If you follow a certain wonderful blogger called Lita then you may already be aware of this situation.
As I write this, I have been dealing with two consecutive rounds of websites “borrowing” my work. And that’s just the ones I know about. The ones too lazy to copy-paste are even formatted so they leave the source link in when they repost and it pings back my original post. There might be more out there.
Honestly, this is hardly the first time. This blog has been up for a while and now and then my content has been used by other sites without my permission. Sometimes it’s just a small blurb of my post with an obvious link to the full thing on my site. That’s actually kind of cool, like free publicity. From time to time I’ve accidentally come across blogs that just blatantly stole the content and removed any link back to my site. This was especially egregious when the post stolen was a very personal one that specifically discussed my name (Irina) and what it meant to me, while the author’s bio was some random dude with a completely different name. I’m sure there have been tons I just never found out about.
It’s a sort of background nuisance you just learn to live with when you publicly publish your work. When you’re a small creator like me, people think they can easily just lift my work and no one will call them out or notice. And they might be right up to a certain point.
But this latest round is a little different.
It first started about a month ago with a site called anime-sensai.co. The site no longer exists which is a good thing. For a little over a week, they systematically reposted all my content within minutes of my publishing it. They didn’t remove the source link but they did have a very nice little header which clearly indicated the author’s name. It wasn’t me.
Even though there was a source link, the problem with this site is that it seemed just full of viruses or at least malicious behavior. It would redirect nonstop without warning; it was riddled with pop-ups to the point that the site itself was almost impossible to read. My firewall blocked it a few times as well. I guess I shouldn’t have been too worried about my content.
Still, it made me really unhappy to be associated with such a site so after dodging a bunch of redirects and pop-ups, I managed to finally leave a comment since I couldn’t find any other way to contact them, asking for my content to be removed. Nothing happened…
Finally, I got fed up and found a link where you can report malicious sites to google. My understanding is that Google investigates the sites and removes them from their lists making them impossible to find through the search engine but that’s about it. I’m not sure if they do more because the very next day, the reposting stopped. I didn’t bother going back to that site until today and now I see that the whole thing is gone.
My respite was short-lived though because less than a week later the same thing started happening with a site called matrixat. At least this new site didn’t seem dangerous, but it was still annoying. I tried to find a Twitter link to dm them but couldn’t, so I left a comment on one of my posts asking them to please remove it. My comment was held for moderation and promptly deleted. The next day, you could no longer comment without being “logged in”. A day later, we couldn’t comment at all…
These guys, like the previous guys, weren’t only targeting me though. They were stealing from numerous anime, video games, and even tech bloggers, reposting content every half hour or so. For all I know, it could all be automated.
I thought about letting it go since they did have that source link and all but it’s still plagiarism. They still clearly name someone else as the author. In this case, the hilariously lazy name “admin” and they still don’t openly acknowledge the original. The only way to know this wasn’t their work is if you read the whole thing, or scroll down to the bottom and click on the small “source link”. And most people aren’t going to do that. So it’s not like they’re advertising my blog or anything.
And then I read Lita’s post on the same subject. Stealing from me is one thing but stealing from Lita is not cool! She wasn’t backing off either. She’s not as lazy as I am. So I was inspired to not let it go. Lita also helpfully shared an email address that had worked for her. So I also send a polite message asking them to take down my content. I got absolutely no response and my content is still up but they did stop stealing new posts…
Aside from that email address that is part of the author “admin”’s profile, there’s not much information on the site. Icons that seem to lead to Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube just link back to the home page of the blog. Same thing for the about the author and our team pages. My only clue is this, the email address is admin@mrhbaa.com and there’s also a particularly ironic copyright notice at the very bottom of the site also assigning all the rights to Mhrbaa.
If you go to Mhrbaa.com, it’s a page in Arabic that seems to be advertising site-building and SEO services. I’m assuming that the matrixat site is a quick and dirty automated site that they use as an example of their work. And that makes it sort of worse. I certainly hope they aren’t selling packages on how to quickly steal other people’s content. In any case, it’s pretty annoying. And dubiously legal.
I’m not advocating for their business to get shut down. Heck, I could even see their matrixat site staying up if they make a bit more effort to give proper credit to the original authors.
However, no matter how unpleasant this little adventure was at times, it did make me think about what my personal views and feelings are about my content getting ripped off. Is ripped off too strong a word? Reposted without permission, let’s go with that.
