When a RSS search engine becomes a thief
The story is very simple. There is a new trend from some bloggers to treat search engines as thieves.
Here are the facts. Make yourself an opinion. This blogger is trying to start a campaign of “bashing”.
1) A blogger sends us a message accusing us of copyright infringement
From: Jason Hogle
Email: jason@xenogere.com
IP: ————-
If you are in fact a search engine, you should respect the \”nocache\” directives to all crawlers. By caching my site, you not only indicate you ignore these web standards, but you also commit copyright infringement.
My site is xenogere.com. Please remove all cache entries and ensure that site (and all subdomains) are not cached in the future. Failing that, I will simply block all IP addresses related to your search engine.
Thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this matter.
Kind regards,
Jason Hogle
2) Here is our response sent on March, 31st:
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your message and interest in Blogdimension.com.
You are right it seems we have detected a bug with the nocache function. It seems it is not properly recognized by our system.
We are solving this problem ASAP.
If you are in a hurry we have no other choice than to remove your site from our index.
Removing your url means your site will not be searchable in Blogdimension.
But if you could be patient we will let you know when it is fixed.
We put this tpic on top of our ToDo’s.
We would like to tell you that we are pleased you sent us this message in a friendly manner and we would be happy to keep you as a satisfied user of our service.
Best regards,
3) This blogger starts a real stinky bashing directly on his blog
http://xenogere.com/2008/04/12/blogdimension-is-a-thief/
Here is a copy of his post:
Blogdimension is a thief
Saturday April 12, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I contacted Blogdimension a few days ago regarding its apparent republishing of my material.
Any response?
Nope.
Instead, they go right on stealing my copyrighted content, showing it as though they owned it, and violating the law and internet standards.
You see, Blogdimension ignores all meta and robot commands that tell it not to cache, index, or otherwise process my syndication feeds.
Instead of doing what they should be doing, they steal and pretend they can do as they will, all the while they violate international law, web standards, and cease and desist orders.
And they is a single nitwit: Renaud Guyon. In France.
Color me surprised.
Not to put too fine a point on it, however, Renaud Guyon is a thief.
Even now, quite some time after I contacted them about repackaging and presenting my blog on their site, they continue showing all of xenogere’s substance with the blatant and illegal intent of a horde of bandits.
So now I take the next step: sending DMCA notices to its ISP.
I hold little hope this will work. Companies bent on thieving content for their own gain, those like Blogdimension, seem to have far more time and money than those of us who actually create the content they present as their own.
4) Our answer to his blog directly on his blog:
Jason,
Your post is very unfair. Here is the response we sent you by email on March 31st so your readers make themselves an opinion. We post the same post & comment on our own blog so everybody will see how you exagerate. I call your attitude simple and free “bashing”. If you have some little honor you should delete your post.
Other thing: we delete immediately your blog from our index. And secondly, we make no money by providing this search service. We have some ads but it does not cover even 5% of our cost.
Mail sent on March, 31st to jason ( at ) xenogere (dot) com.
“Hi Jason,
Thanks for your message and interest in Blogdimension.com.
You are right it seems we have detected a bug with the nocache function. It seems it is not properly recognized by our system.
We are solving this problem ASAP.
If you are in a hurry we have no other choice than to remove your site from our index.
Removing your url means your site will not be searchable in Blogdimension.
But if you could be patient we will let you know when it is fixed.
We put this tpic on top of our ToDo’s.
We would like to tell you that we are pleased you sent us this message in a friendly manner and we would be happy to keep you as a satisfied user of our service.
Best regards,”
Why things could not happen normally by discussing instead of bashing publicly?
No doubt our comment on his post will be promptly removed.
Well, we are sad of such a situation when everything could be arranged simply by discussing.
And you what is your opinion?
Are search engines really the new “evil”?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
The guy is two stops short of Daggenham (find a London tube map if you don’t get the expression), wouldn’t worry about this too much.
There’s a technical reason behind this, you have the time to correct this!
The guy has double morals and rules his blog like a little dictator (which he admits doing). To be fair, problably not even worth having indexed.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hi Mike,
Thank you for your kind support. Since we are considered as “thieves” I believe any online activity will become soon a crime if things go like this.
You see, a majority of bloggers are happy to be found on Internet thanks to search engines. They are happy to get new readers, many comments and interaction, etc.
But it seems a new breed of bloggers would like to set a “private” blogosphere. So be it!
We respect this blogger and therefore we are in the process of removing his blog immediately from our index.
But it is a pity some bloggers become so radical and aggressive when a simple discussion could be carried out, like between normal people.
Our activity has to be adapted to the new paradigm: using online publishing and at the same time being invisible from others… Well, I think this blogger should use password protected posts. Otherwise his life will be an inferno chasing every search engine or aggregator to check if his content is cached. Rather a paranoid attitude ahead!
Good luck and thanks again for your message and your understanding.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:17 am
He has a point if his directives are well set. I haven’t seen any good information on directives in RSS feeds as of now.
Directives in META-tags (html) and robots.txt have become a de facto standard, so there could be an argument there (which should be settled, rather than the methodology used by this individual)
Interesting fact is that his site ìs indexed (and even partially cached) by technorati ànd google. Even though he does not want to be indexed nor cached.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Finally, we removed Xenogere.com from our index. Now, we are fixing our nocache, noarchive and nofollow issues so we prevent from being attacked again the way we are currently being.
Finally, we are considering caching only excerpts of the content. These changes will take some time since we are currently releasing a new version. So, again we ask bloggers who feel uneasy with caching functions to be patoient prior to send their atomic bombs.
You see one learns everyday and we at Blogdimension also learn from others, even the most aggressive ones. Today we received an other demand to be removed. The demand was really polite and nice. Why are things not so easy? We appreciate much instead of all this public bashing. Again, why do people not try to discuss first instead of shooting straightforward with their Scuds and thermonuclear weaponry?
Anyway we do not feel any anger aggainst Xenogere only the fact that things should be arranged by disussions next time, with no stress and no paranoia
Note to myself: I cannot believe this blogger did not receive our message where we asked him some patience. We did not receive any error message. Other lesson, always put an acknowledgement of receipt to your email messages!
Thanks again to all other bloggers for their support and giving us the chance to go improve our service.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
[…] Response:Blogdimenion addressed many of these issues in a recent blog entry detailing a conflict they had had with another […]