CopyFeed Plugin Now Available in English

By Jonathan Bailey • May 24th, 2007 • Category: Articles, News, Prevention

With my recent move this story fell through the cracks a bit, but I wanted to let everyone know that the CopyFeed Wordpress Plugin, previously reported on here, has now been translated into English.

I took the time today and installed the plugin here on my feed and am, so far, loving it. It is a very powerful plugin and seems to do everything that it advertises. Though I am not using the IP identification tool due to my use of FeedBurner, I am using it to place a small copyright notice and the digital fingerprint.

It also corrects other feed-related issues, such as Wordpress artificially truncating entries that use the “MORE” tag, and adds the ability to insert comments and related posts into the feed.

The only frustration I’ve had is that you need to be careful to save your options before you update the preview, otherwise, you will likely lose all of your work.

Beyond that, if it works correctly with this post, it is a powerful plugin that combines functionality that was once spread across nearly a half dozen plugins.

I would encourage every Wordpress using that is running their own installation to look at getting it.

Update: I checked the output from this feed after I published the post and it caused an error with the feed, removing all paragraph breaks in the post itself. I’m going to contact the creator of the plugin and see if this is a problem he is aware of.

Short URL to this Post: http://copybyte.com/z/fz

Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
Email this author | All posts by Jonathan Bailey

  • Good plugin
  • DC: There is a known issue with the latest version of WP and CopyFeed. I do not known when and if it is going to be fixed. As far as FeedBurner goes, very little sadly. If I wasn't effectively stuck with it, I doubt that I'd still be using it.

    Hope that helps at least a little bit.
  • DC
    I tried copyfeed, and first impressions I was impressed.

    The problem I have is that none of the options will update, and support seems to be in German.

    It's a shame because it's a plugin that looks like it could have helped towards blacklisting scrapers.

    It's made me think what is the advantage of Feedburner nowadays.

    Some scraper tools within Feedburner would help no end, but now that Google is in control I cannot see that happening any time soon.
  • AC: Bad Behavior and Antileech are both going to be fairly useless if you're using FeedBurner. Since they actually host the feed, any countermeasures will have to come from their side. Obviously though, they do put some effort into preventing scraping though I've found working with them to be much more difficult since the Google buyout.

    Wp-Ban might help some since it will block the IPs from accessing your original feed (which now just forwards to FeedBurner) but if they update their feed to point streaight to the FeedBurner "source" then WP-Ban won't help either.

    I would remove Bad Behavior since it is a huge drag on the system but keep Antileech running. You never know, some idiots might still be trying to access the old feed and it can help.

    As far as your "mistake" don't think of it that way, it's an understandable viewpoint. Sadly, the spammers seem to have a toehold in about every topic imaginable. Besides, even if they don't take an interest in your topic, how long is it until you write a story that has keywords that relate to a topic they DO have an interest in?

    Should you find out that Acupuncture can replace certain pharmaceuticals you won't be able to do post one without being scraped.

    Sounds like you've got a good plan going! Let me know if I can help.
  • Thanks for the offer of assistance Jonathan.

    The site I've been having problems with, acupuncture-n-herbs.com
    is better now.

    I did the following things:
    1. feedburner with feedsmith plugin
    2. antileech plugiin and put every domain and IP that was scraping.
    3. wp-ban, added all domains and IP addresses either scraping or leaving spam comments.
    4. bad bahavior--don't know how much this is really doing.

    The first three plugins certainly seem to have cut down on the problem.
    Not sure if I'll put a digital fingerprint on or not. . . the hassel to really get someone to stop by going through copyright laws I don't think would be worth it, not for this site.

    The mistake I made was thinking that is was a site about acupunctue and who would want to scrap and spam it. . . a lot of people as it turns out!

    I agree, go to the host if the plugins don't do enought.

    I'll keep on eye on copyfeed and recheck to see if it is working in the near future.
    Take care.
  • AC: I'm sorry to hear that the plugin has not been working. Since I use FeedBurner, I have not yet tested it with the latest versions of WordPress. I do know that it was updated on the 13th of this month, well after the latest WP releases.

    I'll write the author of the plugin in a bit with these issues and see if an update is forthcoming.

    Typically though, if plugins and prevention fail, the best route is to target the host and/or the search engines. Yes, as you mentioned, they can get a new host but it takes time and money and motivates the spammer to move on to other targets.

    Adsense, sadly, is so slow it is typically reserved for extreme cases.

    Let me know if I can help with any cases you have!
  • Looks like there hasn't been a post for this in a while.

    I just tried copyfeed on a site of mine. It's WordPress 2.5.1 and copyfeed doesn't work.

    The blacklist won't update at all. The plugin overall seems a little tempermental, thus I don't think it's really compatible with 2.5

    The looks of the plugin are great. It does many of the things others do all in one.

    I hope there is an update coming. . .

    On a side not, thanks for this site. It's the most informative for content theft I've found.

    Just started a couple sites and they are being scraped constantly. . .

    From what I've gathered, after the plugins the best thing to do is,
    1. complain to google as most of these have adsense accounts.
    2. find the host of the domain and submit a formal complaint of copyright theft. Sure they can get a new host but most likely they will loose money and that may stop them from repeating it.

    Suck, though!
  • Emila: Not all blogs that scrape grab the fingerprint, especially if you do it at the bottom of of the post. It is entirely possible they could grab the intro to the piece, possibly even from another site such as Technorati. The DF plugin wont catch all scrapers, just some of the worst.

    That being said, I don't know if it goes back and puts it on posts retroactively, it has been far too long since I installed it. I thought it did though.

    Sorry I can't be of more help
  • HI Jonathan, it's me again, Emila. I just installed the CopyFeed.

    My blog has been so quiet lately without the incoming links from the splogs after installing the Digital Finger Print,AntiLeech and Akismet. I felt suspicious, it's too good to be true. I turned off Akismet this morning and received a splog link right away. I noticed that I didn't get to see some of the spam content in Akismet folders.

    The thing is that, the splog prey on my previous contents. It seems that the DigitalPrint plugin didn't add my digital print in all my posts. I don't know what I should do anymore, hoping that the CopyFeed will work.

    Thank you Jonathan, you've been a great help.
  • Emila: Most welcome! Please let me know how the plugin works for you!
  • Hi Jonathan! Thank you so much for the informative comment in my blog. I will try to install this plugin.
blog comments powered by Disqus