1: Google Shuts Down Music Blogs Without Warning

First off today, Google is drawing heat this morning over its closure of several music blogs hosted on its Blogger service. The reason is multiple copyright infringement notices against the sites, however, the sites themselves say they have permission for the tracks they post. The bloggers have said that filing a counternotice is often impossible due to a lack of information provided by Google and that resulted in the string of uncontested removals. Google has announced that they are going to tweak their policy for music bloggers to reduce this problem in the future.

2: University Worker Accused of Extorting Student File Sharers

Next up today, a University of Georgia employee has been fired and arrested on charges of extortion after allegedly promising to make an RIAA infringement notice “go away”. The employee, Dorin Dehelean was arrested after a student reported him to police and an undercover operation showed him taking money as a bribe to not pass along the notice to the school’s disciplinary board.

3: Cannot Chase Paperchase

Finally today, Paperchase, a British company specializing in the sale of printed items, is caught up in something of a plagiarism scandal as artist Hidden Eloise filed an accusation that one of her designs has appeared for sale on at least one of Paperchase’s products. Paperchase has responded by removing the product from their Amazon store and issued a statement saying they received the design from a reputable firm but are looking into the matter.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

One of the recurring themes on Plagiarism Today has been how difficult it is to send a DMCA notice to Google, especially over their Blogger service. I first wrote on the topic in 2006, and posted a workaround to email a DMCA notice to Google in 2008.

However, sometime very recently, Google updated their Blogger DMCA page, to include a new contact form that automates much of the process.

Since Blogger, Google’s free blog hosting service, has been a strong focus for spam blogs and other kinds of infringers, this is a potentially huge step forward, especially for those who have dealt with misuse by Blogger users. The previous means of emailing a notice to Google involved creating a PDF of the notice, complete with scanned signature, and emailing that in. This form makes it almost instantaneous to send in a complaint to Google.

However, there are some limitations to this form that have to be considered and it is important to use it for the right reasons.

How it Works

The form, though not much to look at, could not be much more clear. It works by having the person filing the complaint fill out a series of blanks and then submit it, much like with any other contact form.

Someone filing a DMCA notice puts in their name (first and last), company, email address, location of original works, description of the original works, infringing URLs, agree to two sworn statements and then date/sign the form. It is very straightforward and ripped pralmost directly from the DMCA itself.

There are only three issues that I see with the form.

1. Offline Works: The form could be a bit difficult to use for works not already on the Web. You are required to list both a location of the work and identify the work. Though both are a requirement of the DMCA, sometimes they are one and the same, for example with books and ISBNs. However, both boxes are required. You may for example list the publisher and ISBN in the location box and the Title in the first, as Google suggests.
2. Layout: I’m having some trouble viewing the form in my browser (Firefox on Mac) as the description text runs over the edge of my monitor and I can’t scroll horizontally. I was able to work around this by doing a “select all” and pasting the text into another application.
3. No Additional Contact Information: Though it’s not specifically required by the DMCA, it is considered a best practice to obtain mail and phone contacts for people filing the notice. The reason is that, should there be a dispute, the person who is the subject of the notice may need that information to appropriately respond.

All in all, while the system has its flaws, it is a vast improvement over the one that existed before. Still, there are some limitations to be wary of.

Limitations and Problems

It is important to remember that the new Blogger DMCA form is exclusively for Blogger and not any other Google services. For example, Picasa, Orkut nor any other Google service offers an online form for filing a DMCA.

In those cases, the method I described above is the easiest way to email a DMCA notice successfully.

Hopefully Google will create other forms to make filing DMCA notices easier for those services. My wager is that they are taking this route to discourage people from filing DMCA notices with Google Search over items hosted on other Google services. Not only is that a waste of time for Google, which likely spends much longer dealing with search DMCA notices than regular ones, but less effective for copyright holders.

I’m hoping this marks the beginning of a change for Google in terms of speed, cooperation and user-friendliness when it comes to matters of copyright infringement.

Bottom Line

It is nice to know that, after literally years of talking and writing about these issues, Google is finally responding. There had been rumors such a system was in the works for some time, but after years of no activity, it seemed that the project had been abandoned.

