This evening, while Bush yammered about becoming more and more like Scandinavia, I spent a little time on Technorati. Looking through a list of sites that reference Airbag in one way or another I found a link to an entry I wrote about iPods back in October.
Clicking through I found not just a link and/or a quote of my work but the entire entry reposted word-for-word on a website I have never seen or heard of before.
He, she, it, the thing that owns this site, reposted my work in it's entirety without asking if it was okay by me (which it's not, write your own content fool). In fact the "Apple Information Blog" is made up of nothing but other people's work, word-for-word.
Normally I would walk down to the garage, hastily assemble some Roman hardware and start nailing but it just so happens that only days ago I was talking to a lawyer about this very issue. His blog, his work, is often being re-issued in it's entirety by a competitor and in a similar fashion — I told him to get to an Army Navy Surplus store and grab a flame thrower but he's a bit more civilized than I.
So for the sake of continuing that conversation I'll put down the cross and nails and ask you, isn't this plagiarism? Me thinks yes, very much so.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Sounds like this.
Oh, and this too.
Plagiarism? Yes.
Copyright infringement? Yes.
Could you sue and win? Yes.
But can you prove measurable real damages? Aye, there's the rub.
Your best bet is too send a DMCA takedown notice to the site administrator and then the hosting service if he fails to comply.
I believe the academic definition of plagiarism is taking another's work and portraying it as your own. At least that's what my college professors kept yapping at me.
I don't think it's as extreme as plagiarism, but it's certainly deplorable.
LiveJournal is in the Jim Moore camp, or at least they were before the 6A deal, when I found out they were republishing my RSS feed as if I were a user on their system. When I wrote and asked them to stop the response was an underwhelming "put a block rule in robots.txt, we'll respect that but otherwise go screw." As if we're supposed to take the time to look for and block any site that decides it's okay. I realize the two readers a day I wasn't getting aren't a hill of beans but its the principle to me.
I apologize for that. You see I'm doing some RSS programming (part of the system will take a search term and email the user the article related to the search term indicated). Wordpress was a tremendously easy way for me to do debug work related to the system I was using. I've modified the code to only allow a few sentences of text, and I've removed all articles from my test bed.
More and more often I'm seeing "is this guy plagarising me?" vs. the "sorry I was just learning/testing" story. Methinks people need to learn to set up local web servers or password-protected directories or something. Surely programmers can learn to do that these days. Republishing copyrighted content without express permission is just plain uncool.
If this sort of unauthorised RSS republishing continues then full entry feeds are doomed. Dooooooooomed.
Pat's right - plagiarism is when somebody tries to pass off your work as their own, and this fool certainly gave you full credit while he was ripping off your stuff...
Yes, absolutely. This was being done to several 9rules people, probably yourself included. Mike brought it to our attention on the forum, and last I heard was trying to get this culprit (a different one) shut down. It's a sad day and age we live in, where text is being stolen from blogs. Typical plagerism (on paper), while no more justifiable, is at least more understandable - someone could be in a tough spot, looking to make the grade. But seriously - a blog post? What kind of low-life steals other people's website content? //end_rant
A similar thing happened with me (and is happening with lots of photoblogs) - some site takes your RSS feed, grabs the images from your site using that, and reposts them on their site. Admittedly they still have your titles and links to your site, but you don't get the traffic, and they get advertising revenue from the pages with your images on.
I sent them a stern email and they took my images off, but boy was I pissed.
Sigh. Why do people do this? Don't they know that the Internets are open to all, and such theivery is easily found and ridiculed?
The experimentation I was doing served two purposes.
1) I run a blog pinging/search site called blogbuzzmachine.com, I'm currently working on topic search RSS to email functionality whereby a registered user can ask the system to email articles based on certain search terms ("apple" for example). That lead me to another idea:
2) Topic Basic Search Sites - A set of websites dedicated to finding content with certain terms and aggregating them, similar to news.google.com for example. The business model is fairly simple, a majority of the money generated by advertising would be given to the content providers (in this case the bloggers). I came up with a simple way to proof of concept the idea, by using Wordpress. The point of a public proof of concept was simply to gauge traffic and any income generated to see if it was a viable idea. I didn't realize it would generate such a visceral response. I again apologize for any misunderstandings.
Yup. It is. I'll get the bazooka. And the tar. And feathers. Oh, and the nail clippers.
Unless Brian claimed your content as his own, it isn't plagiarism. By the rationale seen here, if I read a bedtime story to my daughter, I am guilty of copyright infringement/plagiarism.
Sounds like he was just creating a form of RSS Reader/Dispenser based on searchable phrases. Of course, there is no way I can be sure as it was removed very quickly.
