Is it Content Theft or Free Distribution?
How do you feel when you see your content on an someone else’s site? Anger? Pleased?
A few people have asked my opinion about the service that is basically built around taking bloggers content and republishing it for their users to read and comment on.
Tony says Shyftr Crosses The Line
Anyway, its not the conversations being hosted somewhere else that bothers me, its that there are a new crop of services which would not otherwise exist without republishing someone else’s content without the original author’s explicit permission. Well, lots of people’s content. And you can dress it up and all kinds of clothing and all kinds of nifty wrappers, but ultimately that’s what this is about.
Scoble takes the opposite view
This is a trend that the best bloggers should embrace. Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me. As someone else wrote: steal my content please.
Shyftr seem to have seen the feedback and modified their service somewhat
we have decided to revise the format around our discussions. We will only display the title, author, and date of an item where discussions occur outside of the reader.
The thing is, they will not be the last. We do need to get our terms right though:
- Scraping – Scraping (note, not “scrapping”), is taking content that was not published in a feed but by reading the HTML source. Google scrapes in fact, and really they should provide an opt-in rather than an opt-out via robots.txt. We let Google get away with it because they benefit us with traffic, your scraper+adsense site will not get the same treatment.
- Aggregating and re-publishing – Aggregators take feeds and publish them in a central location. This might be full articles or just headlines like at alltop. In general, most content creators like the headline type for the traffic they send, and are suspicious of the full content type because they use the content without any traffic benefit to the creator.
- Theft – While publishing full articles is often seen as theft, the worst kind, and where most people would agree, is where the content is not only taken, but modified to remove any ownership, attribution or links for the creator.
How you react to the various types of content reuse depends on your approach to blogging and why you are blogging.
If you make money from page views (CPM ads or network bonuses) or if you make money from ad clicks (adsense, PPC), then you are going to be mightily upset that someone is republishing your work, regardless of intentions.
On the other hand, say you write about photography, gadgets or cigar reviews, you could benefit from the links (providing they are left in unmodified), through search engine boost or directly through product affiliate links.
For myself, much like Scoble, I don’t earn from traffic. I don’t really mind people sharing my stuff, providing my content is reproduced as-is because my blogging is not about traffic but about sharing the content and establishing my “brand”. The more people read my stuff and value it the better for me.
Which leads me to use Creative Commons attribution license on my content. I want it to spread, but I don’t want people mucking around with it or using it to pimp adsense clicks so I use Noncommercial-No Derivative.
How do you feel about your content being re-used?
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Posted on April 22, 2008 by Chris Garrett
Filed Under Creative Commons
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11 Responses to “Is it Content Theft or Free Distribution?”
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I’m happy to see my blog content reused – as long as it is attributed and is linked back to the source correctly.
That way it drives traffic, page rank etc in exchange from the benefits my content might give to an aggregation service.
Without links or attribution it’s the same as publishing unattributed work in newspapers or unattributed quotes.
Yes, in fact I am often more annoyed that a high trust site has quoted me without a link!
[...] [...]
I’m with Chris. In fact I was bummed that Seth Godin quoted me and didn’t give me the link love.
Yup, I’m with Dan and Chris.
I’ve been running my website http://www,junglephotos.com since 2000, and others. I make several $thousands per year from my websites, and I have constantly had to deal with people using my content without permission–taking photos (and bandwidth) or scraping text.
I don’t mind people using the material, so long as there is a link back and acknowledgment of the source. If there is no attribution or credit, why don’t we all just pass the time writing for Wikipedia?
I love my websites and my blogs, but I’m not in it just for the warm fuzzies of knowing I am contributing to the greater good. I want to make money and to be recognized and acknowledged! And that’s perfectly natural, isn’t it?
@Don – That sucks even more when a blogger does it, we all make mistakes but that doesn’t mean it stings any less
@Roger – I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect something in return, even if it is just a link or hat tip. Even a “via” link with no useful text is picked up by Google. Most of us write for a purpose, even if it is just attention. To not have any attribution is just plain bad.
Shyftr is not a content scraper. Shyftr is an RSS Aggregator. RSS is a format of blog (or other) content that is provided by the publisher. If “content creators like the headline type” then it is generally assumed the content creator will provide only that information within their syndicated distributions. Nobody is forcing bloggers to publish full feeds and the aggregators are not responsible for trimming or otherwise tampering with feed content (short of protecting their users and system from uncommon exploits considered hostile). RSS Readers always attempt to display attribution and links to both the creator and the articles own page. An RSS Reader displaying all the content provided for consumption within the RSS Feed is in no way, shape, or form considered theft.
So in reality… people who live and die on pageviews and simply cannot stomach their audience reading the full story in an RSS Reader do not need to get all huffy with the RSS Reader services, they need to re-evaluate the way they syndicate their content and take more responsibility over the control they have. In other words, they need to not publish full feeds. That’s a no brainer and is in no way Shyftr’s (or any other RSS Readers) business what motivates the publisher to make said choice… On that same token it is not the job of the aggregators to educate publishers on the technology the publishers are using, that responsibility lies with the publisher themselves (or, if they are so fortunate, some of their more educated peers). it is dangerous when those “educated peers” seem to misunderstand things and then a steady snowball of misinformation begins to roll down the internet hill.
For a blogger who offers an RSS feed to be upset about having feed subscribers…. I mean… It is as though someone were to misunderstand what a chain-saw was, and then after cutting off their hand they ignorantly bleed in bewildered shock and wonder why on Earth the evil chain-saw companies made the spinning thing so sharp and fast. Can you honestly pity that person? I can’t. Don’t offer the feed if you don’t want your users to subscribe to it. If you want to pigeon hole them into being able to only look at the feed in a specific “favored” reader… then why not just limit them to “your website” … stop offering the feed… I mean, put the chain-saw down.
Roger — that’s terrible to hear. Are they any ways to set up “plagiarism detection robots” that find those pilfered snippets and then report their findings on your original post?? Then you could have, in addition to the typical “Sites that link to this stuff”, a hyperlink of “Sites that steal this stuff”? Something like Turnitin or Eve2, but made web2.0ish?
I’m opposed to copyrights. It’s not an issue of “protecting the creator.” Copyrights exist to create scarcity, which is intended solely for the benefit of the distributor. Unfortunately, even this is backwards thinking.
Quick! What’s the best selling book of all time?
The Bible. Who’s got the copyright on that? No one. Name one publisher that can’t compete with selling the Bible. I’ll show you a publisher that doesn’t know the publishing business.
Here’s the real issue. Which is more important: Having an illusion, or perhaps more accurate delusion, of total and complete control over your work, or allowing as many people as possible to be exposed to it.
Oh, but someone else might profit from my work!
Wah! What that really means is someone else is smarter than you at playing the monetization game. Try to learn from that.
Sorry, this is a core, hot button issue for me. I’m vehemently opposed to IP law. The sad reality is that it benefits no one.
When the tide comes in, we all float higher.
I am a little late but here is my 2 cents. I think the issue is that there is no traffic to the originating site. There are tools out there that can help.
Tynt’s Tracer reveals what content is being copied from your website and automatically adds an attribution link back to your original content if it is lifted from your site and pasted into an email, blog or website.
Trevor