A splog stole my content! Now what?

When I started offering full text rss feeds, I knew that I was putting my content at risk for easy theft. I received a google alert for my keyword on a website I didn't recognize. When I checked it out I found a splog that had my last few posts on the website. Eventually, I got the content removed. Being successful, I thought that the steps I took might be of interest to others who have had their content stolen.

1. The first step was of course finding out that my content was stolen. I'll again direct you to Kate's brilliant tactic on prevening rss scrapes for details.
2. My second step was to search around the website for an email address or contact page. I could not find one.
3. My third step was that I left a comment on each post of mine that was stolen. I said, "Stop stealing my content you are commiting a crime by doing so." I then left a link to the original post.
4. Unfortunately, the comments required moderation. I waited 4 days and nothing happened. I decided to go after his hosting company.
   
5. I opened up a command prompt(start-> run-> type "cmd"-> press enter
6. I pinged the domain name to get the IP address of the website (ping domain.com)
7. Once I had the IP address, I went to this website and typed in the IP address and got the information on the name of the company that owned it.
8. I googled the name of the company and found their website. The company was indeed a web hosting company.
9. I located their "terms and conditions" page and discovered they posting copyrighted material was against their rules.
10. I found the company's "abuse" email address and wrote them an email explaining the situation. I included links to the offending content as well as links to the original content. I asked that they contact the owner and have the owner remove the content, or, failing that, take down the website as he was violating their own terms and conditions.
11. A day and a half later the content was removed. I sent a follow up email to the webhosting company thanking them for their help.

I never received a follow up email from anyone, so I don't know if it was the webhosting company contacting the owner, or it was the comments that I left that eventually prompted the offending content being removed. I don't know if following these steps will work for everyone, but they did work for me. Hopefully, they'll work for you too.

Pros and Cons of different hosting options

I just finished debugging a technical problem with my website. Once I figured out what the problem was, I couldn't help but think that anyone who isn't a programmer couldn't possibly have figured out, let alone solve the problem. That made me think about the benefits of completely managed blog hosting.

If you want to start your own blog, fictional or otherwise, all of your options fall into 1 of 3 categories.

In the first category is a completely managed host. That is, you don't install any software and do all of your configuring and personalizing your blog through a pre-defined interface. Examples of this category is blogger, wordpress, and typepad. The pros is a something that is very easy to use, you never have to worry about technical problems, and configuring is usually extremely easy.

The second category is that I use for Terran Resistance. You buy space on a webserver and a domain. With this option I have to install all of my own software. The pros is that I get a lot more options and flexibility. I can install other software like forums or wikis to supplement my blog. The problem is that you need a little technical know how to install and manage. A major con, as I discovered, is that if something goes wrong you're on your own.

The third category, which makes sense for almost no one, is to get a virtual or dedicated webserver. The pro here is that you have your own webserver. I wouldn't suggest this option for anyone unless you have thousands of visitors an hour and you(or someone you know) has a lot of technical know how.

Until tonight, I would almost always would suggest the second category. Installing this software is really easy and it's always nice to have your own domain name. The problem, I've come across, is when something goes wrong. Unless you are a programmer, stuff can happen that would be near impossible to fix by yourself. That's why my suggestion now is to almost always go with a service unless you are really confident of your technical ability.