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August 31, 2008
I recently read a post on another blog where the author has found his site was being scraped and listed on another site, for profit. If you recall, several months ago, I found that my own stuff was being scraped and posted (which has since been removed) but I think there were some key differences between the two that deserve to be noted.
His Post:
What I have found more so lately is the higher profile I become, the more people try to knock you down or steal what you have. Not surprising in the least. You would be surprised to know that even another blogger scrapes this very blog for their own monetary gain.
Its worth mentioning that the author was referring to one of Kim’s sites. She started a Build a Niche Store Blog many months ago where she setup a feed aggregator and publishes links to other people posts based on “BANS” or “Build a Niche Store” found listed in Google News. Her intent was to someday use the blog as a place where she could interview different authors and allow them to explain how and why they use BANS. ie: “Meet the Blog”
Edit: 08/31/08 - 10:00 PM.
Kim did not realize her site was doing anything wrong and started removing the content that linked to other websites this evening. If you visit the site and find links to any of your content, please post here so we know it needs to be removed!
I recall getting an email from Mike over at BANS Today many months ago in regard to the reprint of content, But I don’t really look at her site much and did not know she was sending Daves site credit as well. In the next day or two, I will ask her to take her site offline to be sure there are no ill feelings toward anyone else, but the choice is purely hers.
Do Aggregated Blogs Provide ANY Value?
This has been debated to the end of the web on many forums! Some of the most popular aggregators are places like Digg, Technorati and even Google itself. If you go to any of the above mentioned sites, and search for blog posts on this or any other popular blog, you will find there are the same types of posts… The benefit of course, is that you find MANY topic related posts in one area, thus giving you the ability to scan what MANY people think versus one persons opinion.
But is it Just a Splog? (Spam Blog)
As part of the debate, the jury is really 50/50 on whether aggregated sites are nothing more than spam blogs. Many people view it as free inbound links and agree the biggest difference in a spam blog, is when the owner of the site does not just aggregate your content, but instead copies your content, replaces your links, and represents the entire edited article as being their own.
In the case of Kim’s Build a Niche Store Blog, she has actually left all links to the original posts in place, including any affiliate links they may have in their original posts! In other words, if a search visitor finds her site based on the content, they are immediately led to the actual persons site who wrote the original post!
Copyright Issues on Blogs
The definition of RSS, which is what bloggers make publicly available:
Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
On my site for instance, you will notice that at the bottom right corner of all pages, there is a link to the Creative Commons website, which in a nutshell says… Go ahead and copy it all you want as long as you do not use it for commercial use (Sell the content) and you give credit back to me when you do use it.
The area of feed copyrights is quite a gray area, since on one hand we are telling everyone, including search engines, to publish our content and make it available for aggregation, but on the other hand, we are wary it showing up somewhere we may not want it to be posted. How do you protect yourself?
Copyright Issues on Content
Fortunately, unlike rss, the content you produce is considered intellectual property and subject to copyright laws. Everything you write on your blog or even in your own code, is yours and if someone breaks a copyright law by using it against your will or even as simple as without your written permission, and does not comply with things like the Creative Commons or your own restrictions, you do have recourse and can file complaints in different places.
Example of Copyright Infringement
A great example of this would be the BANS WordPress Templates I have created and offer for sale. When I first released the BANS Flex template on June 25th, it was done so under the umbrella of creative commons like everything else on this site. In other words, after you purchased the template, you are free to use it, copy it, replace it etc, as long as you don’t take any of the code and sell it or represent it as your own work, without sharing the credit with me. I mean… that’s just common sense anyway! Before I ever released any of it, I even contacted Adam and Kelvin to be sure it was OK to use a portion of the menu code.
If you did decide to copy ANY of the code, start building your own templates and selling them without my prior approval… that would be considered theft of my intellectual property and subject to the rights provided under the DMCA. In other words… its no different than someone taking BANS, copying all the functional parts of the code, and reselling it as their own!
