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Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping


:P
On this page:

Apparently I have arrived. It’s gotten so far that I’m on the wrong end of a new scam: Apparently a number of people are hi-jacking blog posts or – in this case – my entire blog and re-posting the SAME UNCHANGED content under their own blog.

For example check out this post on my blog:

http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/413878.aspx

And then this post on this dickhead’s blog (not linking the entry to perpetuate this bullshit so copy it into the browser):

http://www.mehmetcatkin.com/post/2008/11/Inclusion-of-JavaScript-Files.aspx

In fact the entire blog is nothing but ripped off articles from my blog – many, many many posts of them. Here’s a particularily amusing example since I’m talking about renewing my certificate at west-wind.com which makes the whole scam rather obvious:

image

There’s no credit, no copyright notice – nothing. Content taken as their own. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this. A few months ago I ran into another site where somebody else was doing something alike.

It’s great that the Web is an open forum and that everything can be shared so easily but it also makes scams like this so damn easy. I suspect it’s for building up some ‘know-how’ perception or something along those lines for this dickhead since certainly the shitting advertising that is used on the site can’t be worth even the effort of copying all of this content or even setting up the site. Come to think of it, it’s surprising this isn’t happening a lot more because it’s so freaking easy. I mean you have an RSS feed to feed you info all day long all one has to do is republish it and remove the copy rights and off you go.

I suppose one thing I should do is a copyright right into the bottom of each topic – not that that will stop anybody but at least they’ll look slightly retarded publishing the content under their name with my copyright. I think, maybe not.

It’s not worth getting worked up about, I suppose – it’s unlikely that this kind of blatant rip-off ever results in anything, but at the same time it rankles me. Even more so because there’s really very little that can be done about it other “Oh please Mr. Dickhead, please stop. No really, please stop.” Copyright or no, defending a copyright for something like this is not going to be a cost efficient matter.

This just proves my belief that the world is full of morons who have no values or even a concept of it. What drives people into this sort of thing, especially for anything as petty as highly specific geek developer topics? Losers.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is an automated process – and Mehmet CATKIN will find himself the butt of the joke. So here’s to you Mehmet: FUCK YOU!

Posted in Personal  

The Voices of Reason


 

Stacy Draper
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Not to ruin your Saturday, but it is indeed something to get worked up over. The SharePoint buzz guy has done the same thing and has been very successful with it. I explained to him how he was destroying free content on the Internet and he scoffed at me. I think you need to reach out to mehhead and let him or her know that you don't like it and wont stand for it, and turkey after all is only half way around the world. That's not nearly far enough away. I know a few people who have reached out to content thieves and asked them to stop and they did stop. For a little while. Be vigilant. Find his email and tell him to stop. You work hard to write your content, I like reading it, and if people are going to steal it, you’re going to quit writing it. I beg of you to reach out to this knuckle head and make him stop. I’ll even help if I can. Ping me and I can put you in touch with others who have the same problem and you can compare notes with them on how to approach this guy. Please don’t let him get away with it. Please don't discount reaching out to him. Please tell him to stop.

Lee Dumond
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Rick,

Are you sure you are providing the correct URLs here for the comparison? I'm not seeing where Mehmet's post is a blatant rip of yours; but I suspect that may be because I'm looking at the wrong post(s).

Lee Dumond
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Rick,

Yes, you did give us the wrong URL. This is the URL on YOUR site in question:

http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/413878.aspx

You should probably update your post.

And HOLY SHIT YES, that is shameful word-for-word rip. It would be cool if a bunch of people spammed the holy living crap out of his blog and let him know we're onto his game. I see a lot of Busby SEO Test comments, so maybe he's not moderating or spam checking comments. Just a thought...

Eber Irigoyen
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

This has been happening for the last few years, the very least thing you should do is add some comment at the top of your articles stating that the original content is posted at www.blabla...

Then the other commenters are right, ask them to stop, I've seen this before and it usually works

best regards

Steve from Pleasant Hill
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Yeah well. Have noticed this for years when googling for answers on something -- the same questions/answers appearing on many sites.

