Google Don't Give a Shit. Maybe it Should

An update on my attempts to get Google to take down PhD in History, a Google-hosted blog that consists entirely of posts stolen from other history blogs, including this one. I filled out a form from here pointing to one of the purloined posts, the Ground Coulee dam one, and asked that the whole blog be removed. Instead Google deleted only that one post.

"Yes we host your copyrighted material. So?"

I went back and forth with Google, or an autobot at Google. I asked again that the whole blog be removed, they replied I needed to fill out a new form for each copied post. I pointed out again that the whole blog was copied and that filling out a 4-5 page form for each post was hardly practical. They replied again that I had to fill our a separate form and initiate a new request for each stolen post, and they are not going to do diddly until I do. And please remember that "we do not accept add-on requests."

I gave some thought to actually setting aside a few hours and filing a take down request for every stolen post. But what is the point? Clearly the blog PhD in History (and no I am not linking) is produced by some sort of software program. Others will follow, if they don't exist already. If I spend the time to get PhD in History, or at least all of its posts, taken down, a new blog will pop up in a day or two with the same stolen content. And Google will remind me that "we do not accept add-on requests."

In the end, this is Google's problem, not mine. If they want Blogger to become the platform of choice for a new kind of theft, who am I to criticize?

Also--despite the ink I am spilling here I don't really care all that much. This is a pretty obscure piece of theft and does me no real damage. Google and me--we don't give a shit.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, the Sincerest Form of Flattery

So I was trying to Google up some regional historical information and I found a great post at a blog I had not seen before--PhD in History. The post was excellent--bright writing, nice illustrations, and some good links. Though I had never visited the blog before, the writing seemed oddly familiar. Then it hit me-that is my writing! Those are my posts!

Image borrowed from here.

Some examples: Here is a post I wrote about the Grand Coulee dam. Here it is copied and pasted--images and all--to the offending blog. Here is another post from Northwest History, copied here. There are quite a few other of my posts copied at PhD in History. I am guessing that the posts not copied from my blog are stolen from other bloggers.

What is this? Some kind of aggregation bot? I don't see the point since there is not any advertising on the plagiarizing site. There is no author information at the other blog, or comments, or dates on the posts. Odd.

I am not sure if I even care about this very much. It is not like I am monetizing Northwest History content either, so maybe this is a case of no harm no foul? Just for the heck of it I filed a complaint with Google, and got back an auto reply that "we receive many such complaints each day; your message is in our queue." Also that they appreciate my patience!

Dear readers, have any of you seen this before, or have an idea what is going on?