Though the new form is far from perfect, it is definitely a step in the right direction and a tremendous improvement over the current DMCA regime at Google. If I were doing my DMCA Seven review of Google Blogger today, I would likely say that it is a “B+” rather than its original “D”.

Google has taken a very big step forward and I encourage others to take advantage of this form when reporting abuse on Blogger. If you do, please let me know what your results are as I’ll be eager to hear what others’ experiences are like.

I will post on my own as soon as I have cause to file against Blogger.

Hat Tip to Digital Inspiration

When it comes to the DMCA, it seems that Google has been nothing but a headache. In the past four years of this site, I have lamented Google’s lack of email contact information, developed a hack to get around that, I have faxed a 17-page DMCA notice to their Adsense department (which is separate from Blogger), accused Google of intentionally misleading content creators on how to file a notice with Adsense and consistently given Google low scores for its handling of the DMCA.

However, it appears that Google’s poor handling of the DMCA does not stop with the frustrations of rights holders. A series of articles, first in the LA Weekly last month and last week on Ars Technica, have looked at Google’s handling of DMCA takedowns from the perspective of those that are the subject of them, in these cases, music bloggers that use their Blogspot service.

The criticism is that, once a notice has been filed, Google does not always seem to notify the blogger it has pulled the content from and, when the blogger becomes aware, doesn’t provide a copy of the takedown notice. This, in turn, makes filing a counter-notice (to have the material put back) almost impossible.

It seems that, when it comes to the DMCA, Google has a resoundingly negative review from both sides. This is something that Google needs to address as it strives to become not only the largest search engine, but one of the largest hosts. With so many new services expanding Google’s function as a host of content, not merely an index, these issues can not be ignored.

But fixing these issues is not going to be easy for Google and it is going to require that they completely rethink their DMCA strategy, something they have been unwilling to do up until now.

Bad All Around

The problem with Google’s DMCA regime starts when one seeks to file a notice. If you visit their Blogger DMCA page, you see quickly that Google does not provide an email address for submitting a DMCA notice. The reason is that they require, at least from most notices, that the filer provide a handwritten signature, thus causing them to limit their contact methods to fax and snail mail.

However, this handwritten signature requirement is something of a perversion of the law. When asked in the past, Google has said that it is because the DMCA, in Section 512(c), requires “A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

The problem is that the law clearly states that an “electronic signature” is adequate for a complete notice and the ESIGN act of 2000 defines an electronic signature as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” This means that something as simple as typing your name at the end of an email or indicating a signature with a “/s/” should be adequate for a DMCA notice, meaning that emailing a notice is not just possible, but easiest on everyone.

The vast majority of Web hosts and search engines agree with this interpretation as do the attorneys I’ve spoken with, including many who dislike the notice and takedown system.

However, once these hurdles have been overcome and a successful notice has been filed, it seems that Google has changed its policy of notifying bloggers and letting them remove their own content in a less-destructive way. Now, Google deletes the posts themselves, making them more like other hosts, and, in some cases, doesn’t seem to be notifying the bloggers they are pulling from.

But then comes the real problem for bloggers. Once the content has been removed, getting a copy of the notice is almost impossible. Google, reportedly, has been stonewalling bloggers that ask for copies of their notices. Google does have a long-standing relationship with Chilling Effects, a joint venture of several non profits and universities that is working to build a database of searchable database of cease and desist letters as well as DMCA notices, which it has promised to forward all of the DMCA notices it receives to for inclusion.

But despite this promise, it is clear that the volunteer-staffed service has fallen well behind. Only five notices have been posted since the beginning of the year and none were posted in January or so far in March.

The problem with this is that, without a copy of the notice, it is impossible for a person who has had works removed to file a counter-notice. Filing a counter-notice without being 100% certain that the original notice was filed in mistake opens one up to a wide range of legal problems that didn’t exist with just a takedown.

Thus, without a copy of the DMCA notice, there is no viable way to correct a false or erroneous takedown. It isn’t possible to know who demanded the takedown and what the specific work involved was (could be the post, an image in it or a link).