And I never claimed the content as my own...the system is clearly printing in the title "Article from (with cooresponding blog name included)" and the each articles first two lines include:
Blog Name: (with the blog name, hyperlinked to the blogs home page)
Article Name: (with the name of the referred article hyperlinked to that articles page)
Yes.
Funny, they've mysteriously "lost" the post in question.
Actually I emailed Airbag's site owner directly letting him know I would remove it.
Jared-
Brian wrote: I've modified the code to only allow a few sentences of text, and I've removed all articles from my test bed.
Blake-
Brian wrote: ...the system is clearly printing in the title "Article from (with cooresponding blog name included)"
While using a public, and accessible, site as a means to prove, or test, a concept might be seen as a bit sketchy, it is clear (to me at least) that he is not plagiarising (or profiting from) Mr. Storey's content. Merely displaying it via the RSS (that last S means Syndication) of the posts whenever a matching search term is entered.
I don't know Brian from Adam, but the complete disregard of his comments and the overzealous, "BURN HIM!" attitude seen here doesn't promote me to side with anyone but Brian.
Providing an RSS feed doesn't mean you are waiving your copyright, and unless you've chosen to license your work under a scheme such as the various Creative Commons licenses, the site would need your express written permission to use your content. Merely notifying some site via email that you will be hosting their content (as in the example listed in the first comment) is not enough.
I say nail without mercy whoever steals your content, same thing happened here
Same guy has your entry on this other site to
http://ipod.lans-inc.com/?p=13
Be careful of whom Greg Storey crucifies. His readers have called the crucifiee's employers to complain before. Brian will never be redeemed here, as others have apologized and received no blessing either.
Begone Brian and do not look back from here - nothing will be resolved. There is only slowly incited anger.
the overzealous, "BURN HIM!" attitude seen here...
Where do you get that from? I don't see anyone being overzealous in the comments. If you want to see some over-the-top pitchfork and torches there are better comments in the archives.
By the rationale seen here, if I read a bedtime story to my daughter, I am guilty of copyright infringement/plagiarism.
No, to make your bedtime story example fit the situation you would have to remove the book from its cover and rebind it with a cover you made with your name on it. And then go put it in a library.
And I never claimed the content as my own...
Most people wouldn't know the difference especially when you are encouraging people to comment on the content. Still I understand that you are experimenting and would agree with others that it would be best if you did your work in a way that wasn't being indexed.
Brian will never be redeemed here, as others have apologized and received no blessing either.
Peter you can do the blessing for all of us.
Sorry Greg, I'm your good friend and I'd like to support you but as several have pointed out it isn't plagiarism unless he claims that the content is his own. If he cites you as the source it may be copywrite infringement, but not plagiarism. As a college prof. I deal with plagiarism all the time, this may be bad stuff, he's doing (I don't understand the first thing about the use he claims he was puting it to) but it's not plagiarism.
don't know much about copyright infrigement/plagiarism, but i do know that i find the blog in question: Stupid! Why does he bother is my question!
Read Christian's (aptly named) comment and Blake's wasn't exactly under-zealous - and Nathan's "low-life" comment. There also (prior to your post) was no response from you in regards to Brians apologies. Also not a very clever closing to your post and it just "passes the buck" and absolves you of providing any resolution to the issue.
But why resolve when we can tear down, who needs that "Christ-like" uplifitng BS anyway.
Here's some resolution for you Peter.
Do I think what Brian did as plagiarism? Not anymore. As some have pointed out the only infraction would be copyright violation. Did Brian violate copyright law? Yes, as I understand the law, yes he did. The RSS feed is a method of distribution that does not wave copyright. Permission to republish on a website, newspaper, television, etc. is still required.
Should Brian be testing a system that does this (accident or not) in a way that gets indexed by search engines and the like? Probably not a good idea. There was nothing on the site that suggested it was part of an experiment and I can't imagine that if he was actively testing this application that he did not notice that full posts were being pulled into his site. None the less he has apologized and that was nice of him.
And as I have done for everyone else who has infringed upon my property in one way or another I'll extend the same consolation to Brian: when your work is finished let me know and I'll help promote it.
Perfect. That was awesome. And not just resolution for me but I am sure for every one else who has posted.
Off Topic
How do you come up with the titles for your posts?
It's funny - I was just reading this earlier today, and then found his site in my 'incoming links' via technorati.
The only thing that bugs me about this is the fact that he's running ads on the site. I think excerpting articles as part of your regular blogging is par for the course - but running an entire site of stubs containing popular search terms is a splog as far as I can see.
RAR! MOMO EAT SPLOGGER
Permission issues notwithstanding, feeds based entirely on republished content (such as Eyebeam's reBlog project) have their uses.