Maybe it’s because of my social conditioning or maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a doormat, but part of me always feels just a little flattered that anyone would bother to repost my content. For the record, I know this is a silly way to feel. These people aren’t reposting my content because they think it’s good, in all likelihood they haven’t read and maybe don’t even speak English. My post or site just fit in certain parameters and that’s all. The post itself could be complete rubbish. What can I say, I can find a way to be happy about insults.
When my rational brain takes over though, I realize that not only is there nothing to be flattered about but there might be a negative impact to ignoring such sites. Sites that steal posts usually aren’t all that picky. Just because they are stealing something I wrote today, doesn’t mean they’re not going to turn on another blogger tomorrow. In fact, it’s extremely likely that they will. So by not even attempting to do anything, I’m making it someone else’s problem down the line.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not my responsibility to be some sort of internet watchdog. I’m busy and tired and I’m not the bad guy if I choose to just look the other way now and then. But if I decide to go through the effort to work it out with one of these reposting sites, I could be helping more than just myself. And that’s cool.
I also realize that I am personally not that bothered when my content is stolen. I don’t like it or anything but compared to some other people, it’s not that big a deal to me. My blog is not my livelihood or my portfolio so there is no professional impact. Also, I find that these types of sites don’t tend to survive for long so there are no long-term consequences.
This said, just because I’m a little more laid-back in this regard doesn’t mean others should be as well. There are writers that put a ton of effort into their posts and they have a lot of pride in their work. As well as they should. Having someone else just take it away from them is very insulting. I can understand why someone would get frustrated in this situation.
Basically, navigating this online space you have to balance out how much you value your content with how much you value your peace of mind. And that kind of sucks.
I just read this issue at Lita’s post. I am worried if I get attacked, what should I do to fight back.
I’m not sure. I have up personally
Don’t get me started. Over the years I had content stolen, both artwork and writing, reposted, put on clip art websites as “public domain” (with my copyright notice sometimes still on the art) , claimed by others ( I was once accused of plagarizing my own article and had to prove I had written and posted it first), and my personal favorite – a charity I donated art to credited it to a different artist and insulted me when I complained. This kind of B.S. is actually some of the reason I no longer post work on the internet, nor do I work for any “charity”. At one point I did contact a copyright lawyer and at that time (20 years ago) there was no copyright law applying to the Internet and he was totally clueless what he could do. Perhaps the most annoying was being emailed by a self appointed Internet cop to inform me I had stolen artwork that had, in fact, been stolen from me. I thanked her for letting me know where she saw it posted, had to prove it was mine of course, and I hope embarassed her.
These days if I publish anything I simply put it out there free and open and ASSUMING IT WILL BE STOLEN AND REPUBLISHED UNDER SOMEONE ELSES NAME both art and writing. That way when I find it later, I’m not surprised or particularly upset. I don’t bother trying to address it at all any more because more than once the person who is punished is me. Personally, I can’t deal with the emotions so I’ve decided just to release it. If I put something on line – it’s the mental equivalent of wadding it up and throwing it away, just putting it in a public trashcan anyone can dumpster dive.
It seems there is still little or no recourse for creators who find their work appropriated. Not for us little fish anyway – McDonalds can sue anyone using Mc Anything at all on a restaurant or eatery. That’s slightly different law but I’m just saying big guys can crunch down on someone stealing their creative work (usually the creative work of some little mouse deep in the bowels of their company who got $2 for the work), but us small fry are pretty much powerless. I had hoped that things would change in time but as the big companies have taken over the Internet I guess I was once again too optimistic that this would be a wonderful new world of sharing and love. 😛
Is it more morally correct, or wiser, to fight the good fight when your work is stolen? At this point, I can’t say. I can say in 20+ years the situation, if anything, has gotten worse as more and more is automated, including stealing (eyeroll). Is there any point in fighting it hoping that the culprit will at least cease and desist if not be punished? I just don’t know. This is one area where I leave it to you younger folk to sort it out. I’m too old, tired, defeated, and got other more immediately important shit to deal with. (What could be more important? Life or death, sickness and health, making a fixed income cover ever increasing basic costs of life and getting in my nap :P)
So I had a nap and a shower and two more little thoughts. The comforting one I hang on to – Karma Works. And look, many of those rip off sites disappear, eh? and the slightly evil one – maybe we all should just start putting a notice that says copyright Disney or Crunchyroll or some big company on our work – LOL. I wonder if you can get in trouble for that? But it might make the theives think twice…
Oh yeah. Disney copyright is a genius idea! I really want to try it now
Geez that sounds like an awful experience. I’ve occasionally been tweeted by what seems like a bot for putting one of my posts on their site but I’ve never really looked. Crazy what people will do for money because that whole setup is definitely a total scam.
