Content Theft Using Proxies

He still gets in even though blocked

[Charles Huffacker]

I have a group stealing my copyrighted content. Cannot sue them and win in their country. He came on using an IP and I blocked the whole range in my .htaccess file.

Then 3 times in 2 days he is back using the same IP, but going through Sky Broadband in London.

His IP I already blocked shows in one IP checker and correctly gives the city in Asia he is in. However in my other IP checker the same IP shows, but shows him using Sky out of London. The same IP shows in both IP checkers.

A number of questions:

1. How can I block this man?

2. How can I prevent his group of friends from copying whole pages of my site including hundreds of photos.

They have a forum where they post my materials and I have worked for 9 years banning them by using deny from and it is simply too time consuming,

Any help for a desperate old man who took months to .htaccess correct would be GREATLY praised.

Even something to slow this man down and his friends would be useful.

Possibly scramble my pages? My photos? Then would windows still take a photo of my pages?

Charles

[londrum]

its probably impossible to block him completely if he's that determined.

but maybe you should forget about IPs, and start blocking people based on their behaviour onsite. if they visit a certain number of pages within a set time period, for example, block them. that will take out all the automated stuff. you can whitelist all the search engines easy enough -- look into something like 'bad behaviour'. do a search for 'bad behaviour spam' on google and install the script that comes up.

there's also a free script on the php library on this site.

[edited by: londrum at 9:51 pm (utc) on Mar 15, 2010]

[Charles Huffacker]

I am not bright concerning computer related codes, etc.. I see I need to explain a sentence above. It took me months to finally get the .htaccess file correct.

I am willing to insert any code anywhere on my site to make it harder for that one man and also for his friends.

I have spent hours on your forum searching and learning very little, so now am asking help.

Regards,

Charles

[Charles Huffacker]

Londrum:

Thank you for your reply.

Any way to place code or use some kind of program that will make it impossible for them to copy my words and photos?

Thank you for your kind reply. I will search out what you said to. I do not understand the behavior thing, because this last man now knows he can come on and browse at his leisure.

Regards,

Charles

[tangor]

Charles... welcome! Short answer: NO. You can slow them down a bit, block their country, look for behavior (rate, time, pages/images requested) and even then you can't completely stop a determined scraper. Unless...

You set up your site as a password protected members only... and that defeats the purpose for most informational websites. Wish I had better answers.

[Charles Huffacker]

Tangor:

Thank you for your response. Now I understand a little more. rate, time, pages/images requested, etc.

Strange thing is I finally noticed that all of the various IPs he uses coming out of London (City of London) are static. I just finished blocking three he has used the last few days. My problem is the man goes to about 20 different pages each time. At this rate the thief will have my whole site copied in another 3 to 4 days.

I wish i could find a list of proxy IP address for Sky Broadband.

I have went to "Whois" and blocked one in London and several in America and recognized two of the ones in Virginia. i blocked those last year due to the pages he went to.

Wish i could hear about some code to block proxies, but know this one is going to be a tough one to block. I have literally blocked tens of thousands of IPs due to their harassment.

Is there a place that lists the countries and all of the IPs assigned to those countries?

Thanks again.

Charles

[Charles Huffacker]

Another question if I may:

I keep noticing in one IP checker that people I suspect are using a proxy the checker says, "Corporate" and "Static IP".

I have the feeling these are proxies. Am I right?

Regards,

Charles

[londrum]

sky broadband changes your IP everytime you log on, i believe. in the same way that AOL used to do.
so its a waste of time blocking individual IPs.
all you're doing is blocking him for the time he's logged on. when he logs on again he'll have a new IP address, and the poor soul who has been given his old one will not be able to access your site either.
if you're blocking whole ranges of IPs for London then you could be losing out on hundreds of innocent visits.

to stop him copying your images, you could try watermarking them all. if you've got thousands of them, you can do it on the fly with php to save you some work. do a search for "php image watermark"

[Charles Huffacker]

Whew! I have lots to read ow and attempt to understand.

I want to give sincere thanks to all of you for helping an old man.

I have 183 MB on my site and ore than 4,400 files. Seems like it is going to be difficult to keep them from stealing.

Regards,

Charles

[StoutFiles]

File a DMCA with Google - [google.com...] - and contact the host of the site that's taking your content.

Any attempts to stop someone from taking words and photos are a complete waste of time, if he's determined enough he'll get the content.

[Rosalind]

Check out the Noarchive Initiative, and these threads:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

You can't stop determined thieves, but you can track them better if they have to come to you to scrape content, rather than getting it from the Internet Archive or search engine caches.