In short, Google has built a DMCA system that equally screws content creators and legitimate users. Likely, the only people benefiting from this system are spam bloggers, who have extra protection from having a DMCA notice filed against them and those that with to abuse the takedown process, as they can do so with little worry about being discovered.

Fixing the Beast

It is clear that Google’s DMCA system is hopelessly broken. Not only is the process for filing a notice unnecessarily difficult and legally dubious, but the way Google handles its own customers is worrisome and makes the system prone to abuse.

The two problems, however, are almost certainly related. Google’s demand of a handwritten signature makes it difficult for rights holders to file a notice and virtually ensures that such notices will be in a non-text-friendly version. This increases the time it takes Google to process notices and makes it harder for Google to forward on the information that they get.

The problem is that DMCA handling, like all abuse resolution, is overhead and smart companies are going to look for ways to trim such expenses, especially during down economic times. The fact that Google is cutting corners with its DMCA resolution process shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. They are stripping down their process to the bare minimums of their interpretation of the law, but, if they changed their interpretation of the law to fit with other hosts, they might save money with their DMCA process.

Though allowing plain text DMCA notices would likely lead to a rise in the number filed, it would also make it easier to handle the notices on Google’s end. They could more freely copy, paste and use the information in the notice. This would be helpful both in locating the links that need to be pulled down and in forwarding the relevant information to those who have had their posts removed. That would mean faster resolution for copyright holders and better service for Blogspot users.

With text-based notices, especially if Google provided a form-based system, much of the process could be automated, including the notification of the user. Privacy could be respected (when necessary), users would have the information they need to file counter-notices when appropriate and Google would spend less time, and thus less money, on each notice. It seems like an easy win-win-win.

However, Google has always refused to do this, at least for the general public. Either Google stands by its rather unusual interpretation of the DMCA or it is afraid of a perceived onslaught of notices that would result from easy filing and wants to fight email/form DMCA notices the best it can.

Either way, it is creating a situation where everyone suffers. As long as Google continues the status quo, there will be no winners.

Conclusions

Google is and always has been something of a strange beast when it comes to copyright issues. Both the largest search engine and one of the largest blog hosts, they’ve always had an approach to the DMCA that is all their own. No one, quite literally, handles these disputes the same way.

The sad truth is that, as large as Google is and as great as they are at many of the things they do, this is one area that they have consistently gotten things wrong. Companies only a tiny fraction of Google’s size, such as Automattic with WordPress.com, have gotten these issues just about perfect without breaking the bank.

The question isn’t whether Google can fix these problems, but if it is willing to do so. Perhaps now with their flawed DMCA system impacting their own users as negatively as other copyright holders, change may finally be possible.

Of course, especially with Blogger, Google has promised that it’s going to improve its system before, especially as it pertains to spam blogs. Sadly, none of that change has materialized as of yet.

Hopefully 2009 can be the year it happens.

Whether it is a matter of using Copyfeed to stop scrapers, Digital Fingerprints to track them or Feed footer plugins to turn them into advertising, self-hosted WordPress users have had a slew of options

Blogger users, however, have not been so fortunate. The hosted nature of the service makes it impossible to block spammers and the limited formatting options has, historically, made it very difficult to manipulate the feed.

However, I was recently tipped off to a little-known feature of Blogspot that enables users to insert any HTML they want into the footer of their feed, thus giving them opportunities for protecting and tracking their feed that may not exist otherwise.

Editing the Feed Footer

Editing the contents of your feed footer is surprisingly easy, if one knows where to look.

First, visit your dashboard and, for the blog you want to edit, click on “settings”.

Once in that tab, click on the “Site Feed” subtab.

After that, you’re taken to a series of options for your feed. In addition to being able to set your feed to full or partial and redirect it to a Feedburner account, you also have the option of adding a footer to each post in your feed.

There, you can insert any text or HTML that you want to appear at the footer of every post in your RSS feed. It is important to note though that this is strict HTML, meaning you need to close your tags, including slashes after line breaks, in order for this to work correctly.

However, this has the ability to be one of Blogspots most powerful features and, to those worried about scraping and spamming, one of the most useful.

Things You Can Do

There are many great ways that you can use this feature and at least three ways you should consider making it work for you.

