If you have tried to google your username and you have a blog or a Flickr account, you probably have seen some shameless people scrap your stuff or Flickr photos.

The situation for Flickr photos is worse, they are not only scraping photos but also the comments. Luckily, they don't always link back to Flickr photo page, I would not want them to do that. Maybe I can report to Flickr, so it will be blacklisted?

One issue is Google indexes those crappy websites. I believe this is sort of encouraging (even Google does nothing to encourage). Not only that, those websites uses AdSense and even have +1 button. Google often posts algorithm this algorithm that, why I still see those websites in their indexes?

They make it look like a blog post with comments using WordPress. Probably a way to fool search engine bots. Maybe search engine can't have enough data to reach the threshold? Every a few days, new website will pop out in results. New name, new design (not really such thing you can call design), new domain name, just my old photos. I have seen same photo was put on three or four websites almost in same period of time, I was guessing those were from same scrapper.

I don't know if I have mention in my blog why this blog is not licensed, the reason is to prevent those people scraping, but it does not really work. I think they just grab the feed and do whatever to generate posts. Ever now and them one of my post would be scrapped.

Of course, there is no efficient way to stop them, they are like cockroaches. You can never kill them all. They run, they hide, you can't find them even you want to sue them.

By not licensing is, well, the last hope, I guess. Maybe just the last item on checklist of how-to-desperately-stop-being-scraped-list you should have checked.

It's not as if I don't want to share, if anyone partially copy-and-pasting my content with proper attribution, it doesn't have to be a link-back, I wouldn't mind at all.

To me, licensing isn't important because I can't really take an action when someone violates my rights and I don't really want to keep my rights, I want to share. The more important thing is intention. It's crystal clear that scrappers are just want to exploit your heart-licensed works to make their own money. I don't want my stuff to be part of those.

Right now, I have switched my default license to none on Flickr. Only the new uploads will have new licensing setting. I will see if that could stop them, though I truly doubt about it.

Some careful people would ask you a clear statement about the license if you doesn't make it clear or haven't licensed yet. I actually do same thing, if I think I need a written permission.

Anyway, don't license your work. If people really need to use your works, they will send you an email.