DMCAs should be sent to sales@eNom.com - who are at fault!
They MUST include - 'Domain ID:D44166883-LRMS' - as this tells eNom exactly who the thieves Are!
Hubbers need to do that directly with eNom.com or they will get messed around and get nowhere!
Perhaps.. someone in the US can save some time and simply RING eNom 425.274.4500 (WebMaster) and insist that they take down our work...

When I get through a few things in my day, I will call them myself. It might be good for more than one of us to bring this to their attention, however.
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76
sunforgedposted 12 years ago
With some basic searches I found both these software programs designed and marketed to scrape hubpages (among other things)

http://www.get-article.com/ (watch the video and then laugh when you think how much good "disable right click" would do)

Hubpages Scrapper [sic] - felt no need to share a direct download link

I even found nulled/ download and use versions of the first software. THis stuff is all real easy to find and use by those who follow such methods, its probably a good idea as web publishers and writers to be aware of what you are up against.

With the higher visibility you create by publishing at hubpages I personally would expect a bit more security and pro-active anti-theft from their end. But maybe I have skewed expectations.
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Pearldiverposted 12 years ago
@Laura... Nice Work Wordscribe...

Great posts J... I totally agree with you.. But You KNOW that!

There is absolutely No Way this stuff can be ignored.. this retards the true value of our work, deflects traffic.. and highlights the need for Duty of Care to be recognized as needing to be more than a one way commitment or effort! (Irrespective of how a TOS is worded or selectively interpreted!)

Cheers to everyone who has posted pro-actively here!

(Too Good Josh! )
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melbelposted 12 years ago
Some new guys have been copying some of mine:
activeweblist.com

Not verbatim, but they essentially copy the entire hub and then just change a few words... it's still duplicate in my eyes.

Their crappy navigation reminds me of 27articles or whatever.
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91
wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
How are you guys finding all your scraped content on talkblog dot info? For about 5 minutes, it seems the search was working and I was able to find one of mine... But, all of a sudden no search results are coming up at all, it just reloads the home page...

Are you using Copyscape? I guess that's what I should do instead of digging through all of our stolen work... which is more than irritating.
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1. 59
  missoliveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  wordscribe43 - I'm actually googling my titles and they are turning up on Google HIGHER than my original content. Try that instead of the disabled search engine. I'm only finding whatever I have posted since 11/24/11
  reply report
68
Moon Lightenedposted 12 years ago
This is sickening and extremely disheartening. I also realize it's unavoidable on the internet, but now that many here are aware of it, I would think HP could stand by all their members and do something. Is anything at all being done? I've seen the site but honestly I don't have the heart to search for any of my hubs there. I may not be the world's greatest writer but I put a lot of time an effort into what I post here. It's really a downer.
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1. 68
  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  The Key to Dealing with these guys is to NOT Let it Get You Down to the point that they can negatively influence your personal goals and commitment... You get even, by rising above the BS and exposing those that feel it is okay to steal your Anything!
  
  This is an INDUSTRY Problem.. which makes it MORE than merely ours as writers!
  
  That point alone is what motivates me personally to ask every publisher that shares 'an interest' in anything that I write... This First Question:
  
  "What Exactly are YOU Doing to Ensure that OUR Industry is one that is At Least as Sustainable as it can reasonably be expected to be under ANY set of Circumstances?"
  
  I Expect that to be a Hard Question to Answer: That's Why I'm Asking it!
  If I am Fobbed or Derailed or Put Down for Asking It... Then Not Only Do I KNOW the answer, but I Also KNOW The Depth and Insecurities of Those Who Have A Problem With My Question!
  And They Will Absolutely Hate... My Second Question!
  
  @ Cheers WS.. That is exactly what we writers must do to 'rise above' the BS.. Sooner or later this makes a change! One step at a time.. but positively!
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91
wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
I just found (through a lot of searching, I might add) the link about what eNom requires for a DMCA. I wanted to find out their requirements, since they're all different and I don't want to waste any more time than need be.

Here's the link: http://www.enom.com/terms/copyright_policy.asp
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Greekgeekposted 12 years ago
I'm a little befuddled, here.

As far as I know, there's absolutely no way on earth to stop content from being scraped. The public accessibility of web content -- it can be readily grabbed by any web browser or bot -- means that it's also available for scraping software. That's just how it works. Complaining about it is like complaining about old age.

Ranting against Hubpages and smearing them with ulterior motives (" I Also KNOW The Depth and Insecurities of Those Who Have A Problem With My Question!!") for failing to solve a basic and fundamental aspect of the web is unfair. It's like accusing your doctor of incompetence or worse because she hasn't fixed that old age problem for you.

If you really care that passionately about it, how about educating yourself in computer programming? Maybe you can find some way to stop it that all the industry experts haven't thought of. Until then, we're stuck with it, and we're stuck with the tiresome fact that we have to defend our own copyright... other sites (meaning Hubpages) cannot defend our copyright for us, since it's not THEIR right to do so.
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1. 68
  Pearldiverposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Is THAT the best you can do?
  
  OMG.. You may well find that
  
  A - I am younger than You
  
  B - I am somewhat more educated in far greater and more relevant areas than you attempt to discredit ME with!
  
  Have you considered that before you Attacked My personage?
  
  Clearly I was well justified mentioning Insecurities
  
  I don't believe I mentioned HP Specifically in the post that you are referring to! Why did that specific question concern you - you're just a hubber/writer aren't you? If so, then you are in the Same boat as anyone else and could perhaps show that the REAL ISSUE concerns you! (Rather than poor old ME ) If Not, Why would you intimate that I was specifically challenging HP?
  The question was Valid - Pro-active - Strategic and Clearly Appropriate!
  