You be the Judge
10 Responses to “Does Aggregated Content Violate Copyrights?”
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For me, it really depends on the intentions and general “vibe” of the site that’s scraping the content. If the links and content are still intact from the original source, then I guess it’s okay.
I’ve always found this to be a difficult topic to discuss because it’s such a gray area.
It really is, Elijah.
I can completely relate to Dave and his thoughts of being scraped for profit, but at the same time, after looking through the pages on her site, it appears the only person who really benefits is his site and others that are listed.
Its really a bittersweet call!
Some people don’t have enough to worry about so they make chit up to get angry over.
People are weird like that.
I love the scraper sites……gives me a link and they never rank very well for long anyways so who cares.
Reprinting entire posts is spam. Doing it without author’s consent is uncool. If she was interested in passing along his nuggets of wisdom, she could simply reprint portions of his posts along with her own commentary and a link to his original post.
I could be mistaken, but does the duplicate content penalty not penalize Dave as well?
The duplicate content penalty….if such exists…..would not penalize the original author. Google can easily tell who owns the content.
@ Andrew -
Good point Andrew. I know most of the plugins just rely on the Original poster using the tag on their own site… to limit the length of the post.
As I said in the post, Google is very smart and knows ehere the original content comes from in most cases. In this case, the content was even linked back to the original.
As I am writing this, I just went over to check how many articles were actual full reprints and it looks like Kim has already removed the articles!
Poof… gone.
I’m curious how Google rates duplicate text. I would be furious and take action IF I found out the MY content was causing problems for my ranking or being accused of posting duplicate info because of someone else.
Hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know if these even happens. Anyone know about this?
I’m all for people mentioning my site(s) and links, but they MUST make a comment. One or two sentences WHY they bothered to copy my text and links.
boingboing.net for example! That’s the perfect solution! It’s my fave site, cos they personally comment and link to various topics which fascinate me. I appreciate what and how they do it!
My biggest issue: people DO NOT include a live link to my site when they use my photos, with or without my permission. Yikes. Don’t get me started.
My punk and other rock photos have been published and stolen for 32 years. I struggle so much because people know my photos, but not my name. They are stunned to find out one woman in LA took so many photos they know. They wish they knew sooner to have licensed or purchased them. I lose so much money because of photo thieves.
I am very sensitive to this whole issue of using anyone’s content without it benefiting the creator first and mostly. I know too well what happens if the creator is last in the equation.
At the same time, I am always pleased when people mention my name online. But I rather they not lift my text UNLESS it’s in context with what THEY write. Same with my photos. I demand they remove the photo if used photos out of context and/or without a live link to my site!
@ Jenny - Agreed completely!
ANYTIME you use someone elses work, you should at minimum, provide credit back to the original author. i know in this case, every one of the posts was linked back to the original author, including all content in the posts being the OP’s content… so I dont think that was an issue.
Photos are intellectual property just like my own template code is… you should truly file a DMCA every time you find one of your photos on another site and the owner is not willing to talk to you about it.
If on the other hand, the site owner is willing to work together with you on it… its another story as they are providing your link credit back, ie: creative commons.
If they refuse to talk about it… have the DMCA throw the book at them!
Mark
I have no problem at all with aggregated content sites as long as the content and links are left in the original state and the original author is credited.
It’s a free link and honestly, I’ve gotten quite a bit of traffic and new rss subscribers from several of them.
It’s the ones who change the links and print the content as their own you have to be concerned about. I always try to be nice and send a notice first, but if that doesn’t work, then they get reported.
My first affiliate site I have running scapes content in WP with wp-o-matic. But I don’t set it to post automatically. It sets everything to draft so i can manually select the entries I want to publish, add my thoughts and comments to the post, any images are cached locally so I’m not leeching off their servers, and each post has a link back to the original source.
As long as credit is being given and resources are not being leeched then I think it is fine.