I think everyone knows I am not a lawyer but incase you did not here is your notice.
A few times a week I get emails from people who are getting there RSS republished other places. Usually the title of the subject is like “PLEASE HELP ME CONTENT THIEF STOLE MY STUFF”.
Usually the first thing I look at is there feed to see if they have anything about how there RSS feed is licensed. Not one time has any of these people ever had anything on there feed that says how it can be used. You can see in my feed that it says it falls under the creative commons license with some rights reserved and it links to the license here
So here is the thing. In my legal experience its always been about “intent”. If someone gets caught ripping off your RSS and you have ZERO instructions on how your rss can and cant be used then you are going to have a hard time going after someone ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU STILL DON’T HAVE ANY INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW YOUR FEED SHOULD BE USED.
In the end really… how bad is it? I see so many people LINK to people that are stealing there content and make countless posts in forums linking to the place that is stealing there content… where otherwise someone would have never seen it… Is it me or does this seem stupid?
If you really have a case its very easy to file a DMCA request to there provider and the content will be removed within a few days (google blogspot and wordpress are very fast in this). Also worst case scenario is that someone ranks over you for your own content in Google and you can send Google a DMCA and they will get nuked out of the search engine…
I do think this is a area where someone could start a service that would handle this for you. They could actively search and destroy people that were syndicating your content. I dunno that is probably messy….
So my final thoughts on this is basically look and make sure someone will actually SEE the site before you make a huge deal about it. Is there alexa number 7 figures? Is there pr0? … srsly
September 11, 2007 at 2:15 pm
what for is a lawyer?
September 2, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Usually that’s enough. Webmasters dont’ always steal content just to steal. Sometimes they just want to share and don’t really understand the laws or figure no one will care.
September 1, 2007 at 4:36 pm
This is almost perfectly on-topic, but if anyone wondered how they’d reliably find such an infringement in the first instance, http://www.copyscape.com would be a tool that could be employed.
September 1, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Yeah there’s pretty much nothing you can do other than show a creative commons licence. And if a site who is ripping you off is big enough to actually overtake you, take action. Fast.
August 29, 2007 at 5:42 am
Stealing content is not a issue, as it’s only being done by people who have no idea on how to run a website and are just looking for a quick buck. They give up sooner or later …
August 25, 2007 at 2:19 pm
http://www.constant-content.com
August 23, 2007 at 10:56 am
I agree also. Dont draw attention to it if you dont have to.
August 22, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Taking the shoemoney route never hurt anyone – good choie :p
I did only a few months ago and am much richer (in intelligence, AND money!) for it!!
August 22, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Anything to make a buck… :S That was you at one point wasn’t it?! Lordy knows it was me… sorry!!
August 22, 2007 at 3:23 pm
That’s incredible – what company is that you work for / own??
August 21, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Wow joey… this is just getting out of control now :p If you don’t have anything better so say……. :
August 21, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Agreed completely shoe – if nobody’s gonna see it – it’s not affecting you – WHY DRAW ATTENTION TO IT?!?
I guess they’re just those same people that call the cops on kids dealing weed on their streets though… it’s not hurting them… but they have to make a big dealio about it anyways – you should konw though… you ARE drug dealer :p
August 21, 2007 at 10:11 am
nice!
August 21, 2007 at 2:29 am
Nice post, should help others.
August 19, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I found Amazon linking to a content thief. It was on the main page of their Amazon Web Services section, under “In the News”. I read a post by John Reese (income.com) and then when I was on Amazon’s page I clicked the link to an article and started reading it. I KNEW I read it somewhere before. Ended up just contacting Amazon and John and it’s now updated.
August 19, 2007 at 2:24 am
Here is how I deal with RSS scrapers…
http://www.myawesomeblog.com/blogging-tips/how-to-combat-idiot-sploggers/
August 18, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I am not a professional copy writer by any means and lord knows I make a ton of typos and grammatical errors. I did notice something in a LOT of your posts. You are typing “there” when it appears, from the context, you are meaning “their”. Then again I could be missing something. Just FYI – I would want someone to point that type of error out to me. Love the site man. Keep up the good work.
August 18, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Thankfully never had to deal with this (apart from articles I have submitted) but I think that was allowed anyway…
August 18, 2007 at 6:08 am
Let me add this bit as well. I know a guy that got his whole website copied and duped into google on a new url. what this guy did was he did a simple whois and found the guys IP that he was hosting the site on and all those url’s that were on the IP, he got them all Flamed by google in a matter of days with his spam report.
Webmasters are very smart and i think you would have to be a fool to mess with someone who sits home all day finding new ways how to F you over.
August 17, 2007 at 8:20 pm
We file these requests all the time for our writers, we do it so much we have a template.
August 17, 2007 at 8:08 pm
One of my staff forwards me an email with a link to an article “Boss, you should read these, some great ideas”. I click on the link, and it takes me to a scraper type of blog, and here’s the article I’ve written the day before and have spent over 2 hours. It had only 1 link in it and it was removed, and no backlink to my blog, and not even a mention of my name.
It doesn’t feel good when people steal from you.
August 17, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Yeh its almost like when people take your domain name leave the plural out and copy the mother and take some of your traffic..never thought they would do this with my wedding site
August 17, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Speak of the devil. Woke up today and checked my incoming links, and someone stole my content too. My New Hustle is still new but still has that great content that attracts the eyes of scrapers. I thank the dude for the compliment, but please, get your own content.
