19962013
Flickbot?
So I'm doing my weekly logfile run through to get a better sense of the ebb and flow of traffic in and out of Blogware and I come across a whole bunch of queries from "FlickBot 2.0 RPT-HTTPClient/0.3-3" - some type of a bot (obviously).
Not much came up in a Google Search for "FlickBot" - except some conjecture that it was a bot looking for illicit use of the DivX codec and some banter that it was an MPAA subpoena-bot.
Digging a little bit deeper, I find that it is actually a bot that looks for "movie content" (their words, not mine) and indexes it for inclusion in their search engine. According to their FAQ
"The DivX Search Engine ... includes content that is freely available on the Internet. The movies returned by the DivX Search Engine may-and very probably are-protected by copyrights... We don't exclude any specific type of content (including adult content)...They also include details concerning their REP implementation - i.e. how to prevent them from indexing your web site.
User-agent: FlickBot*They also provide details concerning how to get previously indexed content out of their index. Seem like a decent enough bunch - wonder what their follow-through is like.
Disallow: /
See this post as it first appeared on Blogware.