If you run a MMA blog or participate in writing about MMA, make sure your writing isn’t being stolen. There is a site called videofights.net that will steal articles so they can capitalize on your hard work with their Google-ads infested website - commonly known as “splogging.”
Apprently (removed as requested) of Chicago-based (removed as requested) is trying to make a quick buck from sites like Irish Whip Fighting, ProMMA.tv, Cage Today, us here at MMA Opinion, and even the Pancrase website by stealing their headline news and posting it on a page littered with MMA advertisements. With little regard for the actual content itself, the page prides itself with a boring layout and no categories to differentiate content. They leave a link to the originating site, but considering there are 10,000 “posts” and 0 comments, the focus isn’t on the writing itself.
This is pure disrespect and it needs to stop. The common practice of linking between the different legitimate MMA blogs to give credit is accepted. Stealing work to make a quick Google-ad buck is not.
I certainly do not appreciate him using the work of MMA Opinion writers. Hopefully this article will get grabbed by the bots he uses to pick up any article with the letters “MMA” in it. Oh the irony.
You can reach (removed as requested) at (removed as requested) or by e-mail at (removed as requested).
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December 3rd, 2007 at 4:03 am
It actually did get picked up, and as luck would have it, I stumbled upon it while on our publishing site, so I clicked to see it, since we’ve been getting so many damn links from them and I didn’t know who they were. At first I got really weirded out because it copies everything word for word, and said “us here at MMAOpinion”, and I thought this was some kind of identity theft, until i saw you actually wrote it, Brandt
And then I linked here to read the rest, and how funny it was they did grab it with there bot thanks to the word “MMA”. Please, as a community, can we stop this crap!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 am
They rip off all of the MMA sites I know of but they are one site out of many that do this. The best thing to do is to make sure their trackbacks don’t make it onto the site (this is how they get almost all of their traffic) and report their site to Google Search and AdSense as spammers and they will cancel their account and remove them from the index.
Also, there are some plugins for most blogging platforms to minimize the damage they can do (including only offering an excerpt feed in extreme cases). Send me an email if you need help, I specialize in this sort of stuff and would be glad to help.
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Thanks Kris! I was checking out a few sites regarding this behavior and Zach from FightOpinion found a little loophole to their theft. Apparently they are stealing Yahoo! content…they have lawyers.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:00 am
I like it. Stay in touch…