In your case I suppose it is a twisted form of flattery, but doubt if that is of little consolation. Plagiarism is indeed part of the "nature" of the web.

Dylan Beattie
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

In http : / / www . mehmetcatkin . com/post/2009/03/SSL-Certificate-Renewal-Pain.aspx, our friend Mehmet shares the problems he's had renewing his certificate for west-wind.com

Appears he's not just an unscrupulous plagiarist - he's also really quite stupid.

Mind you - you've got 7,152 subscribers. If 10% of them popped over to Mehmet's blog and left little comments on each story saying "hey, this is entire story is copied word-for-word from www.west-wind.com/weblog/ " it'll probably give him a bit of a shock. Happy to do my share if you think that might help...

Suprotim Agarwal
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Ah! Pagiarism. I can relate to how it feels..I face this problem every now and then and have to keep sending copyright notices. One way to detect a copy of your article is to use www.copyscape.com. Just type in the url over there and it will search out for copies of your page on the web.

For eg: I tried the url http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=99 and check out the number of copies of my article :)..some of the results are not correct but you still can get a fair idea.

yaip
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

What a dickhead.

Mark Nijhof
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Indeed ridicules. On the other hand I was happily surprised when I got contacted by someone asking me if he could translate and publish a post of mine into Russian. I mean cool that the guy asked.

-Mark

laimis
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

I am surprised your blog is copied that way ... I mean it is not that great

David
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

That is a shame to see, but I notice that at the bottom of each post (those I looked at) he has one line that reads "source: http://www.west-wind.com". Not sure if that is a recent addition - that he read this post and decided to cite his source. Not to suggest that plagurism is in anyway ok, but it has been said that immitation is a form of flattery.

Reine Larsson
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Outrageous! I've seen sites where people have copied entire designs and images, but this blunt copy-paste of your complete articles is beyond stupid. Go kick his ass!

Paul
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

It's one thing to link to you and discuss your post and quite another to blatantly copy and paste. Sad to see someone with so little respect for the developer community.

Shan
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Hi Rick, I'm sorry to see it happen to you but unfortunately you won't be able to prevent it. Many people unfortunately have no sense of morality, don't sweat it. Throwing a copyright message on your pages is a good idea but even then international copyright law enforcement is non-existent. Let them re-post your content, eventually smart people with a good moral compass who read their blogs (i.e. the people who matter after all) will pass the blogs and these people up.

Deepak
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Well atleast you could contact google and get that site taken off.

The DMCA section on this site may be useful: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

Henrik Laursen
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Well it seems that he knows that he is doing something wrong. I just posted my outrage about this on the article on his blog and it was taken off immediately.
If any of you guys out there with a spam bot network are reading this, then please DoS attack the shit out of this guys site.

Chris Jefferies
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

I once was camping down by the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park. As we were having our morning coffee we saw these fellows on horseback chase a runaway horse and when caught, whipped that horse with a rope. It was barbaric and cruel.

I am usually a peace loving person but I think "horse whipping" should be reserved as a suitable punishment for spammers, scammers and people like mehmetcatkin. They're like cosmic debris accelerating the entropy of the universe.

"Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmic debris?"

Paul
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Yeah, I wrote an article on CodeProject some 5 years ago that I found a year or so ago on some guy's blog (in the middle of a bigger article but still a word-for-word rip off). I was offended for a few hours, thinking of all the hours I'd spent on that compared to his 40 second copy-paste-post. But in the end I decided to take as as flattery.

That said, if it was the same person time and time again then I might be inclined to start posting responses, no text, just a link back to your own page.

Kevin
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Rick,

What a bunch of crap, this dude has completely ripped off your blog. If you click on his name on the page it actually brings up all the past blogs that you posted http://www.mehmetcatkin.com/author/mehmetcatkin.aspx This is crazy stupid.

Aloha,

Kevin

Rick Strahl
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Thanks for all the comments guys. I've updated the link in the post - whoops - wasn't paying close attention and grabbed a related post.

It looks like the guy knows about this discussion now, since today a small source accredition note has appeared at the bottom of the posts. Right.

