Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Warning:


If you're reading this at http://growerflower .biz/blogs /Flower-grower-in- california/ ("Flower Grower in California:" link is broken on purpose), you're reading content scraped from my blog without permission. Actual original blogging about flowers, and the growing of flowers, can be found at the blog Plants are the Strangest People, which is awesome. Flower Grower in California should probably consider creating some original content, instead of whatever it is that they do.

Other bloggers being ripped off by FGinCA (some of which are interesting -- though inclusion in this list doesn't necessarily mean I read them or endorse their content):

Snapdragon's Garden
Hillary Miles Flowers Ltd.
Manolo for the Brides
Adriana Lima
Zone10.com
Prairie Bluestem
Blooms, Beats and the Bits in Between
Good for the Soul
Herb Gardening
Certified Organic Seed
Garden Route Therapy
Shamanaqua
and a gazillion others.

If you have a garden blog, I know the temptation to go and see if you're being scraped too will be overwhelming, but instead I'd like to suggest that you check Technorati or a similar service that logs incoming links to your post, instead of going there directly. Technorati is how I found out, and if you go through a third party then FGinCA don't get more page hits, attention, revenue, and what have you.

If the relevant people at FGinCA are reading this and protesting, but . . . but . . . we were linking to you! We were doing you a favor! Raising your Google rankings and stuff! -- no. You were using my site to generate content for your own, which you knew perfectly well benefited you more than it would me, which is why you never asked me if I minded or even notified me that you were doing it. (Also, with respect to the "buy viagra buy viagra" links at the end of the individual posts: what the fuck does Viagra have to do with growing flowers?) As it says in my sidebar, I don't object to people re-using my photos, so long as they're used with attribution and a link back to PATSP, but I am not okay with lifting of text, even with a link back, unless permission is requested and given first. I mean, at the very least you should offer me a cut of whatever money you're making from the viagra people, since I'm doing a lot of your work for you.

So please knock it the fuck off.


11 comments:

Lance said...

You mean Viagra doesn't make your flowers grow longer and harder?

Ok, I know serious post, but I couldn't resist the joke.

mr_subjunctive said...

I've seen references to it being used in the water of either cut flowers or cut Christmas trees (maybe both) as a way of extending the "life" of the plant, actually. Maybe "Mythbusters" did something with this? I don't remember. Whatever they were trying to preserve, it didn't work any better than regular water.

Lance said...

No, I can't imagine it doing anything beneficial to any plant.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mr. Sub. this really ticks me off too. There was a site called Mi Ami that was scraping my posts, with no mention even of the name of my blog anywhere, along with many others that I finally was able to make them stop through several emails. They claimed they were doing me a favor by directing people to my site with the link hidden at the end, still no Fairegarden anywhere. That is one scraping that was stopped anyway. A small victory.
Frances

Genevieve Netz said...

Thanks for listing my site, which then gave me a heads-up to check the rip-off site. It doesn't seem to be there anymore?

I've had a lot of trouble with this sort of thing, and I don't mess around anymore. I do a Whois search to find out where their domain is hosted and then file a DMCA complaint with that company. Sometimes they will just take the entire site down and that is a great satisfaction. Google will only remove the pages where the copyrighted material appears.

Best wishes to you, your readers, javascript:void(0)and the plants. :) Thanks again.

Genevieve Netz said...

The blog's still there -- I found it. There is probably not much that can be done about this one because he is not publishing the entire post. He's doing a very short excerpt with a link, and I don't think that's illegal.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, thanks for letting us know.

Anonymous said...

"Viagra (sildenafil citrate) is good not only for treating male impotence. Israeli and Australian researchers have discovered that small concentrations of the drug dissolved in a vase of water can also double the shelf life of cut flowers, making them stand up straight for as long as a week beyond their natural life span." Read more at

http://student.bmj.com/back_issues/0999/news/313.html

Anonymous said...

oops, that address should be:

http://student.bmj.com/back_issues/0999/news/313.html

Anonymous said...

For some reason, it keeps cutting off the end of the web address - it should end in html, not just h.

Ginny Burton said...

I had a nurseryman tell me to water the gardenias with a solution of birth control pills. I pointed out that 1. I was post menopausal, 2. no doctor would prescribe them for me, and 3. my health insurance would not cover it. He persisted is saying I should do it anyway.

Five years later, he's out of business, and my gardenias are doing fine on non-Rx Miracle Grow.