What to do about sploggers?

after erroneously receiving a DMCA notice from Viacom about a video of mine on YouTube I read up an awful lot. Something interesting you may glean from on Chilling Effects. People are sending DMCA notices.. which technically you have just as much right to if you feel your copyright is being violated. Why let big companies like Microsoft do this to Google..when you can do it to a splogger near you. Let alone.. whomever is hosting the splogger. Which means..they will be dropped like a hot potato. DMCA’s are nasty little pieces of work..but considering that you just want to scare the bejeezus out of them. Why not? Just an idea! Im hoping the EFF takes on Viacom..ive given them my info..just dont be stupid like Viacom and send notices to someone who isnt infringing on your copyright!!!
Otherwise people.. i just landed here and am very impressed with WordPress..even if I know nothing about operating stuff like this. I’ll figure it out.
Oh one more thing.. about those DMCA’s..designed for biz to screw all us little folks.. the more average people use them and the more trouble is created..perhaps the sooner they will disappear!..just a little something to think about. I saw one blogger had sent one to google(its fashionable to pick on google i think??)..so the potential is there..if your stuff is being picked up elsewhere..get the hosts after them. excuse the length here. -b

Well I can’t imagine going to the trouble of threatening legal action with some web site… in the end I decided I would simply spice up my feed a bit, throw down a copyright statement, a link back to my site, the post itself, and a fancy little “comments” link… here, for example, is the latest piece of content thieved from my feed:
https://www.roostmusic.com/News/october-rust-breitseite-ep/

All things considered, I get the SEO juice, a bit of promotion, and at least it’s clear where the content originates… I guess that’s about the best I can do, and hey, it’s not like I have to put any work into fending off the inevitable splog assaults as my content production continues…

The host *should* investigate, and most will take down the site until the investigation is finished.

*snort* Yeah right. Never sent a complaint to an ISP, have you? Most will just toss the complaint until you get a judge involved. There’s no money to be made in following up with complaints such as this and you’re asking them to get rid of a paying client.

Out of interest, how did you do the feed code Xander?

I had totally forgotten, but it looks like I used the Better Feed plugin (chosen for how easily it is to customize):
https://frenchfragfactory.net/ozh/my-projects/wordpress-plugin-better-feed-rss/

As you can see, there are many handy options to mess with.

I’ve written a plugin called DualFeeds which allows you to offer BOTH a full post AND a summary feed. By default, the normal site feed is full post and a second feed is created (by adding &dualfeed=2 to the URL) for the summary feed. However there is a parameter to switch the feeds, so the normal feed is summary and the second feed is full post.

I didn’t write this to deal with the splogging situation, but it could be used to help to a degree.

If you use the plugin and switch it, so the normal feed is the summary and the second feed the full post, then the sploggers will presumably scrape the summary feed. If they want to, they could visit your site and find the full post feed, but I think most of them won’t, so this may offer a degree of protection.

The main problem with this approach is that it will mess up your existing subscribers (who will have to resubscribe to the URL for the second feed).

I think an analogy to image hotlinking is appropriate, and you know how we deal with hotlinkers.