Why is bitacle stealing all our blogs??

And even better, they’re making money by taking our content and then putting Google ads on it. Check this out to see what I mean:

http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/xgeipfww0/33?usrmode=1

That’s my post from yesterday. Does it say ‘Plain Jane Mom’ anywhere? Nope. Creepy, right? Here are more:

good blog stolen content
Motherhood Uncensored http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/wwayosny0/72?usrmode=1
Suburban Turmoil http://bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/1f6cvvug0/11?usrmode=1
Friday Playdate http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/exg-8w5b0/294?usrmode=1

And there are plenty more, but I’m tired of using their shit site to find them. Since they just subscribe to your RSS feed and use that to build their site, the “fix” is to change your RSS feeds to summaries only, not full posts.

Legitimate aggregators like Technorati display only excerpts of your content, and I have no problem with that. Does bitacle irritate anyone else, or is it just me? Is this just a necessary evil? They’re selling Adsense ads on our content. Is everyone already aware of this and thinks it’s OK? I’m amazed at their gall myself, but I need to hear what y’all think.


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14 responses to “Why is bitacle stealing all our blogs??”

  1. […] More and more bloggers have written about it: Shel is tracking down the guy who created Bitacle… Kevin is contacting the CEO of Netvibes… Val is posting ways to prevent them … Allan is throwing Bitacle into the 8th Circle of hell… Jeremiah is pondering if this imitation is a form of flattery… Plain Jane Mom is feeling creeped out… …and some German blogs are saying something, and it seems like they aren’t too happy (even though I cant read German ). […]

  2. Niccolò Zamborlini Avatar

    U got the same problem of my blog. Simply Bitacle.

    I resolved it with a .htaccess rule:

    # STOP BITACLE!

    RewriteEngine On

    deny from 212.22.59.251

    deny from bitacle.org

  3. valerie Avatar

    Yup, block them, keep your RSS feeds as you want them. In addition to the IP above, they used 72.78.117.236 to access my site yesterday.

  4. Peggy Avatar

    oooh…I haven’t used bitacle…only technorati. How frustrating is that, though? Hope that can be resolved fast…

    Psst…I’ve also tagged you…

    ~Peg

  5. Plain Jane Mom Avatar

    Thank you Niccolò and valerie! I’ll see if that works on my next post.

  6. Owen Avatar

    I wrote a WordPress plugin that can block sploggers like Bitacle that I’ve released on my blog. It’s not as comprehensive as good .htaccess settings, but it’s a bit easier to configure and lets you fight back a bit.

  7. Suburban Turmoil Avatar

    Wow. I had never even heard of this! Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

  8. Niccolò Zamborlini Avatar

    Here you a better .htaccess configuration

    This new rule wont stupidly block it, it will simply redirect him to a 403 error. MUHAHAH! :D

    RewriteBase /

    RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^212\.22\.59\.251$ [OR]

    RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^72\.78\.117\.236$ [OR]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Bitacle

    RewriteRule .? - [F]

    and also, just to be sure, you can add these rules to your robots.txt

    User-agent: Bitacle bot/1.1

    Disallow: /

    User-agent: Bitacle bot

    Disallow: /

    User-agent: Bitacle

    Disallow: /

    In italian is “Un harvester buono è un harvester morto” (“A good harvester is a died harvester”) :)

    Bye bye!

  9. Plain Jane Mom Avatar

    Thanks Niccolò! I think the 72.78.117.236 IP has turned out to be be Owen’s but other than that, this looks great. Thanks!

  10. […] Bloggers are outraged, just titles speak for themselves – All your blogs are belong to Bitacle Bitchacle Bitacle: thieves now open for business in the 8th circle of hell (a good summary of the issue) Why is bitacle stealing all our blogs?? BITACLE DEBACLE CONTINUES — BLOGGERS OUTRAGED — NO NEWS COVERAGE BY OLD MEDIA? Bitacle is Heisting My Content Those Bastards!!(Bitacle.org) […]

  11. melissa b. Avatar

    I have the same thing happening! Arggghhh. Thank you!

  12. […] Don’t know what bitacle is? If you have a blog you should find out. Check out my first post. I’ll wait… […]

  13. […] Last September I blogged about Bitacle and how they were stealing people’s blog content and making money from it. The “fix” I recommended was to stop publishing full-posts in your feed and just publish the first few sentences. […]

  14. Cyber Lawyer India Avatar

    I think, every one need to join in and report Bitacle.org, as a spam to Google.com at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

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