Changes in the LisaLise Blog

You may have noticed a change on the LisaLise blog over the past few weeks (shorter posts, loads of LisaLise mentions, and loads of links to the main LisaLise site).

There's a Reason

I'm making these changes because it seems to be the only way to deal with an issue I have been struggling with for a while now.

As you may have already guessed, it's not a fun reason.

Copying, Scraping, and Plagiarizing are Equally Unethical and Equally Wrong if you ask me

There are numerous entities who have been making a habit of 'borrowing' photos, text and entire posts from this blog without my consent, and (this time) I have not been very successful in getting the support from the folks at Google Blogger that I had been hoping for.

I might even say the help I was expecting as they have been stellar in helping me with previous issues.

And before we all go yelling at Google Blogger, let's allow for the fact that I may not very succinct about explaining (or understanding) technical-type things when they aren't 100% cut-and-dry plagiarism.

That appears to be the case with this present issue.

It seems there is a term called 'scraping' where your entire blog is copied and posted elsewhere but still links back to the original. For the life of me I cannot understand what the purpose of doing something like this is. In a sense, credit is given to the original site, but the entire content is at another URL (as well as at the original site).

From what I gather, it is apparently 'OK' to 'scrape' an entire blog without the permission of the creator of the original content. (I'm still trying to process this and if you have any input, please feel free to add a comment below).

And as 'scraping' seems to be OK, it also seems to have become quite a popular thing to do.

There are numerous sites on the internet with identical content – all from this blog.

How I Found Out

I didn't go looking for these copycats - they started popping up all by themselves when I was searching for something on my own blog (which I typically do by googling 'LisaLise followed by what I am looking for').

The first 2 times I experienced a different URL with my content, I reported them to Google Blogger.

After getting the same 'We have decided to take no action' from them, I stopped searching for things on my blog that way and instead go to my blog first, then search.

But it unfortunately doesn't change the fact that this blog continues to be copied in its entirety. Without actively looking for them, I have come across 3 additional sites doing the same 'scraping', so goodness knows how many more there are out there.

So, Now We Make a Few Changes

Because of the frustration of experiencing my content in places I didn't put it, wasn't asked about and definitely didn't grant permission to, I have decided to change the content that is being 'borrowed'. This is a particularly sad thing as I have been blogging with Google Blogger for 10 years (yes really), so this decision has not been an easy one to make.

The amount and type of content I post to this blog will continue to look like it has over the past few weeks - super short posts with loads of super advertisey-like LisaLise mentions and links to my main site.

The main bulk of my blogging content is going to be posted here on my main site from now on.

One might think 'well if they can scrape from Blogger, they can scrape from everywhere' and one would be absolutely correct.

However.

In contrast to Google Blogger which is a massive entity with frazillions of users, scads of employees and an (understandably huge) amount of rules and protocol when one wants to make any kind of complaint or ask for any kind of help, my shop blog is hosted with a provider who offers fast service and real human contact when any problems or questions arise. In a situation such as this, that's gold.

If you are used to checking in both here and on the shop blog, you may not even notice the difference. As a matter of fact, it might be easier to keep track of all of my blogging as there will be all kinds of links to the shop blog from here.

Thank you for following this blog, for your lovely comments and support, and for your interest in my weird, nerdy, plant-based cosmetics making work.