Plagarism is Alive and, Sadly, Well
Wordpress boss Matt Mullenweg believes spam is one of the blogosphere’s biggest threats but another increasingly troubling issue is plagiarism. We’re not talking about people taking the ideas of other bloggers but outright theft of entire posts or passages. A recent example is The Client Side, which had its posts ripped off without attribution or even a hat tip by Scott Kress, an experienced blogger who should know better. Over the weekend, several b5 bloggers noticed a blog called All Women Talk is using other people’s content without permission.
Within the media, plagiarists are treated like vermin and quickly ostracized. In the blogopshere, it seems many people are still trying to get their heads around plagiarism. On one hand, it can be somewhat flattering to have your content “borrowed” by someone else because it suggests what you’re writing is interesting. Many blogs using your content will try to get around it by linking back to your blog or giving you credit.
After awhile, however, you begin to realize you’re doing all the work while someone else is reaping the benefits (readership, traffic, advertising revenue) by scraping your content. I mean, why should someone ever visit your blog if they can read it somewhere else? And pretty soon you realize the linkbacks are insincere tokens of thanks. Rather than giving you some props/credit, they’re a cheap and inadequate way of quasi-asking for permission.
So what can you do if another blogger is ripping off your work? You can start with a friendly comment or e-mail, suggesting that while you’re flattered by the attention, it would be better if they put together their own thoughts on a particular topic while citing the blog where they got the idea through a hat tip or link. If that doesn’t work, a harsher e-mail or a post on your blog outing the plagiarist may be the next move. In extreme cases, you can considering using Digital Millennium Copyright Act, (DMCA) to compel people to take down material seen as infringing on copyrighted content.
For more information on plagiarism, check out Plagiarism Today, a blog that looks at plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues.
January 29th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Great post Mark!
January 29th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I’ve stopped being nice and the claws come out from the start. I had a scraper last week who tried to make friends with me by flattering me.
“Your content’s so wonderful and I want to share it with everyone.” blah blah blah
No thanks. Stop wasting my time and get a life.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Mark.
We’ve had to crack down on sites using our full feed and I agree, RSS plagiarism is a growing problem that is frustrating for webmasters.
But…I’m not sure I agree with you totally on the “all women talk” example. I took a look at the site and noticed they are indeed scraping content from other sites and offering no unique content of their own, however, they are using only an excerpt and are giving full credit to the source including a seo-friendly inbound link. What’s different from this method of rss aggregation vs. sites like digg.com, originalsignal or Google News for that matter?
Surely B5 wouldn’t complain about any traffic that came as a result of Digg, so why would you need to worry about All Women Talk. Would you not consider this fair use and better yet, another nice way to expose b5 content to a wider audience?
Like to hear your thoughts on this.
Best,
Branden
January 29th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Branden,
I’m all for exposing b5media content to a broader audience but there’s just something wrong about creating a blog that simply consists of other peoples’ material. If the material is so compelling, why not write a blog post that cites the original content as a source.
I would argue that Digg is difference given Digg gives you a snippet of the content but makes you go off and visit the blog for the whole story.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Mark.
Thanks for responding.
Yes….Digg “gives you a snippet but makes you go off and visit the blog for the whole story.” But…that is exactly what AllWomenTalk is doing. They are giving an excerpt and making you go to the source to read the whole story. And, ala Digg, they are allowing users to vote on the content they like. Heck, even Google shows excerpts of a site and then links off to the original source.
I’m not defending this site specifically, but I am wondering how we can define what constitutes fair use within the arena of news aggregation? Should we embrace the use of our feeds by others for commercial purposes if they use only our excerpts? I guess this is decision ultimately lies with the individual publisher but one thing is certain, content enforcement is going to give a lot of us major headaches.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Hi Mark,
Thanks for mentioning the situation that happened to me and sharing information on this topic.
I have given Scott Cress every chance to respond and come clean. He has chosen to remain silent and, as a senior marketer who has a profile on LinkedIn I would assume he would have spoken up and apologized. He has ripped off many other posts including TechCrunch so his reputation is seriously destroyed in the blogosphere.
They say that imitation is the best form of flattery. So, what do you call stealing with the intent to deceive? I know what I call it but have enough class to not come right out and use those words on your very classy blog Mark!
Cheers,
Michael
January 30th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Mark, see: http://www.toyz.org/mrblog/archives/00000266.html
There are some technical things we can do referenced in that post, such as Digital Fingerprint and Anti-Leech (both for Wordpress).
February 4th, 2007 at 7:11 am
what’s wrong with allwomenestalk.com ? they just publish excerpt and placing 2 link per post to original source.
What they do is just gathering interesting post for women in one place (with full credits)
I’ll try do add my blog to their site - it’s source for more readers and better SE positions.
anyway stealing is bad but sharing is good
February 4th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Thank you for the suggestions Mark! I wished I found this post earlier because someone recently copied my blog as well and I had to make a post about it! I added your advice in the comments section for other people to read.. sorry I had to copy/paste
February 5th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Michael.
You work hard to produce your content and you have every right to demand that it’s used fairly. But…I have to ask you the same questions as Leor did above. What’s specifically is AllWomenTalk doing that crosses the line?
They give you full credit, take only a small excerpt from your article and provide you with two inbound links. I’ve raised this point with Mark…what’s the difference between that and sites like Techmeme or Digg? I realize Techmeme is adding value by filtering out only the most popular stories, but the “use” of that content seems equally fair - no?
In fact… Mark’s site is sitting on the front page of Techmeme right now for his Google Office story: http://techmeme.com/ What’s included? The headline, a short excerpt and a link back to this site. Exactly the same as what AllWomenTalk is doing.
If that was you on the front page of Techmeme, I think its fair to assume you wouldn’t be as concerned or trying to find Gabe Rivera and get answers from him in the blogosphere.
What would I do? In the past I’ve done the same damn thing. I’ve felt cheated and requested that the site remove my content. But I’ve never sent any such requests to Digg, or Original Signal, or Techmeme, or the dozens of other “popular aggregators”. That seems to qualify me as one whose setting a double standard.
So…what do you think Michael? What should the rules be here in your opinion. What makes some aggregators legit and others thieves? Personally I define fair as an excerpt only, a link back to my site (free of nofollow attributes) and full credit as the author. I find full use of the post unfair, no linkbacks unfair and linkback with nofollow attributes unfair.
Your thoughts?