Even if there’s no way to completely stop it, I think it’s great that you did that deep dive though. It was very informative to read and hopefully if enough people do that it will deter the scammers
Hopefully they’ll get more ethical. A lot of folks are getting ripped off
I am so sorry to hear that you’re going through this, and my heart goes out to you, truly. As someone who can end up with long-lasting writer block, or the general struggle to just get my own blog posts out to the standard that I like them to be, I can imagine this would be incredibly frustrating for anyone. I haven’t encountered this issue yet that I know of (TDF is just a small anime and fandom blog in comparison really), but I dread the day it does… because I know sadly, one day it will.
Even if you don’t feel the same sort of endless rage and disappointment someone else might feel, I’m sure it doesn’t feel particularly good to see other people just stealing your work from you, either… I gotta say though, as a fellow blogger myself, I am infuriated whenever I hear that this is happening to someone. It shouldn’t be happening at all.
I just cannot condone the idea of anyone taking your work (or the work of anyone else for that matter) and claiming it as their own. What a dark day indeed, and it is sad that as writers we eventually come to expect that it will eventually happen…
I don’t comment very much (I’m bad about that), but I would just like to say I really do value a great many of your views, Irina. This particular blog has provided me with plenty of hours of night-time reading. Particularly in these last few months as I read over old archived posts from you and your guests bloggers… it’s a treat, truly.
I wish I could come up with something to say on a lot of posts, but you so often encapsulate and conclude your thoughts and opinions so concisely that I often have very little to say in the face of reading such satisfying content… it just comes down to the fact that I struggle with finding the right words, more often than not. I don’t just want to leave “Great post” or something tiny like that and move along.
However, I also have a problem with learning when to shut-up when typing when moved to comment at all. Therefore, as not to leave a gigantic essay in your comments because this is already long, I once again just wish to convey my gratitude to you. Thank you for the endless enjoyment of written content, and for speaking out about this…
You are more than welcomed to leave gigantic essays anytime you wish.
It’s an ongoing situation that’s very frustrating for all those targeted. I genuinely appreciate your sympathy. It makes it feel a little less lonely at least
You lucky dog! I never get stolen – at least that I am aware of. And every repost I’m aware of has given full credit. Maybe some of my photos might have been grabbed and used somewhere else but I haven’t even seen that.
Maybe my blog just isn’t good enough.
Ohhh don’t say that. I’ll happily steal one of your posts!
Definitely happened to me before too, though with other published content rather than anime blog posts (I doubt I write prolifically enough for anyone to want to bother stealing my blog stuff). I’m not sure it’ll make you feel any better, but a lot of these places aren’t people per se – obviously someone makes the sites, but it’s bots doing content scraping (as opposed to people going out and manually copy/pasting everything just for the lulz). I’d say that makes up the vast majority of “in-bulk plagiarism” type sites these days, and matrixat definitely looks like another one of those.
Oh these are surely bots. I doubt the people associated with the site speak English.
I know having parasites like these people steal from you sucks. But if it’s any consolation? They see your work as valuable and worthy of theft. I don’t think anyone is bothering to steal from me. Yay?
Let’s see… Your not sick with some sort of flu… I am. Or was. Explains yesterday’s lack of a Witchblade review. Parasites thinks highly enough of you to steal your work. And Christmas is coming. The goose is consulting a Fine Feathered Attorney, please add a few followers to this crazy old reviewers site. Or just wish me to get better. I’ll take positive vibes too.
There’s a lot of viruses going around! Take care of yourself
If my comment is in moderation only because of posting their YouTube link than it kind of goes In all likelihood there’s probably little you can do to stop them but they probably ain’t getting far with their little scheme and I’m good to still with the originals. But hey if you want to talk to Mrhbaa their YouTube comments are open until they see my poop emoji.