There are several other blogs on that same site that are linked - I'm curious if somebody else will find or recognize their blog content ripped in the same way.

Several people mentioned going after these guys, but you'll notice that there's no way to contact on that blog. All you can do is a leave a comment, which is likely to just get removed as several others have seen.

This isn't going to cause me any pain, and I doubt that this content actually will get anywhere to matter, but it just feels silly.

Stacy Draper
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

try admin@mehmetcatkin.com that's who's in the whois database.

justin
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Yes very annoying. My competition steals, prints, copies website layout, and even has the same grammar mistakes.

This thief appears to be in turkey according
http://whois.domaintools.com/mehmetcatkin.com

Your best bet is contact the ICANN register and have it yanked

The guy is breaking policy since the whois database has bogus contact information .

The pictures proves your the victim.

Jeff K
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Hey Rick

check this out - other posts that reference west wind on his site - there are two pages of them

http://www.mehmetcatkin.com/search.aspx?q=west%20wind

worse yet - he's stealing your bandwidth. The posts with images in them are still reference to YOUR site. I ran into this a few years back and wrote an image handler to dole out "special" images to these losers

Roger Pence
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

This doesn't help ease the pain of the guy stealing your thoughts, but I really like your blog. I don't take the time to tell enough how helpful it's been to me. You do a great job.

rp

Doug Dodge
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Jeff K,

That is a hillarious idea!

Rick, maybe send him a graphic of a horse's behind and a caption that says, "I am a thief and horse's ass" :) or something like that.

Best,

DD

Scott Mitchell
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

If I had a nickel for every copy and paste job of one of my articles that I've found or have been alerted to over the last decade, I'd be... well, at least a few bucks richer.

I used to make a big stink about it, e-mailing the plagiarist, his web hosting company and so on, but after a short while realized it wasn't worth the hassle. There is always going to be someone that's doesn't see the harm or immorality of stealing another person's work and rebranding it as their own, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Sure, you may be able to get a particular copycat article or blog taken down, but it doesn't change the person's perspective.

Dave Ward
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

I get a ton of this too. I include a footer in my RSS feed to be clear where the content came from (which they usually strip out anyway), and make sure to cross-link in posts with absolute URLs instead of relative. Beyond that, there's not much you can do without wasting more time than it's worth.

In the end, I wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as your own URLs are deterministic (i.e. no duplication on your own domain), Google is very good at determining which content in the wild is duplicate and penalizes accordingly. I bet this post got the guy more traffic than he's seen since starting to rip you off or ever will afterward.

Anonymous
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

That is just weird. I mean I can't even imagine someone being so stupid and sad and it makes no sense to me. Are they profiting from this?

Mohit Bhardwaj
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

This is just too obscured. Some one can copy an entire post like that without giving credit to the original author. It is really shameful. And moreover, that guy is really stupid.

Rick Strahl
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

I subscribed to comment notifications the blog for a couple of posts and it's kind of amusing to see some of the comments that are being left (and deleted). I'm pretty sure the guy gets the message by know although I doubt anything will change.

Mike S
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Think of the fun you could have...

With each blog post, include a uniquely named 1x1 pixel transparent image.

Once your blog has been copied, remove the IMG element from your post and change the 1x1 image into pics like like Goatse, TubGirl, etc.

Just make sure you don't specify the width/height attributes on the img...

Rick Strahl
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

He he. You guys are mean! Unfortunately that doesn't work because a lot of people are legitamitely republishing the content from here with proper *prominently displayed credit* and a backlink to the original article, which is fine.

Any of the image schemes don't address this. Well - actually - hmmm. We could check the referring domain and based on that send nasty images.

