Rosalind - 1:35 pm on Nov 21, 2012 (gmt 0)

I feel like I should stop writing any kind of content for the time being, because I am only spoon feeding the thieves.

The trouble is, plain text written content is so easy to scrape. A lot of people talk about big brands getting a free pass, but they have the resources to create types of content that are far more difficult to copy: widgets, tools, and games that work with server-side technologies. Scrapers won't bother to recreate these, they'll just leave them out or put up versions that don't work.

Brands are probably doing more pro-active blocking of scraper bots because they can afford to employ experts, and they benefit from offline marketing efforts that lead to online links. But these head starts aren't anything that smaller outfits can't emulate in some way.