Plagiarism or just sloppy RSS usage? What’s your take?
I just received an e-mail from Melissa at Writing Forward about my blog, her blog and dozens of other writing related blogs being copied and posted on the brand new procopywriters.com blog that was started yesterday.
This isn’t your run of the mill content scraping. The articles are reprinted in their entirety and credited to me and the other writers. Sounds okay so far.
But there are two problems that I see:
-The owner doesn’t have permission to use the “borrowed” content.
-There aren’t any backlinks back to the sites, which means there’s no value for the other writers and myself.
The owner of Procopywriters posted his reasoning at Writer’s Resource Center
It included:
“First…ProCopywriters is almost three years old, however, we started the blog YESTERDAY!!! It is true that the content comes from other web sites around the Internet. NO content is stolen from a web site - it is collected through the sites RSS feed.
We do NOT edit the content or change ANY of the embedded links. We do use a contextual advertising technology that adds advertising links where none existed (Kontera, for those interested).”
I do know that from what I saw, the embedded links were kept intact but there were no links back to my blog. If there had been, I would have seen them in my incoming links instead of being notified by Melissa.
What are your thoughts? Do you use RSS syndication? Has your content ever shown up in this manner somewhere else?
Don’t believe him when he says he started the blog yesterday. That blog has archives dating back to 2006. Also, he embeds advertising links WITHIN the text of the original blogs. He is using other people’s content to drive paid traffic, which is pretty much the definition of scraping.
Thank you so much for clarifying that John, and for taking him to task in your thread!
If you don’t like it, I’d tell them to stop immediately. It is a copyright violation. The other side of copyright is that it specifically gives the creator a right to decide who does NOT get to use their stuff.
Backdating is easily done on blogs. You can post today and timestamp it ten years ago if you want.
Thanks for the heads up (and to Melissa Donovan as well). Our content is being used over at the site. Needless to say, I need some coffee and a clear head before dealing with this.
Thanks for letting me know about this. I’ve been having a problem with scrapers lately too. Ugh!
That’s a poor move on their part. Pitching themselves in the ‘Welcome’ message, not saying the content wasn’t written by them, and taking the content without permission.
They should just write their own blog.
One other note: Feedburner lets you determine Creative Commons for your feed. I’ve gone in to modify mine and hopefully, that clears up what people can and can’t do with our feed content.
On a side note, I think that the blog owner didn’t mean to cause such upset. I think he had good intentions but didn’t go about it in the right way. Now he’s caught with a blogger fire on his hands and he’s feeling defensive. (Ha, don’t I know that position!)
What’ll prove or disprove my theory is what decisions he takes now to repair the issue.
I sent a short note today asking that my content be removed. I spoke to a few other writers who have done the same, and had their content removed as well. You’re right James. I don’t think that he meant this intentionally. This situation could have been avoided if the owners had asked and credited properly.
Yeah, that’s the part that is too bad. He removed our info as well, with apologies.
I guess the problem is a lack of concise information about the legalities of copyright and syndication and all that stuff.
You have to admit, the Internet has so much information that it’s very easy for people to make mistakes because they read content that isn’t quite right.
Then of course, there’s the issue of which laws apply where and how, blah blah blah…
I just checked out the site, and noticed that the titles of each post and clickable, as are the comments, both of which lead back to the original blog post from whence they came.
It doesn’t make it kosher, but I thought I’d mention my findings. Basically, he’s still linking to each post, but it’s not as obvious as it would be if he was giving deliberate credit in each post.
It’s also disturbing that he lists the blogs he’s scraping as “Contributors” in the left-hand column.
Finding the right term isn’t always easy. The guy wants to do right by bloggers and find a great solution for all. He originally chose Contributors thinking it was a good name, but is open to calling it “Links” or “Blogroll” or basically whatever fits and pleases the bloggers involved.