1. Digital Fingerprint: Place a unique string of letters and numbers, between 8 and 16 characters long, in the block and then set up a Google Alert to monitor it. Google will email you when it detects a site on which your fingerprint appears, thus pointing you to a likely scraper.
2. Copyright Footer: Put a copyright notice in the box with your site’s information and licensing information in the footer so that any sites that scrape your feed will also carry with it correct attribution and information.
3. Advertising: Use the footer to place links back to your site or any services you provide so that spammers will be helping to promote you. This may not work in many cases though as a lot of spammers strip out links and other HTML.

Though what step or steps you choose to take with this feature is up to you, using any of these techniques would be more productive than leaving it blank.

After all, this is a feature that requires almost no time to use and places no meaningful burden on your readers, it is clearly worth doing something with it, even if it just using it as promotion.

Some More Good News

Many will be quick to point out that these exact features can be achieved by using FeedBurner FeedFlare. While this is true, FeedFlares are very routinely stripped out by spammers as they contain code that aids in the tracking of RSS usage as well as links that can harm the usefulness of the site for search engine spamming.

However, according to the tipster that let me know about this feature, he sees these footers being removed far less than the FeedFlares, which he also uses.

While this is far from a scientific study, it would make since considering that FeedFlares are more common and share similar code elements, giving spammers both the motivation and the means to filter them out when doing automated scraping.

Conclusions

Users of Google’s Blogger service still don’t have a lot of the features that self-hosted bloggers do when it comes to protecting their content. For example, this will not do anything to block spammers, just add content to what they scrape.

Still, this feature might do something to help track scrapers and mitigate against the damage that they can do, helping to level the playing field a little bit.

Even if you have no intention of using this tool to protect your content, it has many other applications that should be considered.

In short, no matter how you feel about scraping and spamming, if you’re a Blogspot user, there is no reason to leave that box empty.

Video

The video below is from a marketer who is using this feature for promotional purposes. However, it still provides a great overview of how the feature works.

Related Links

• Bloggingtips (Another neat idea, adding subscriber-only content)

Further Discussion

• What further steps can Blogspot take to prevent scraping of its legitimate users?
• If you are a Blogspot users, does this make you feel better about the service?
• How does Blogspot stack up against other hosted services, including WordPress.com?

Hat Tip

• Rawsumer

Step six specifically instructs you to “sign the paper” and step seven only provides two means of sending it in. The first is via postal mail, the second is via fax.

The problem with these steps is that the vast majority of hosts accept, and even encourage, DMCA notices via email. Email is by far faster and easier to send for such complaints and, according to the ESIGN Act, should be able to deliver a perfectly acceptable electronic signature.

However, Google’s limited contact information and requirement of a physical signature seems to turn a digital matter into one that needs pen and paper to resolve. This has caused many to give up on sending notices to Google and just tolerate any misuse that takes place on Google’s servers, including Blogger.

Fortunately, there is a way around this and a means to successfully email your DMCA notices to Google. All one has to do is be a little bit creative.

Step 1: Scan Your Signature

The first step is to get your handwritten signature into your computer some way. This is because Google, even when accepting notices via email, still requires a handwritten signature most of the time.

There are several ways you can get your signature into an image file. First, you can simply sign a sheet of paper and scan it. Second, you can use a program such as Paint and draw your signature (best done with a stylus). Finally, you can take a picture of your signature with a good digital cam.

The end goal is to get your signature in clear black lettering on a white background.

Step 2: Get your DMCA Notice Ready

Next, obtain a copy of a good DMCA notice. If you wish, you can use the stock letters available on this site.

Once you have your notice, paste it into a word Processor that is capable of both importing images and exporting to PDF. You can use Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or many other applications for this purpose.

Then simply fill in the needed information as if you were just emailing it out and make sure that all of your information is accurate.

Step 3: Import Your Signature

Once you have the notice in your word processor, scroll down to where the signature goes and import your handwritten signature as an image file into the document.

Take a moment to make sure that it looks right and is ready for export.

Step 4: Export File to PDF

Export the file to a PDF using the best tools available. Though most word processors can do this export directly, if you need to print the file to a PDF you can use a free PDF creator.