Gym Gal
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Honey, welcome to the club. Has been happening to me for a while, now, and you just have to go after their asses via email harassing to get them to take your work off their site, OR ELSE!
Sometimes that works.... sometimes it doesn't! :D

Best way to find them is to do an engine search on a title or a phrase in one of your posts. The copycats are then revealed. Sometimes, though, you'd rather not know, it pisses you off so bad (and it's so damned time consuming to go after them all!).
But, if you do have some extra energy, go get 'im!

my post about this can be found here:
http://thefitnessdiva.blogspot.com/2009/01/boo-hoo-what-to-do-when-another-blogger.html

Dennis
March 21, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

It's a shame Rick that this is happening to you, I come to your site for inspiration and knowledge. At the very least you should get some credit somewhere for the information you give. The thing that makes me mad is when you google something and then you get the same information 1,000,000 times.

I can tell you that this problem is rampant at the educational level as well. As a part-time professor I get code from students who think they are smart in passing off programs as their own when I know damn well they leached it off of the internet. How hard is it to put a comment where they got it from. I get told that I'm hard on them, but I know when you are doing your own work versus just taking some code and passing it off as your own work.

But rest assured there are those ethical coders, such as myself, who give you credit when they user your code or information from your blog. It's called respect for another's work!

Whether it be a blog or code plagarism is plagarism and when you are called on it, especially at the professional level the consequences can be quite severe. Although it may be a waste of your time to go after every one that is doing it, it is very important that we get the full story of what is going.

Don't feel discouraged, You are doing a great service here with your posts and I know that there are other's here that appreciate the information you give.

Keep up the good work Rick, I can't say it enough, you are appreciated.

Dennis

Rush
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Maybe in each blog post reference an image (really point to a handler that returns image output stream) that will be a blank pixel when the referrer is from your site and a nasty image/message when it's not. :-)

Rainer
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

You could send him a message in Facebook:


http://tr-tr.facebook.com/people/Mehmet-Catkin/556094507

Egil Hansen
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Damn, it must suck.

It would be extremely cool if you could get Google to remove him from their index. That would make his stealing irrelevant at best, pointless more likely.

Jef Claes
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

You should take that as a compliment ;)

Justin
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Hey it looks like the jerk off removed the page he ripped off. Woo hoo!

Nicholas
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

I have had this happen for content on my blog, and it can ruin your Google search rankings. One "blog" actually started ranking higher than me in results. I await the day that Google tells me _I'm_ copying someone else's content and dock me for it.

Soni
March 22, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Looks like the jerk has put in a copyright note on his blog !! Talk about irony !

E Rolnicki
March 23, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

The best part is, he will probably scrape off this article too!

This is funny
March 23, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Hey Rick, check out the funny comment in the comments area: http://www.mehmetcatkin.com/post/2008/03/ASPNET-MVC.aspx. It may be deleted by the time you get to see it but hopefully you do for amusement lol.

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

lol -- get him, Rick!

Rick Strahl
March 23, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Here's a quick update. I did receive a note from Mehmet and he's pulled the content from his blog - that's all I can ask for at this point, so while there's obviously some error in judgement in what's right and wrong, he ultimately did the right thing and let's leave it at that.

Christophe
March 27, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Yep, usually a polite but firm notice does the trick.

I just came across these recommendations from Wordpress in case you have to deal with this again ;-)
http://support.wordpress.com/content-theft-what-to-do/

What I do from time to time is google for specific keywords I used in my blog. It allows me to catch these scams.

Fred Besterwitch
March 30, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

by laimis March 21, 2009 @ 9:12 am

you are an idiot, Don't write stuff like that. Rick's articles are very precise and well explained. If not for him I would not knwo anything.

Abhijeet Patel
April 04, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Maybe people do this kind of crap so that they can show how knowledgeable they are(NOT) and use that to sell themselves to potential employers?

Gym Gal
April 04, 2009

# re: Yet another Scam: Blog Ripping

Funny! I just had to deal with this same thing on my blog this week!! I just randomly did a search on the title of one of my blog posts to see where it came up in the search engines and found a duplicate. Upon clicking the link, I found that this blogger not only ripped of that post; he's been stealing my content since he started his blog in February! Well, I sprung into action and put him on blast! The end result is that he pulled all my content off his blog. Pronto!
Where do these people come from, and what are they thinking? Here's how it went down, and how I dealt with it:

http://thefitnessdiva.blogspot.com

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