I had to take a brief hiatus from blogging this week to learn about splogging.
A splog is a spam blog where someone takes content from your blog and reproduces it for the purpose of increasing traffic to their blog without actually doing any of the work.
Unfortunately I was splogged this week. Fortunately I was splogged by someone that apparently didn’t realize what they were doing was illegal and was very cooperative to remove the ten posts they had plagiarized and posted on their site.
It was a shock to click a pingback and find 10 of my posts on someone elses blog, along with randomly inserted pictures that were out of context and not one link, not one word of credit given to me.
Lessons From and For 4 Legs is all original content. It’s not like I think it’s the most important, life changing information out there, but it’s a creative process that by law is my property. Needless to say I didn’t react to the shock of having it stolen very well.
I always appreciate the people who think our experiences are worth siting on their blogs. I appreciate it even more when they give credit and links where due.
However, it can be a nightmare to resolve getting splogged so there are a few measures you can take to protect your blog.
Of course at the top of the list is a site wide copyright line. Mine is at the bottom of the page, you can also insert a copyright line to every post. RSS feeds are notorious for getting splogged so including excerpts, or summaries, can help protect you that way. Copyrights on all photo’s are something I have been lazy about, but will now be included.
Thankfully this was an easy fix for me, but plagiarism in the blogisphere is becoming more and more prevalent. It’s good to know how to protect these stories we share.
For us its back to Training Levels training, eye doctor appointments for the squinty eyed Maizey, some big Magnus news is in the works, and coming soon an actual Walking Challenge update. Got your miles started yet? Count them up we are ready to hear all the exciting walking stories!