Most of the details about the quality of the PDF are unimportant, just make sure that the PDF is clear enough to be read and small enough to be emailed.

Step 5: Email the PDF

Though Google does not advertise their email address on their site, they did file a designation with the U.S. Copyright Office that provides an email for submitting DMCA notices.

You can send the PDF to that email address. Simply include it as an attachment and paste the text of the notice into the email.

There is no word if that email address will work after the designated agent returns to the office.

Conclusions

For most Web hosts, sending a DMCA notice is simply a matter of having a good stock letter, dropping it into an email, filling out the necessary information and then sending it on. It is only Google, to my knowledge, that requires this kind of effort.

However, Google receives such a large number of DMCA notices that it is important to be prepared to work with them. Not only do they host Blogger, which remains one of the most common hosts for spam blogs, but they host Google Groups and other services that could host infringing content.

They are also one of the top advertising networks with Adsense and their policy for reporting infringers using Adsense closely mirrors the one for Blogger. This technique should also work for that.

Most importantly though, they are also the number one search engine in the world and the search DMCA policy also closely mirrors the other two, complete with physical signature requirement and fax/snail mail only filing. This technique should work with it as well.

Until new systems come online to help us report spam and copyright infringement to Google, this is the best technique to file a DMCA notice via email.

It is a bit complicated and convoluted, but it is certainly preferable to the delays of postal mail and the hassle of a fax.

However, one factor that I had not actively considered, but has come up in recent conversations, was if the service you used could help draw more attention to your site.

Specifically at issue is if using a free blog host, such as WordPress.com, BlogSpot or LiveJournal could draw attention to spammers that specifically targeted those sites. I have seen a handful of spam blog networks that seem to target one blog host specifically, but these occurrences have been seemingly rare.

I would like to get feedback on this issue to see if it is something I should look into more deeply. I would love feedback from those who run both self-hosted and freely-hosted blogs and their experiences with scraping on both.

It would seem logical to me that they would be greater targets for scraping given that it is known freely hosted bloggers have fewer tools for stopping RSS abuse and lack the server control to block scrapers. However, freely hosted blogs would also seem to be less reliable considering there is no penalty for bloggers walking away.

If this seems to be a factor I’ll plan on looking into it more deeply and seeing which services are most at risk and what can be done about it.

I look forward to your thoughts.

However, in this case, the backdating was unlikely to fool anyone. The date shifting was so severe, usually spanning several weeks, that many of the entries on the spam blog were listed as posted before the events they described and, most likely, were allegedly posted on dates well before the search engine spiders made their last visits.

Still, it is not uncommon to see spam bloggers backdate their scraped posts more conservatively. From a shift of a few hours to account for time zone differences to a day or two to try and appear more legitimate, there are many reasons why a spammer’s post may appear to go up before your own.

Fortunately though, this is not a major worry for Webmasters. The timestamps we look at are all lies and both search engines and users know that to be the case.

Why Timestamps Lie

The problem with the timestamps provided by most major blogging platforms is that they are easily changed by users. There are many legitimate reasons why a blogger or Webmaster would want to alter a timestamp. You can forward date a post so that it publishes in your absence, pre-date the post so that it fits into a natural series with related items or set the date to an outlandish time so that it remains at the top of the page.

Even if there is no intentional manipulation of the timestamp by the author, it can still be wrong due to problems with the server, disagreements in time zone and other completely natural issues that can change the date a post or page is listed as going up.

For these reasons, search engines place very little faith in the timestamp of a post when determining which is the original. As such, spammers are unable to simply backdate their scraped posts and claimed the top spot in Google.

Fortunately, it is a bit more difficult that that.

It’s About Trust

If spammers could steal search engine thunder by simply backdating their posts, every spammer would be doing it. However, search engines place much more stock in how much trust the sites involve have and that is something much more difficult to obtain.

This is something that Andy Beard points out on his site. In a recent post on his blog, he responded to a previous post by David Naylor, using many of the same keywords. Though Beard’s post both came later and linked to Naylor’s post in the first paragraph, Beard’s site was able to claim the top spot in Google for a relative search term due solely to its search engine authority.

Though the story is anecdotal in nature, it illustrates how Google, and other search engines, award rankings. It is not based merely upon who is first, but rather, who is it trusts more and which site the search engines feels the reader would rather land on.