He’s also ready to take the blog down if it causes too many problems, though I really think that there’s room for this situation to be beneficial to everyone. The person is open to discussion - but come on, if bloggers en masse are going to start beating the crap out of him for screwing up, what sort of image does that give us?
Sometimes, screwups are honest. Not everyone is out to f**k people over. I think both Courtney, Deb Ng and I can all relate to being caught in crossfire we never expected.
I believe that in this case, the guy is honest about his good intentions. I don’t want to defend everything he did, because I agree he screwed up in many ways, but he didn’t deliberately do so to hurt everyone and be an ass. Give the guy a break.
James, I’m not sure if you’re referring to my comment when you said that we should “give the guy a break,” but it appeared so since you had replied already right before my comment. I just want to make it clear that I’m not one of the bloggers en masse who is “beating the crap out of him.”
In fact, I discovered that he did, indeed, provide a link to each blog post he used, even if they were not obvious. He was accused of not providing any backlinks, when in fact each and every post title linked directly back to the blog it was taken from, and even the comments of each post led directly back to the true blog. Maybe the backlinks aren’t in a preferable position, but they are there, in the titles.
I admit I could have chosen a more appropriate word than “disturbing,” regarding his use of the term “Contributors.” “links” or “blogroll” or something else would be totally appropriate; “Contributors” is a bit misleading because it infers that these people are willing contributors who agreed to be involved.
I agree with you that this guy probably had good intentions, wasn’t deliberate in “stealing” content, and have no problem giving him a break. I never said otherwise.
Hope that clears my comments up.
@ Julia - Nah, it was more directed at large, not at you (which is why I didn’t say @Julia before writing that).
I’ve posted over at Poewar.com on the matter as well.
@James - Whew! Thanks.
(I’m still not used to using “@name” all the time. I tend to write more like a letter, like how I did with my comment to you.)
Hi everyone. I have a few points to add.
1. The system in which the posts link back to the original article is a new development. It was not the case when I discovered him scraping my site. That was done as a response to the pressure, and is a very “limited” concession.
2. His software still embeds adds within the text of other people’s articles AND his site is filled with Google Ads. He is most definitely using other people’s work for profit, not just information.
3. Yes, it is possible that he faked the backdates for his blog posts and started the blog two days ago, but even that is a dishonest practice, though not normally one I would care about. In looking at his archives originally, I found many scraped articles (including my own) in the October archive. There are less articles there now though, simply because he has been asked by several sites to remove their content.
When I looked at the site, the links were back to the RSS feed, and not back to the site. But apparently that has been changed.
My content has been removed and that’s what I was most concerned about.
I always wonder about the people who plead ignorance. How can you possibly put someone’s entire content on your site or blog and think it’s ok? Anyone who knows anything about writing knows you must ask permission first. So really, I don’t buy the whole ignorance routine. If people are going to profit from my work they better cut me in or take it out.
That’s the thing, though - how many people know about writing? How many people understand copyright? How many realize what they can and can’t do with feeds? While I run across tons of people who know that if you want to use something from a print book, you ask, the same people wouldn’t think twice about scraping Internet content.
We know the “rules” because we live and breathe them. So many others don’t.
(Though yes, use the friggin’ Internet to research a little, ya think?)
If the content was being used on a blog or website that wasn’t writing related, I could see pleading ignorance. But a site that claims to be a good resource for freelance writers? That’s another ball of wax entirely.
Hehehe… okay, you win on that one. I was talking generally but yes - a site for writers should know these things.
The “blog” portion of procopywriters.com appears to have been taken down. I don’t know what they plan to replace it with, if anything, but lets hope that it is a legitimate blog written by a real person (preferably paid for their efforts). Whatever the case, I hope that puts an end to this issue.
Wow, cool of you to check, John, and thanks for letting us know. I hope it’s an end, too.
Thank you so much John! I’m sorry your comment didn’t post until now, I found you in my akismet spam for some reason.
Dec 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
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