Thieving Bastards

I was just reading Motherpie's Post about Bitacle; a site that scavenges material from blogs around the world, posts them on their site, and then reaps the benefits in the form of ad revenue. I was outraged. That outrage grew to near apoplectic proportions when I searched the site and discovered that my ENTIRE blog content, including images, has been stolen, reproduced without attribution (linkbacks have only recently been added to mollify irate bloggers) and used for financial gain NOT MY OWN.

They are poaching my feeds, and quite likely yours, (I checked a few feeds from my Bloglines feeds list. Kvetch, Motherhooduncensored, Mrs. Chicky and Mrs. Fortune...they gotcha. Mom101, Mothergoosemouse and Bubandpie, you're good.) a practice known as "scraping". Make no mistake. The blogs that are being represented on this site have not been submitted, though the site is cleverly constructed to make it appear as though they have.

The blogosphere, typically, is not resting on it's collective laurels. We are mobilizing, we are polarizing, we are not taking this shit lying down. Join the effort to stop plagiarism, copyright violation and theft of intellectual property by joining the movement to stop Bitacle and sites like it.

Here are several comprehensive articles about issue. Go read them. Educate yourself. and then FIGHT BACK.

HOW?

First, go to StopBitacle and get yourself a handy dandy little button like the one at the top of this post. I am including it on all my posts until my feed has been removed from their database.

Then, spread the word. The women of the blogosphere are a force to be reckoned with. We have a huge voice, and we will be heard. I have readers that you don't. You have readers that I don't. Together, we can network the entire blogosphere until everyone knows what is going on and how to protect themselves.

I know certain people thought I was being a little hyper vigilant when I removed my Funeral In A Small Town series. And truthfully, I myself thought I was maybe being a smidge paranoid. I'm a small fish in a big pond after all. But this just proves that there is no blog or blog content to small or too insignificant to plagiarize.

Protect yourself and your blog and join the fight against splogging, clogging and theft, TODAY.

UPDATE: I did a little investigating and discovered that Bitacle pretends to be a blog subscription service much like Bloglines. It's not. How do I know? Well, I created an account, and set about trying to add blogs to my folder. You know what happens when you click the little "Add to a folder" icon? Nothing. You can't actually get anything into your folder. Unless I'm just a complete retard and can't figure it out. Which is possible. But I did manage to figure out Bloglines, so...Try it yourself, see if you have better luck. Report back, please.

Anyway, it certainly appears that it is just an elaborate facsimile to lend credibility to a very shady enterprise. They don't offer any actual services at all. They are purely and simply, content thieves.

Also, it seems that my button is not showing up on their site. Has my feed been edited? Is that possible? They've published this post, so it seems unlikely. I'm really pretty clueless when it comes to stuff like this, so I'll have to consult Husband aka The Guru tomorrow.

UPDATE: Der. Husband says that a feed will not display template properties, which I should have realized. Pretty basic knowledge, since that's what a feed IS. Told you I was clueless. I will have to insert the button into each post.