This makes backdating posts an ineffective tactic for gaining search engine ranking. If Google does not trust your site, it does not matter if your post appears to have come first or even if it truly did, you will not rank well for terms related to it.

While this is good news for many bloggers who are heavily scraped, there are other bloggers that have a great deal to worry about.

Spammer Trust

On the upside, if your site is well-established and is generally trusted by the search engines, it has a natural shield against scraping. Search engines are not likely to give a new site more authority than you on a topic, regardless of how they date their posts.

However, statistically speaking, most active blogs are fairly new and have not yet earned that level of authority. As such, they may be very vulnerable to scraping, especially considering that spam bloggers often leverage their networks to build up artificial authority. In the early months of a blog’s life, it is entirely likely that the spammers scraping its posts may have more authority and trust than the original posts, making it very hard for the site to find its footing.

In short, the problem with authority is that all sites start out with none and that makes them vulnerable to abuse from sites that have any, no matter how little.

Conclusions

Bloggers have very little to worry about from “clever” spammers that backdate their posts. The search engines place little to no faith in those timestamps and, most likely human readers don’t either.

The issue is not who came first, but who carries more trust. The Associated Press, for example, will always carry more trust than a one-month old blog and the fact that the blog backdates its posts is irrelevant.

In short, it is more important to cull and nurture this kind of relationship than it is to simply be first. This is not just a large part of what prevents spam bloggers from simply taking over the Web, but also part of the reason why new bloggers often struggle with scraping so much more severely than established.

It is very important to track and stop blog scraping, especially in the early months of a blog’s life, to further that trust and ensure that the spammers can not build an artificial reputation.

After all, the sword cuts both ways. If being first will not help the spammers, it will not help you either. Building and maintaining your authority level is the first and best step to protecting yourself against scraping, but it is one that requires both hard work on building your content and vigilance at keeping the spammers at bay.

Yet, out of the last 40 spam blogs I’ve looked at, 32 of them were located within the United States. The few that remained were in countries such as Iran, Russia and Ukraine, where copyright law makes it hard to stop them.

So why are so many spam blogs American despite the obstacles to setting up shop in the United States? The answers are surprisingly simple but do not bode well for the future of fighting spam here or abroad.

An American Tradition

The beautiful thing about the Internet is that it is possible to set up shop just about anywhere in the world and, in turn, have anyone else in the world come visit you. Geographic borders are meaningless, until you look at legal issues.

Legally-speaking though, the U.S., much like the EU and similar legal climates, seem to be very hostile places for spammers. Not only does copyright law give easy recourse for those who are scraped, but hosts are very well versed at dealing with spam and often take action without prompting.

It seems logical that spammers would start to take their operations and move them overseas, into countries with weaker laws and enforcement. A stable home would mean longer-running spam operations, that would mean more trust with the search engines and, theoretically, more money.

But despite this, spam seems to be an almost purely American tradition. American hosts are rife with spam blogs and there seems to be no rush on the part of spammers to move to other nations. Despite greener pastures, the purveyors of junk are fine working with in the United States and, when one looks at the reasons, it is clear why that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Sticking Around

Spammers aren’t staying within the U.S. to make it easier for American bloggers to shut them down, rather, they have their own interests in mind. Consider the following:

1. Cost: Hosting is extremely cheap in the United States and, with the dollar falling, it is only getting cheaper. For six dollars per month you can get a hosting account that lets you host unlimited domains. It is cheaper to risk having accounts cut than to pay a premium for hosting elsewhere.
2. Free Hosts: The vast majority of free hosts are located within the United States. Spammers that want to target sites such as Blogspot are pretty much forced to stay within the country.
3. Still Vulnerable to DMCA: Even if a spam blog sets up shop in another country, they would still be vulnerable to American laws with regards to the search engines. Since Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask are all American companies, a copyright holder can still use the DMCA to effectively blacklist them from search.
4. Search Engine Trust: Though I have not been able to find evidence of this, it seems only logical that search engines would put more trust into sites closer to their searchers. A site hosted in Iran may do well in Iranian searches, but would not likely perform well in the bulk of search results.
5. Cooperative Hosts: Despite the laws in the U.S. that prohibit this, there are still no shortage of lesser-known hosts that will gladly turn a blind eye to spam and copyright infringement. These hosts can typically get away with it because U.S. law makes it so difficult to sue for copyright infringement.

