Madly off-topic, I know…
but I’ve really got to have a rant — followed by some truly useful links, I promise! — about the Vile Pond Scum known as Scrapers.
Scraper blogs are those ad-splattered automated blogs that steal content from the RSS feeds of hard-working real human bloggers, slap on some Google Adsense ads, and churn it back out again with flagrant disregard for law or ethics. They’ll even hijack your illustrations — so you pay for the hosting space and bandwidth, the Pond Scum Scrapers flash your pretty pictures to make their blogs look deceptively genuine…
Pop Quiz: Which would you rather do? (a) enjoy a cool bevy on a sunny riverside patio with friends,
or
(b) stare a computer screen for hours, tracking down a blog content thief and filling out official forms to try to fight back?
I thought so.
Yep, those scraper blogs have finally ticked off the mild-mannered Domestik Goddess enough to make me drop the oven mitts and fight back.
They’ve cost me money, created confusion, sucked up my high quality crafting and gardening time, and (worst of all) spoiled much of the idle socializing that I’d had planned for this past sunny spring weekend. (more…)