A new blog called Got Copy? alerts us that a blog service called ByIndia is hosting a bunch of fake blogs with almost entirely plagiarized content. Each of these blogs is so brazen that it even uses the original blog’s title! And, no, DesiPundit is not a victim — yet …
Polite Indian, whose blog is among the ones plagiarized, raised this issue; in the comments section, Trevor Longino, a ByIndia official, blames it on a “malicious coder’s spyder”, and says they “have fixed the situation”. They may have ‘fixed’ the blogs that have been flagged by Got Copy?, but a cursory check led me to some more:
Kitabkhana, and here is the fake blog
Gautam Ghosh — Management Consultant and the fake blog
Blank Noise Project, and the fake blog
Reality, One Bite at a Time, and the fake blog
MBA Aspirant from India, and the fake blog
Education in India, and the fake blog
As I said, I took only a cursory look, and there are probably many more where I found them. But I’m also sure these fake blogs — and others that you may find — will be removed in due course (the last three are already ‘disabled’!).
Clearly, ByIndia’s blogging platform needs a mechanism that allows even a casual reader to flag offensive and plagiarized blogs so that the company catches them before the blogosphere does. I have e-mailed to the company with this suggestion. I’m yet to get a response; if I get one, I will post an update.
Thanks to Krish for the alert.
Comments
8 comments. Leave your comment »
Kaps
Dec 14th, 2006 at 11:03 am | #
Abi,
This doesn’t come as a surprise. The folks at ByIndia have been spamming the comment boxes for sometime now. They pick blog posts related to blog search (in the Indian context) and blow their own trumpet. They claim to be the first to blend search, social networking, video sharing and auctions into a single product offering
Polite Indian
Dec 14th, 2006 at 11:06 am | #
Thanks for taking up this issue and spreading awareness.
Gautam
Dec 14th, 2006 at 1:13 pm | #
The best punishment for these folks would be no links…they’ll get ignored and die a natural death
Manisha
Dec 14th, 2006 at 8:31 pm | #
Kaps, that’s probably yet another bot that is doing the rounds to discredit byIndia.
Seriously though, it’s high time that web apps that are put out there as an answer to everything we Indians (or anyone else for that matter) could ever want, need to be better developed.
Abi
Dec 14th, 2006 at 9:20 pm | #
Kaps: I wasn’t even aware of a company called ByIndia! It looks like their overenthusiasm led them to a situation in which shady people can take advantage of their weak platform.
Polite Indian: Thank *you* for bringing it up in a forthright way on your blog.
Gautam: Point taken. But, evidently, I disagree. In this case, the company has been doing the right thing — mainly due to complaints by individual bloggers — by ‘disabling’ or ‘banning’ the offenders. Since linking is harmful only when the offending blogs continue to be in business, and our links here are achieving the desired purpose (of getting them removed), I believe we are doing the right thing by highlighting the offence — with links. My hope is that such public displays of our disgust will prod the company to spruce up its blogging platform.
hh
Dec 14th, 2006 at 11:18 pm | #
KAPS is right. ByIndia is a big spammer and I had spent time cleaning up their spam left on my blog.I take it as another spammer and this doesn’t leave any good impression about the company. No wonder, there is the fake blog news now.
Ashish
Dec 15th, 2006 at 12:29 am | #
The same thing happened to my blog. I was doing a search, and saw this blog that had similar, (doubletake) the same content. But it was only one post, so I did not pursue it.
noshtradamus
Dec 15th, 2006 at 2:31 am | #
Hey! I had the same problem last week and pointed it out to others like ekawaaz and bothack whose copies I also spotted (see my posts under archives, and filed under shame shame).
However I thought this was sorted out with Bill (yes he wrote to me too) saying he’d get all the illegal mirrors removed.
I see that some of the fake links above still exist, and each day I discover even more fake blogs on byindia!
Forget errant spiders and software – this seems like one big fraud – where, if I was to draw a parallel, someone’s paid big money to buy what they thought was a large and popular house – only to discover that it’s really a facade. And every day a couple of bricks in the facade fall out (courtesy bloggers like us) to reveal a hollow nothingness!