The end result is that the life of a U.S.-based spammer is far from easy, but it certainly is fruitful and, with a little bit of creativity and effort, the obstacles can be easily overcome.

Mitigating the Problem

With the current legal and hosting climate in the United States, there is very little Webmasters can do to outright stop this problem. However, there are steps that we can all take to minimize this issue.

1. Use The Laws: The fact that most spam is within the United States is something of a gift. Most hosts respect the DMCA and will remove infringing works. Taking advantage of that is a powerful start. The DMCA has been around in the U.S. for ten years and most hosts have effective policies for dealing with such notices.
2. Target Search Engines: Hosts that are uncooperative need to be pointed out to the search engines in the form of spam reports. The reason is that, if enough spam is reported in an IP range, Google will start to distrust the entire host and that will affect their bottom line, both driving away spammers and legitimate customers.
3. Use Search Engine DMCAs: Though working with Google may be tricky, once a spam report has been filed sending a DMCA notice to the search engines can decapitate the spam attack, making it useless.

These are not perfect solutions, but they are ways that everyday Webmasters can hit back at the spam problem without having to go through the hassle of finding an attorney.

Conclusions

The U.S. is in no danger of being dethroned as the Web spam king. Though spammers will diversify as the Web becomes even more international, like wolves hiding in a flock, they will follow the rest of us in a bid to fit in.

But as frustrating as this is, it does serve to our advantage and give us some powerful tools to fight back. All it takes is the no-how and willingness to take action.

Fortunately, it seems that more and more are fed up with Web spam and are doing something about it.

Though these spam blogs will take many different approaches, inevitably, many of these spam blogs will use scraping as a means to fill their pages and appear more authentic to both Google the search engine and Google the host administrator.

Bloggers, especially those that frequently have spam-friendly keywords in their sites, should be aware of the likelihood of increased scraping on the Blogger service. Now would be an excellent time for sites that offer email subscriptions to check for any @blogger.com accounts and everyone to consider taking feed protection steps such as installing Antileech, creating a feed header/footer or using a digital fingerprint. 

Sadly though it recently seemed as if Google was on the offensive against spam, it now appears as if the tables have turned.

While the new spam wave is still ramping up, now is the best chance for bloggers to be aware of the issue and be prepared to take action as needed. Hopefully, Google will fix this issue soon and the impact of the problem will be limited.

If not, then Blogspot could easily become even more of a spam wasteland than before, making it even more difficult for legitimate bloggers to get noticed on the service and for Webmasters everywhere to keep their content out of spammer’s hands.  

Shortly after writing that article, I received emails from several administrators of Yahoo Groups lists and other mailing lists. They were finding that the same technique was being used to convert member-only newsletters and posts into spam blogs.

The idea is simple, just subscribe to the group using the same Post-via-Email address and have all of the messages that are sent to the group, converted straight to posts in to spam blog. This can work with lists where only the administrator posts or on lists that allow users to participate.

Any mailing list or “group” site that routine sends messages to members and allows public sign up is vulnerable. To help guard against this, I would recommend that administrators take the following precautions.

• Make sure that your list does not allow anyone to subscribe with an @blogger.com address or that you routinely remove anyone who attempts to.
• If possible, make sure that the email address of the subscriber is included in every letter sent out, this guards against the use of email forwarding.
• Include your unsubscribe link as a clickable hyperlink in your emails. If a user discovers the spam blogging, they can easily unsubscribe the spammer.
• Set up Google Alerts for relevant information in your emails, something that would be unique to your list.
• Make it clear when users register that content from the list is not for republication and have them agree to not redistribute the content that is emailed to them.

Fortunately, this problem seems to be relatively minor now. Most email lists do not seem to have this issue in a significant way and, of the mailing lists I subscribe to, I was not able to find one that was being actively scraped.

Still, administrators should be aware of the danger, especially since simple steps can help prevent any problems.