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Content theft

Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress has written quite a few posts on splogs and other blog content thievery.

Sites such as Bitacle parse through RSS feeds from various blogs and steal their content. You don’t have to be an ‘A list’ blogger for this to happen to you – everyone is vulnerable. The splogs do not link back or trackback to the original site. They do not attribute the work, they just take the content. They then market the content as their own, coupling it with related advertising —“ thus making money for themselves – off your work.

This type of stealing, sometimes called scraping, is becoming more and more common.

Lorelle has various articles on this phenomenon as well as information on WordPress plugins and tools that help in identifying and stopping theft. Check out the following:

While we faith bloggers don’t mind getting the word out, we should be careful as to how our content is used, what ads the content is paired up with, and what comments are made on our posts (yes, sploggers allow people to comment on stolen content). A word of warning is spoken.

Christian Witness

About the Pontificator

I’ve been reading the Pontificator’s blog for over a year now. I’ve even commented a few times on various posts. Recently, Mr. Kimel announced that he is closing off comments on his blog. It looks like he will be ordained a R.C. Priest, and his life will take him and his family in other directions.

In a certain way I always felt intellectually inferior to those who posted at Pontifications. Things were well thought out, described, defended, and debated.

When you encounter that type of community you open yourself to various reactions. You can be offended, angry, challenged, intrigued, or even converted. I felt challenged and intrigued.

When I started blogging I used Google’s Blogspot. The simplicity and beauty (clean lines, easy to read text, not a lot of visual noise) of Pontifications challenged me to switch to WordPress as my publishing tool. More recently, Mr. Kimel’s switch to Macs moved me to consider a switch. My wife and children are now on Macs and I use the kids’ Mac Mini. While I still regularly use my PC, I await a MacBook Pro.

Above the mundane, the quotes from the Fathers, the debate between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, and Mr. Kimel’s perspectives provided me with insight, challenged lazy thinking, and told me that I cannot sit on simplistic platitudes about my Church. There are too many people out there with enough apologetics to blow me out of the water. I was challenged to gird up my loins and prepare.

I’ve used points raised at Pontifications as fertilizer for growing my homilies (look at this week’s homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time and its tie in to Mr. Kimel’s challenge to preach predestination).

There are certain things at Pontifications that annoyed people. I never found much annoying. I took it all in light of its purpose, and from whence it came. Mr. Kimel is, after all, a convert from Anglicanism. He has the spirit of a convert, just as I have for the PNCC.

I never much cared for all the discussion about Anglicanism, but that was his hurt point. After all, a blog, even if run by the Pope, is a personal endeavor, an insight into personal thoughts and feelings. It is a publicly shared journal —“ and journals work best when they help us discover ourselves and grow. I hope Mr. Kimel has found growth and edification through his blog.

I wish Mr. Kimel well as he enters, once and for all, the Holy Priesthood. I pray that he continues to post his thoughts and insights. I know that they will challenge my thinking and that they will help me grow.

Everything Else

—Your— information

Blogging is part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. As bloggers we say and share a lot about ourselves, or at least about the public persona we want to put out there.

One of the social networking sites that is part of Web 2.0 is Facebook (background wiki). Business Week posted a story titled: Facebook Learns from Its Fumble.

Facebook members are upset because a new feature added to the site aggregates and distributes information they have posted about themselves. It aggregates this information out to people they have already chosen to share with.

The reaction of at least 90,000 Facebook members was negative. For the life of me I wonder why? Was seeing all your information in one place, in all its glory, too much? Perhaps they prefer that people visit their individual sites to gather the data – ’cause the visitors need to know everything they think about. See me, feel me…

The Business Week article notes that privacy protections at Facebook are very tight. Because of the tight controls people ‘feel secure.’ Guess what, you are not secure. It’s kind of like engaging in pre-marital sex. If you don’t want to become pregnant and you don’t want to get a disease, don’t do it.

If you are all so holier-than-thou about your personal privacy then get a clue —“ don’t post anything about yourself and please keep your opinions to yourself (or only share them with family members and friends one-on-one (you know, meet people, call them).

