The State of the Blogosphere report, in October 2006 noted that seventy percent of all blog postings are spam. Splogs are a growing problem in the blogosphere. If you have a self hosted WordPress blog there are several plugins that you can use to help fight back against thieves. In this post not only will we discuss some must have WordPress plugins, but we’ll also look at some informative articles on content theft.
Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin – Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin adds a short copyright notice to the footer of each feed entry
Blog Copyright – Blog Copyright is a WordPress plugin that displays a dated copyright mark on single posts and general, category, and archive queries.
WpLicense – WpLicense is a plugin for WordPress which allows users to select a Creative Commons license for their blog and content.
WP-Ban – WP-Ban bans users by IP address, host name, or referrer from visiting your blog.
AntiLeech – Antileech produces a fake set of content especially for splog scrapers that includes links back to your site.
Akismet – Akismet is a plugin which identifies and blocks comment and trackback spam on blogs. Akismet works with Movable Type,Lifetype, Drupal, Blojsom, Bloxsom,phpBB, PunBB, Geeklog, Serendipity, Coppermine, Nucleus, b2evolution, Express Engine, Simple Machine Forums, etc
WordPress Plugin: Digital Fingerprint — detecting content theft – This WordPress plugin designed by Maxpower.ca was created to help you locate instances of unauthorized content use by inserting a “digital fingerprint” manually into your posts which is seen only in your feeds.
Article regarding Content Theft
Content Theft: How At Risk is Your Blog? – Jonathan Bailey takes a look at feed scraping content. Are you at risk?
What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content – Lorelle Vanfossen talks a little about what to do when someone steals your content.
PlagiarismToday & The DMCA on Seven Blog Hosts –
Jonathon takes a look at Seven Blog Hosts and how they measure up in the fight against copyright infringements.
(Just to note: With regards to WordPress, recently someone scraped my content on WordPress.com. I contacted WordPress and within 24 hours the content was removed and the blog was suspended. Blogger also needs to be applauded as they are doing a great job with regards to the fight against splogs. I have reported several spam blogs and they have deleted them all. )
What solutions have you found for fighting spam and sploggers?
