Travels with a Sketchbook...in Kent

Bluebell Beginnings

8" x 12", coloured pencil on Arches Hot Press paper
Antique White mat, American Oak Frame £195
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The next section of this blog will feature sketchbook blog posts (from Making a Mark) which are about places in Kent. These all include sketches which are drawn in pencil or pen and ink and then completed using coloured pencils.

The summary list of posts relating to Kent - in the order they were published is as follows:

• The kitchen garden at Chartwell, Churchill's former home
• Sketching bluebells at Emmett's Garden, Kent
  
• Through the fence (Emmett's Garden)
• International Sketchcrawl - Great Comp Garden, Kent
• More sketching at Sissinghurst and a salutary tale
• The White Garden, Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent
• Summer at Sissinghurst
• Autumn at Sissinghurst
• Knole House in Kent
• Spring at Sissinghurst
• Spring fields from Sissinghurst
• The view from the Downs
• A hot summer's afternoon in a Kentish garden (Penshurst Place)
  

These posts will be posted after this summary and the hyperlink to each post will be added to this summary as each is published.

I'll also include a date at the end of each post of when it was first published on 'Making A Mark' but otherwise won't comment further.

In future, this summary will be:

• included in the "trip summaries" section (near the top of the right hand column)
  
• updated on a monthly basis if I've posted a sketch of Kent in the previous month.

The image at the top of this post is a drawing I completed based on the sketch I did and the photos taken during my visit to Emmetts Garden in Kent last April (see 'Sketching bluebells').

Knole House in Kent

Knole House, Sevenoaks, Kent

8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

On Easter Sunday we visited Knole House near Sevenoaks in Kent. We went for a stroll in the ancient parkland which is one of the few deer parks to survive over the last 500 years and the only one in Kent. Then we both sat on a fallen tree trunk in the parkland on the hill overlooking the house while "He who must not be bored while I sketch" read the Sunday Times and I sketched Knole House - in pen and ink finished with coloured pencil.

When I finished the sketch I decided that my failure to ever actually pay a visit to Knole House needed to be remedied and so I made a very quick acquaintance with the interior at the end of the day - a time I especially like for visits as it tends to be quiet.

Knole House is now a National Trust property. It's a sprawling ragstone property and has the most fascinating mix of historical, ecclesiastical, Royal, and literary associations. Believed to have been created in the thirteenth century and long associated with the hunting of deer, it was originally home to the Archbishops of Canterbury before it was 'given' to King Henry VIII and made a Royal Palace. Elizabeth I then presented it to Thomas Sackville, the first Earl of Dorset in 1566 and is has been home to the Sackville family ever since.

A curious legend attached to Knole House is that it had seven courtyards, representing the days of the week, fifty-two staircases - one for each week of the year - and 365 rooms, corresponding to the days in a year. (The Heritage Trail)

Knole was the childhood home of Vita Sackville West who restored Sissinghurst Castle and created the very famous garden there. Her close friend Virginia Woolfe writes about Knole in Orlando and a facsimile manuscript of Orlando in Woolfe's own handwriting - showing the development of the description of Knole in the book - is displayed in the Great Hall. The novel ends with Orlando taking possession of the house although Vita was denied ownership of Knole because the house was 'entailed' and passed through the male line.

The house is also full of paintings, including portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun and copies of the Raphael cartoons which are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

For more information about the house try reading either the National Trust website about the history of Knole, this very informative New York Times article or Vita Sackville West's book "Knole and the Sackvilles'.

Knole Park is relatively unique amongst English country houses in that it was never 'landscaped' and consequently looks much as it did in the seventeenth century. It was however devastated in the Great Storm of 1987 - which felled 6 of the seven oaks in the town of Sevenoaks. The ancient parkland lost 70% of its trees which reputedly cost a £1m to replant across 1,000 acres in a way which had to be careful to reflect the lack of a 'designed look' for the overall parkland.

We finished up on Sunday by having half a cream tea each in the Brewhouse Tearoom. I reckon the scones had been out of the oven for about half an hour as they were still warm and moist. Excellent blackcurrent jam and cornish clotted cream was served as well - very definitely a place to go for a Cream Tea treat! I have been planning my book which rates National Trust properties by the quality of their cream teas for some years now........

The garden looks and sounds really interesting and I'm now planning to go back this summer and visit it on a Wedesday when it's open.

If you visit Knole, note that:

• the house is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
• the garden is private to Lord Sackville and is only open on Wednesdays
• the parkland is open daily for pedestrians only. Cars are only allowed in when the house is open.
• details of how to get there are available here.
  

Links:

• National Trust - Knole
  
• The Heritage Trail: English Stately Homes - Knole House
  
• New York Times: Knole House - Quintessential English Style
• The Bloomsbury Group and Vita Sackville West
• The Literature Network: Biography of Virginia Woolf

Technorati tags: national trust, sketchbook,

Google fails to stop theft and abuse by spam blogs

Google's search engine lists spam blogs which steal copyright material from legitimate blogs and then generate income by hosting Google Ad-Sense adverts.

The content of my blogs - which is all copyrighted specifically to address this issue - is being repeatedly scraped (stolen) and used on spam blogs. The content of your blog might be suffering the same fate. I'm currently faced with an explosion in the amount of material being stolen. Read on to find out if you've got a problem like mine and what you can do about it.

What's a spam blog (splog)?

Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either Inauthentic Text or merely stolen from other websites. These blogs usually contain an high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites. (Wikipedia)

What sort of fraud or theft is it?
Content from my website/blogs is stolen (scraped) and reposted on a splog which hosts Google Ad-Sense adverts.

• It's fraud because income generated for the host spam blog is generated by content devised by and stolen from other legitimate blogs (likes yours and mine).
  