The right to have a public opinion means that you have to stand up in public and voice that opinion. The point of crafting a public persona is lost if you don’t stand up in public and build that persona (and hopefully you are honest about who you are).

If you want absolute privacy, here are some tips:

  • Don’t open a bank account,
  • Don’t apply for a credit card,
  • Deal strictly in cash,
  • Don’t register to vote,
  • Don’t own a home or car or anything of value,
  • Don’t go to school,
  • Don’t buy a domain name,
  • Don’t build a website, blog, or join a social networking community. Even if you think you are anonymous a quick look at the code behind your site can reveal quite a bit,
  • Never get listed as a family member in someone’s obituary, wedding announcement, or other life event,
  • If you contribute to charity do it in cash and don’t let them know who you are,
  • Don’t go to a doctor or dentist.

and…

I could go on for a long time.

Most of all remember that if you play fast and loose with your ‘personal’ data, anyone, including your fellow Facebook friends, can copy and distribute your stuff. Do you think they will say, ‘Ooops, I violated the user agreement?’ If they are doing such a thing it is out of malice. You are harmed, they may not care. You could get all mad and track them down and sue them. Yeah, right, the cost/time/hurdles are prohibitive, and no one believes in objective truth or ideals anymore anyway.

Once you put yourself out there you are in the public eye. Sure, if you’re like me not a lot of people are going to read what you think, but guess what, you are out there.

It all comes down to balance. As a Web 2.0 lurker, or even as good old fashioned html coder, you need to balance the kind of pride that makes you think you are the center of the world with the right desire to engage in community, to care, to laugh, to think and to grow…

Everything Else

Troubleshooting

I decided to do a little more troubleshooting in regard to the 500 Server errors that were coming up on my blog’s homepage. I turned off all the plug-ins and reactivated them one-by-one. It looks like BAStats was causing the issue. I don’t know why because it worked fine before. I guess it is time to change stats packages.

It appears that all is back to normal. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Everything Else

Server errors

Some readers may be receiving intermittent server errors (500 Internal Server Error) when trying to connect to my blog’s homepage. I’ve contacted Yahoo hosting about the issue and am waiting to hear back. Your patience is appreciated.

Everything Else,

Finding Deacons

If you’ve read some of the comments I’ve received from Deacon Dan or from our seminarian Adam, you’ll note that a few of the comments mention the lack of deacon bloggers.

My mini mission, since I redesigned my blogroll, is to identify worthwhile blogs run by Catholic deacons. I’ve just added another link to Deacon Dean who blogs at Life on the (L)edge. He is chronicling the struggle his family is facing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

As we’ve just passed the first anniversary of this tragedy, please make a special intention this week for Deacon Dean, his family, community, and all affected.

I should also note that I’m not including all deacon sites that I trip across. I look at several things to determine whether a deacon will be included:

  • Catholic content, i.e., reflecting the Catholic faith whether in discussion of the Catholic faith itself or in politics, sports, family life, etc.
  • Good design with readable content
  • No extremes except in the preservation of the faith, i.e., no ultra neo-Cath content, far left, far right, far out agendas
  • Ecumenical, Orthodox, Roman, PNCC, Oriental, basically Catholic (anyone who has a Catholic understanding of the Diaconate)

If you would like to recommend someone, let me know.

Everything Else,

My first anniversary – one year blogging

I’ve been blogging for one year now —“ glad I made it, and I hope to continue.

I’m sure that my postings have been many things to many people, enlightening, challenging, maddening, frustrating, and funny. If they have moved you to consider something differently then they are of value.

I appreciate all of you who visit and read, or read via RSS or Atom. I appreciate all who comment. I pray for all of you.

Even in this modern age we keep reinventing ways to achieve community. Blogs are part of that, and they connect us in ways that span time, distance, and technology. They are simply an archetype of what God intends for us —“ that we join in community. The Kingdom of God, in its fullness, will be just that, a community joined in praise and worship around the throne of God.

Come Lord Jesus.

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