It’s a real pain, isn’t it?
chikorita157’s idea to use a DMCA takedown is a good one; it should work if the offender is in the US. At least my understanding is that it’s part of US copyright law. Some countries will accept the form. Unfortunately, the last couple times my stuff got stolen, they were hosted in a country that did not.
Probably not a coincidence!
I think your idea of going to Google is probably the most fruitful. My understanding is that evil folk steal the content to drive traffic to ads and get their money that way. That means if you can convince Google to shut them down, about 85% to 90% of their revenue disappears. And the site will likely go with it.
Like you, I worry when an obviously virus-ridden site steals my stuff. I don’t like to think about my material helping infect folks!
Neither of us are us residents and I doubt that the servers are there considering pricing. International copyright is still very tricky to use. I will try Google for now
I actually submit the stolen articles to “copyright removal” by google. They do not get removed completely BUT when people Google the keyword, it won’t show their articles, only mine and the copyrighted get removed from Google Index.
I also usually message them (or their domain/hosting provider) to remove the stolen content, but that does not always work.
It sucks to see my articles stolen with a complete disregard for my effort & time put into it. I despise scrapers.
I’ll have to try Google
Yeah, it’s never fun when you find out that someone else is taking credit for all the hard work you put into your blog posts. I wish there was more that could be done to prevent these sorts of things from even happening.
The readers are giving some nice options
Well definitely don’t go to their YouTube channel where the regularly post their whatsapp number and business emails. If you do certainly don’t down vote and pause all his videos after one second so he has terrible watch time and is less likely to be favored in the algorithm. https://www.youtube.com/@mrhbaa/videos. I would be careful commenting on the videos his bots are looking for profiles, and it turned me into an Ali for a little bit in his comment section, think it’s just to disguise obvious bot accounts.
In all likelihood there’s probably little you can do to stop them but they probably ain’t getting far with their little scheme and I’m good to still with the originals.
You have been busy with these guys
Sometimes it takes a nuisance to beat a nuisance.
To answer the most critical question of your post…
“Mrhbaa” refers to an Arabic greeting, it roughly means “welcome”
As for how it’s pronounced, Fairouz can help (OG Fairouz, not Ai)
youtube[dot]com/watch?v=8V7cRH5jeiE&t=88s
If you want to send them a mail in Arabic let me know
Thank you. They stole this post as well which makes me think they’re not big on reading
That was the crux of the post. I’m glad someone got it!
Haha, the same thing happened with me a few months ago, where someone emailed me, talking about my site, and offering SEO services, only to steal my posts.
Thankfully, it doesn’t happen to me very often since my blog is just not that old yet, and I don’t get many readers anyway.
I remember reading about an author who was fed up with this, who decided to post his web serial exclusively on Patreon to avoid this, since stealing is very common in web serial space, even by professional publishers.
But that requires that you already have audience, and you already have enough patrons that you don’t need to advertise by giving the pieces of your content for free. So I doubt this will work for a up and coming writer.
I don’t monetize so that wouldn’t work for me but it could be a solution for other bloggers
I had this issue in the past, but the best way to take down content that is stolen from you is filing a DMCA takedown notice. You can usually look up the IP address by using a Whois service by typing the domain. Then you do the same with the IP address to get the hosting provider. You send a DMCA claim to them so they can force their client to take down the stolen content or suspend their account. I block their hosting IP so they won’t continue to steal content.
I shared detailed steps earlier this year if you are interested –https://chikorita157.com/2022/03/29/what-is-on-my-mind-winter-spring-2022-sony-pulls-a-monopolistic-move-sentai-gets-bought-dealing-with-content-thieves-and-more/
I’m sorry that this is happening to you and a lot of bloggers.
I’m currently looking through the website as I am worried that the site could’ve stolen my content as well.
I’m really disgusted with how many posts they have stolen (probably all of them). They’re spineless with the way they’re ignoring complaints and outbursts.
Hopefully, justice will prevail.
Just sent a DMCA claim against them this morning. They are apparently hosted at OVH, but after doing a DMCA takedown, it usually does the trick. However, they got around my IP block though.
I posted the details on Mastodon if anyone needs to file a DMCA takedown notice against them;
https://sakurajima.moe/@chikorita157/109438650662874488
I’m not sure they speak English. They ended up stealing this post too…
Cool. I’ll check that out