Do like Handy does. :>)
Write an article ripping them and when they pull it from your site – zowie! They’ll soon stop.
1. I believe you might be able to block them by using the .htaccess file but you would need to research how as I am not sure.
2. You can write to them informing them that you will take action for breach of copyright if they continue publishing your copyright material without permission. I did this in a similar case and they took my stuff down double quick.
3. You could contact their ISP to complain. If their ISP doesn’t take action they can become liable themselves so they usually act pretty quickly.
Thread Starter
Harvey
(@harvey)
I tossed an email to the bitacle people directly just now.
I am searching on whois to find detials of their ISP, but no luck so far.
Hey these guys do link back to my blog in teh title of the entries they rip… Is this supposed to be some kind of serious service?
Who are these guys!?
Thread Starter
Harvey
(@harvey)
I tossed these guys an email as mentioned, but no reply, and no change on their behavior.
Could anyone help me to identify their ISP?
You could do a trace from your machine to their site (look up “tracert” in a search engine).
You could also use the DomainTools.com whois lookup, which may give you a little information that you can then use to trace the host.
If they’re doing more than including a snippet of your content, my guess is that they’re probably using an automated method (rather than manually copying your content). If this is the case, it may be that they’re gathering your content via your RSS feed. You can limit the amount of text that goes out in your RSS feed in your Control Panel.
WP Admin > Options > Reading
Change from “Full Text” to “Summary”
Also you can install a plugin that puts a Copyright notice or other footer text of your choice, in your feed, so that would appear on the site that is syndicating your articles.
Thread Starter
Harvey
(@harvey)
Thanks for the tip, I went into Options, Reading, and made it show only the summary.
Does it decide how much consitutes a summary automatically? Or do I need to be conscious of this while writing my posts?
Thanks for that!
It’s automatic, Harvey. You can opt, if so desired, to put text into the “Optional Excerpt” field (below the Post editor).
“Are these guys evil?”
Yes, they probably are.
There’s an interesting article I found here: http://lutrov.com/blog/80/ and an anti-bitacle site here: http://stopbitacleorg.wordpress.com/
From what I’ve read, you can’t stop them with “robots.txt” because their bot bypasses it. You’ll have to deny them access via htaccess.
Wow…. interesting reading. So what does one put in .htaccess then?
This should keep them out:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bitacle \bot [NC]
RewriteRule ^.* - [F,L]
Make sure you have that backslash before “bot”.
Thread Starter
Harvey
(@harvey)
You guys rock.
pizdin, I implemented what you suggested.
My .htaccess now looks like this. Could you check it to be sure it looks sane? I have some other personal lines in there too, don’t mind them.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^blog/(.+)?$ http://www.japannewbie.com/$1 [QSA,L]
DirectoryIndex index.html index.shtml index.htm home.html welcome.html index
.php
Deny From 80.36.223.107 80.58.39.174
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bitacle bot [NC]
RewriteRule ^.* - [F,L]
# END WordPress
Assuming you meant to have a backslash before “bot” (which you probably DID have and this forum software took it out), it looks workable. The only comment is a pedantic one:
The bitacle-bot check should probably go after the denial by IP address and before “# BEGIN WordPress”, since it’s technically nothing to do with the WP implementation.