August 17, 2007 at 6:29 am
For me personally, I am going to take the “shoemoney” route on this one and say that I am not building my blog for google, I am building it for reg. people and other bloggers to come and get info. if you think my posts are good enough to steal AND you link back to were you stole them from then I say bring it on.
And yea shoe you are right, if you are in the 6 to 7 digits on alexa (i am) then who the hell out there knows who you are anyways. if someone gets your content and links back to you in my book, thats a plus.
As for the disclaimer shoe, go ahead and make a video for it as well, place it on this site and youtube, get another million links because it is sure to be big time link bait and keep pulling those strings baby, for I for one ain’t mad at ya.
August 17, 2007 at 5:52 am
Pedantic comment: it’s “their content”, not “there content”. You’re excellent advice will read with much more power if you write it without grammatical errors. Cheers.
August 17, 2007 at 4:41 am
The disclaimer is cool but you have good visibility and people will always copy you no matter what you say.
August 17, 2007 at 3:28 am
All the people who jack your RSS feed made my Technorati score shoot up about 10 spots when I was linked in the Dillsmack interview post, so I’m not complaining.
August 17, 2007 at 2:42 am
there = their ?
August 17, 2007 at 2:17 am
What kind of bs is this? It doesn’t matter whether I put a big fat “DON’T RE-PUBLISH MY CONTENT” sign on my website or not, PEOPLE CAN’T TAKE OTHER PEOPLE’S CONTENT.
With your kind of logic I would have to put a “DON’T STEAL MY CAR” sign on my car just so I can go after someone who might steal it.
Just because I publish a RSS feed doesn’t mean everyone can take the content as they please.
August 17, 2007 at 2:11 am
A decent defense against the scrapers is to have alot of links to your site in your own articles. Dont go crazy, but the occasional “we are now revisiting on what we talked about [link]last week[/link]” works nice.
This obviously wont work on sites that strip the links, but its a good way to scrape the scrapers and get some backlinks..
August 17, 2007 at 12:40 am
2 of my domains got highly penalized for duplicate content… which got copied by other sites who were older than mine.
But as you said, I didn’t have any license anywhere.
August 16, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Hey Shoe, Just to let you know, in your feed your still linking to version 2.0 of the license. You need to update that to 3.0 as I’m sure you know, just incase you didn’t realize you forgot to update it
August 16, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Hmmm. I guess I need to look into copyrighting my stuff.
August 16, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Good points, Jeremy. It’s amazing how many people provide no copyright and use information … and how many “agreeived” copy victims didn’t own the content to begin with. It;s certainly a two-way street.
I did get a kick out of John Chow’s latest review of a blogger who aid him $400 to tell the world about the content the guy had stolen. Although the crazy part is the guy is getting way more thna his $400 worth in traffic, to be sure.
August 16, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I love scraper sites, that is, as long as they provide a link back.
August 16, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I wouldn’t mind someone stealing my content if they keep the links intact
August 16, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I say, don’t use content that you don’t own and claim it as your own (too many people are doing this). Hey you ripped those images off my site man, ya, but you got them off Google images… Also, be smart, tag your images, have disclaimers, and agreements. Just be smart about it.
August 16, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Yeah, spot on. I’d like to meet some of the people behind scraper sites because it seems so faceless and bland, kinda creepy in a weird internet way (for lack of a better way to put it).
August 16, 2007 at 5:22 pm
interesting take on things Jeremy.
August 16, 2007 at 5:07 pm
These sites are great if they keep your links up. Something a friend does is have the RSS feeds generate extra information per post that includes, “If someone is stealing my feed e-mail me at . . .” He’s gotten responses and took action.
August 16, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Your right but there’s no running involved. It can dynamically populate content so you don’t have to touch it after you make it. Put up a couple of adsense ads and voila. website ready for clicks from internet noobs that don’t know better. I don’t have one but I think that’s the biz model…
August 16, 2007 at 4:19 pm
So shoe, what do you think about scraper sites? I though I heard you say something about a scraper for voip that you spotlighted on net income that you thought was a pretty good site? Perhaps I’m wrong but I thought you had said that was a scraper…
August 16, 2007 at 4:17 pm
yea, that is pretty cool.. not too hard if you have ever done code to dynamically populate the title tag. you’re not a coder are you?
August 16, 2007 at 3:58 pm
I laugh when scraper sites nab my content, it’s such a measly way to “run” a site.
August 16, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Shoe, quick question. I notice that when I refresh your page I get a different title, how the hell did you manage to do that? Its friggin awesome is it a plugin or something you got Dil to write? Let us know.
August 16, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Love the picture on your disclaimer
August 16, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Someone at Johnchow.com ordered a reviewme for their site while their site was filled with content they had ripped off from him. The review was harsh.
August 16, 2007 at 2:37 pm
I have ignored the problem in the past but as my sites have grown I have seen a very widespread problem from some sites. What bothers me is when they strip any links away from my site.
If they link me I normally leave it alone. If they take away a link it upsets me.
The problem is Google isn’t acting anymore on this issue. They have sent me emails saying I need to take it up with the host etc..
So I have done that 2 times and the host has ignored.
So I don’t have time to waste since I am running a growing blog network. So for now it mostly goes ignored.
August 16, 2007 at 2:16 pm
i love your disclaimer!