I was browsing some links for my website when I noticed this odd page (see image). And I started reading a ‘response’ to an article I wrote in October, 2007 about the problems of Adsense (original here), I noted that the organisation tone of the article seemed similar to mine, so I checked it out. Voila! Another content thief. This guy stole my entire article, added ten reasons why Adsense is good at the beginning (some most of which is similarly copied – from Problogger’s Article on the same topic, some seems original ) and posted it on his blog.

You can see the original. Then look at this jpeg of the article on his website.

This guy stole my article, and even kept the original funky formatting that I used in this article. He didn’t even bother to change anything… just copy and paste. What is a blogger to do? Well, I posted a comment in the article, then fired off a polite cease-and-desist type of letter to his hosting company. It’s amazing how much you can find out from doing a whois search. Within an hour or so, it seems that the owner of this site removed the content as I was forced to go to Google’s cache to see the original entry. It’s still there (though it will be gone soon), and it’s still linked on his blog in his article directory.

Basically, though, the site is a splog for articles from article directories and (probably) other stolen articles from innocent bloggers. In fact, the articles from the directory are all unattributed as well, which means that the break the article directories’ TOS. I doubt that anyone would find useful information on the site, which is why I didn’t post any links to this site. No sense giving it link-love.

I guess it’s flattering but it still makes me mad when someone copies my entire article or blog without any attribution or permission to do so. Who knows? If he bothered to ask, I might have said okay. If he had asked. But then thieves don’t ask. They just take.