  I don't believe that I Am 'Ranting' as you arrogantly intimate.. I think perhaps the Real Issue is as embarrassing to many here as it is to me!
  
  FYI.... EVERY Corporate Entity in this Industry that relies upon an income and relationship with 3rd party entities (like Any of the Writers here) and on terms such as those between those parties and platforms (like HP) HAS what is commonly Known in Law as 'A Duty of Care'
  - it is reliant on good faith and that is a reciprocal expectation!
  - Now Before you Refute or Abuse MY Good Faith (in pointing this fact out to you)
  - Consider Where YOUR Good Faith lies in regards to your questionable attack on me!
  
  I Am NOT The ISSUE! Nor Is My Personality, Accent, Good Faith or Objective in regard to the Primary Issue!
  Why would you attempt to promote me as such?
  reply report
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sunforgedposted 12 years ago
so turn your google machine on and learn about the multitude of ways professional web admin use to identify bots, scrapers and similar ilk and block their access.

Many of the ways are hinted at here already.

Yes, web scrapers can be blocked ... can ALL bad bots be blocked, no ..
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1. 79
  Rising Carenposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I repeat. Prevention is useless; detection is everything.
  
  Even if there were other ways to detect bots and scripts, the people making them are techy enough to adjust them based on new methods of prevention. Scrapers may often be computer noobs, but they're not the ones making the bots. They're just the ones buying/stealing the bots that the l33t made.
  
  That's like trying to prevent pc gaming piracy through new DRM - it always gets cracked eventually and then you have to spend months/years developing a new method that will also end up cracked. They only get to be "protected" for about one month in the whole year - often times they're only "protected" for just a few days/hours.
  
  That's why the ONLY way to stop scrapers is through after-the-fact detection. As long as these content thieves try to rank for google (or yahoo or bing), they can be traced through them, and thus can be found. Now whether or not their Web hosts/Countries will let you do anything about it...That's another story.
  
  Some people might argue that making an effort will at least stop the less experienced scraper. However, I doubt they're the ones who end up stealing hundreds or thousands of articles. Those who can afford to buy/steal bots are the ones that do this kind of behavior and it really cannot be stopped.
  reply report
91
wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
Okay, help. Here is the email I received from eNom.com

Hello,

Thank you very much for your notification. After researching the domain, we have found that eNom, Inc. only provides domain name registration for this customer. We are not the webhost, internet service provider, or administrator for talkblog.info. Given that we are not the webhost for the domain, the allegedly infringing material identified in your notification does not reside on eNom’s computer servers. Accordingly, we do not have the technical ability to remove or disable specific items of objectionable content.

Again, due to the limited technical sphere in which eNom operates, we do not believe that we are the correct party to contact regarding this matter. In this instance, we suggest that you contact the party operating the website or the party hosting the website to have this matter properly resolved. A "ping" of the website you indicated often reveals the IP number of the party which probably hosts this website. You may then use http://whois.arin.net/uis or another similar tool to identify this party.

Feel free to contact us at copyright@demandmedia.com if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Regards,

Copyright Agent

eNom / Bulk Register

So, who is the webhost?
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sunforgedposted 12 years ago
http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-184-104-0-0-1/pft

worth doublechecking my ping info though before any concerted mail efforts

if that is the host - then:

http://he.net/web_hosting.html

is the hosts site (for further/quicker contact details)
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1. 91
  wordscribe43posted 12 years agoin reply to this
  I got: 184.106.243.57
  
  # http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=NET-1 … xt=netref2
  
  same thing...
  
  I'm seeing something about parkingpage.namecheap as the most recent webhost.
  
  The webhost is parkingpage.namecheap.com
  
  184.106.243.57 - Geo Information
  IP Address 184.106.243.57
  Host parkingpage.namecheap.com
  Location US US, United States
  City New York, NY -
  Organization Slicehost
  ISP Rackspace Hosting
  AS Number AS19994 Rackspace Hosting
  Latitude 40°76'19" North
  Longitude 73°97'63" West
  Distance 7579.06 km (4709.41 miles)
  reply report
  59
  missoliveposted 12 years agoin reply to this
  In the meantime - I'm using the Google form for removal from Google search - here is the link - http://support.google.com/bin/static.py … page=ts.cs
  reply report
  91
  wordscribe43posted 12 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, I've already done that. But, I want the whole site shut down, that's way more important.
  reply report
91
wordscribe43posted 12 years ago
I have filed my complaint with namecheap.com (great, trustworthy name I might add). I will let you all know what they say... I am almost postivie I have the right web hosting company, but I will wait for their reply before I give those of you who've been affected the green light (meaning I've got the right web host and you should launch your DMCA). It's worthwhile to do the DMCA with Google, but it's better to shut the entire operation down or we'll be back-paddling.
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60
againsttheoddsposted 12 years ago
ok how do I get off this thread I unfollowed it and it still shows up in my feed
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84
Maralexaposted 12 years ago
Please read this Forum post. YOUR hub may have been copied. I found these on talkblog.info:

Western Short Story : Tam the Tall Tale Teller #118 Page 457

More of My Favorite Hubbers….They Are Awesome…You Should Read! Page 450

Advice for Beginner Online Writers About Article Writing and Your Online Persona Page 440

Increase Web Visibility With Search Engine Optimization page 435

Kindle Fire – A Quick Look! Page 459

Pay It Forward- My Story! Page 406

That gal done did me in

There are likely many more. This was a quick random search on my part.
Sincerely, maralexa
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