One interesting effect of turning on trackbacks the other day is that we noticed a couple of folks republishing our entire RSS feeds. Now, we’re fine with folks republishing our headlines and the first couple of words… but taking the whole feed and putting three Google Adsense ads around it?
To boot this person at http://www.computeralchemy.com is lifting other blogs including Gizmodo.
It turns out there are folks marketing services encouraging folks to do this! Rok Hrastnik at MarketingStudies.net has an article about it. One system is called SuperFeedSystem which says:
Another day, another person stealing our content (or "the Eliot Ness solution")
Reader Comments
(Page 1 of 1)2. Jason, just added a new post, which basically calls on RSS publishers to post their thoughts on re-publishing best practices and guidelines. Your feedback is apprechiated: http://www.marketingstudies.net/blogs/rss/archive/000410.html
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Rok Hrastnik
3. Hi, Your solution might work for big publishers but not for individual bloggers, I think. After writing on the phenomenon http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2005/05/30/spamblogs/ I had the idea of using a central spamblog-repository using public tagging services like del.icio.us or furl.net: http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2005/06/01/hunting-spamblogs/ Pretty sure the idea has a lot of drawbacks, but it might be a first step?
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Pascal Van Hecke
4. Well, You need to completely define 'stealing content' or content theft. i.e. There are often days when I find a neat article, extract what I believe are the key points and I post them to my blog (obviously with a link back to the original document). Other times, an article is an inspiration for myself to write an article and I will most likely take some ideas from the original blog (which I link to of course). Are you strictly talking about automatic aggreation of whole content with no recognition of source? Or is what I do going to get my knees bashed in as well? ..jordan jordanwillms.com - stream of conscious
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Jordan Willms
5. About Google Adsense for feeds being republished via the www.computeralchemy.com spamblog: no they haven't changed the publisher ID - probably they're not even aware of it. However - the original Google Adsense Publisher (account holder) might be "liable for any and all use of the AFF Ads by any feed user and will indemnify Google for any lawsuit [...]" see http://rss.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000713043682/ In practice, I assume the account holder might see his account suspended and revenues withheld if he hasn't taken the appropriate measures against abuse, for example by: "Google recommends publishing a feed-specific T&C document warning users not to mess with your feeds"
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Pascal Van Hecke
6. I don't think we can expect the advertising networks to police all of these sites. First of all, there are so many different ways in which content-stealing occurs that it would take vast resources to determine, case by case, which practices are permissible and which are not. Secondly, these networks are not the appropriate party to make such determinations and their attempting to do so would probably subject them to lawsuits by the infringers. Unfortunately, these matters ultimately have to be left to the court system, which of course is slow and costly (and part of the reason why people get away with stealing). Sending out cease and desist letters may just have to become part of the regular work of maintaining a blog.
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Hoyun Kim
8. Hi all I'm the publisher of iPodlounge and can relate to people stealing content. Word of advise, send a DMCA (Digital Millenuim Copyright Act) notice to their ISP. Most ISPs have an abuse department to handle copyright issues and all ISPs have copyright infringement policies in their Terms of Use. The ISP may shut down the offending site until the person gets rid of the infringed material. http://www.learnaboutlaw.com/learnaboutDMCA.htm You can also Google sample DMCA notices.
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Dennis Lloyd
10. Jason, Computeralchemy.com is displaying your RSS Adsense ads though... lol. I just hope they didn't change your publisher ID. The idea to add a copyright notice is a good one and should help a bit.
Posted at 9:18PM on Nov 8th 2005 by Marcel @ Car blog
11. I got tired of this feed-stealers. So I made a WordPress plugin to automcatically add copyright messages to feeds. I think having a copyright message is a first level deterrent. What if he removes the copyright message? I think that should help in the future if the victim decides to pursue legal action because the excuse of using a automated process will not apply. The perpetrator has actively removed the copyright message from a copyrighted content and displayed it on his site. IANAL
Posted at 1:15AM on Nov 15th 2005 by Angsuman Chakraborty
12. I call these Pseudo Blogs by the term "Copy & Paste Blogs", and have been the victim of this lazy greedy practice. As pioneers of the third major phase of the blogosphere, we enjoy discussing and solving the unique problems we encounter, knowing no humans have ever faced these situations before. One trick I accidentally discovered in my own blogs is this: I always end my posts with my name and my aka as a hypertext link to my Vaspers the Grate blog. During a Google or Technorati search on my blog name, I discovered a "Copy & Paste" site that had lifted my content. I always have a 150 k digital artwork headlining each post. They had the art, the post text, and the signature with a link embedded in it. They were too lazy or stupid to remove the linked signature. I laughed. Anyone who read this content could click on "Vaspers the Grate" and go to my blog, where they might find the content that was stolen and not given proper credit or link. Thus, all content thefts have to go to the trouble of removing that linked signature at the end of every post. My primitive, but effective DRM type device, within my Zero Budget Marketing approach.
Posted at 11:55PM on Dec 11th 2005 by steven streight aka vaspers the grate
Add your comments
Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.
1. Jason, we're actually discussing the situation with the maker of the SuperFeedSystem, right below the article you're referencing above. If you feel like it, your additions to the discussion are most welcome: http://www.marketingstudies.net/blogs/rss/archive/000407.html
Posted at 4:41PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Rok Hrastnik