• It's fraud because all clicks on an advert on a spam blog are charged to the advertiser. The advertiser's name is also being linked to fraudulent activity.
• it's theft because Google is involved in publishing stolen copyright material by continuing to index the website in its search engine after it has been notified about it.

How did I find out?
I have various phrases associated with my website/blogs set up on Google Alerts [http://www.google.com/alerts] - not to be confused with www.googlealert.com which is nothing to do with Google. Guess who got stitched up on that domain name!

Every time the phrase is used in something indexed by Google I get an e-mail alert. The number of alerts I've had in the last 24 hours which are actually associated with spam blogs is getting quite ridiculous - hence this post.

I very much recommend that you also set up Google alerts for your blog's name and any similar 'phrases' to see if your content is also being scraped.

How did I report the theft and the abuse?
What I did was I found the website for reporting abuse of abuse of Google Ad-Sense, located the e-mail address and reported the abuse. The e-mail address is " adsense-abuse@google.com ". (They call it a 'policy violation'. I call if theft.)

You should report:

• the names/URLs/posts of websites/blog sites from which content is being scraped
• if your content is copyright protected and whether there is a notice to this effect on site
• your concern that income is being generated for thieves committing fraud through the use of Google Ad-Sense adverts on the offending site
  

You will get an automated response. This is it.

We've received your email alerting us to a potential policy violation on a site displaying Google ads. Although we're unable to respond to individual reports, we have forwarded your email to our team of specialists for further investigation.

We appreciate your help in maintaining the quality of the AdSense program.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

Dissatisfied with this initial response to a statement of their involvement in a theft of copyrighted material, I wrote again and indicated I was about to start blogging about it and got this (automated?) response

Hello Katherine,

Thanks for writing in. I understand your concern about your content being re-posted on other sites. Upon investigation of the sites you've listed, it appears that the blogs in question have been since been suspended.

Please know that publishers participating in AdSense may not display Google ads on web pages with content protected by copyright law unless they have the necessary legal rights to display that content. Should you find that your content is being replicated on other sites, rest assured that we will take action as necessary to address the issue.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Diane
The Google AdSense Team

I've reported a number of further breaches in the last 12 hours and am back to the original automated response.

Why is it a problem?
The problem exists because Google has created opportunities for it the problem exist and is not doing enough to close down those who operate in this way. This is not a new problem. I did a little bit of investigation and found more than a few articles about it. Here are links to a couple.

• Rich Miller at Netcraft (a reputable security oriented internet company):
• Google draws fire over Blogspot spam blogs
• New Google Ads could influence hosting affiliate programs
• Yahoo News: Study exposes Spam Blogs - reporting on a joint Microsoft/University of California study
  

Often, legitimate companies have their advertisements served on questionable sites through redirections designed to "obfuscate the connection between the advertisers and the spammers," the researchers wrote.........If those links are clicked, the doorway pages then redirect to other pages, potentially bringing revenue back to its controller via pay-per-click advertising offered by companies such as Google Inc. through its AdSense program.

and

A responsibility also lies with advertisers to assert greater control over where and how their ads are placed.

"Ultimately, it is advertisers' money that is funding the search spam industry, which is increasingly cluttering the Web with low-quality content and reducing Web users' productivity," they wrote.

How to get Google to do something?
So long as Google's search engine continues to index spam blogs and Google Ad-Sense continues to serve up adverts to spam blogs then:

• blogs like mine - and yours - will continue to be scraped of content
  
• copyright breaches will continue
• income generated as a result will mean that content authors are being defrauded
  
• people advertising using Google Ad-Sense will be defrauded.

I sat and pondered on why Google hasn't done anything. And decided that one of the reasons may be that advertisers are not aware of how bad the problem is. If advertisers started pulling their adverts and/or pressurising Google then maybe Google would get it sorted.

So I've decided to start listing all the advertisers appearing on the same page of the spam blogs hosting my stolen content. This at least would alert advertisers to where their adverts were being placed.

Some of the advertisers are small operations - some are individual artists - and some are major companies - including Microsoft! All are potentially being defrauded by the sites hosting my stolen copyrighted content. None appear to be exerting sufficient control over where their adverts appear and all need to check what sort of site their adverts are appearing on.

1. www.nostalgicpen.com - an artist's pen and ink artwork
   
2. www.turnercreative.co.uk - an architectural illustrator
3. uk.shopping.com - buying pencils
4. www.drawnbymike.com - on the spot caricature
5. www.mrpen.co.uk - quality pens
6. www.NailDesignEuroDiscount.com - nail art pen
7. microsoft.com.sharepoint - free trials of Microsoft sharepoint 2007 software
8. elite-supplements.co.uk - anabolic steroids book
9. www.bug.co.uk - training
10. www.investmentu.com - stock reports
11. www.newmexicoindianmarket.com - Indian blankets
12. www.clubmed.co.uk - holidays
13. www.langdale.co.uk/easter - holidays
14. www.monaco2007.com - Holiday apartments
15. www.directrelief.org - Gulf hurricane relief (charity?)
    

I wonder how long it will take for a representative from Google Ad-Sense will turn up to comment on this post to identify what they are doing to halt this sort of abuse. Or maybe they don't pay attention to what people are saying about them on the Internet?

If you are an artist paying for Ad-Sense to advertise your art - you might want to pause and think about the wisdom of your investment. Your adverts might be turning up on spam blogs and getting listed on blog posts like this.....................

Links:

• Google Ad-Sense - don't sign up before you have checked out the search engines for reviews of abuses of Ad-Sense
  
• Google Ad-Sense Abuse - write to adsense-abuse@google.com
• Google Alerts (beta)

Technorati tags: ad-sense abuse, google ad-sense