Blog Article Piracy?!
When I naively starting blogging, it never occurred to me that I would have problems that I’m sure many other bloggers are having these days. I’m talking about blog article piracy. I recently discovered more than 15 sites who have decided upon themselves to take one of my most hard-worked articles and stick it up on their site. For example, look at this site who took my entire article and slapped it on thier site: http:// www*webknowhow*net/dir/Other_Resources/articles/SmartRedirect.html (remove spaces and replace *’s with .’s).
Now this is petty compared to all the other kinds of piracy that goes on, I am aware of this. But where does it end? What sort of options does a blogger have in his or her defense? I don’t mind when other sites provide snippets of my article and talk about it a bit. But when somebody blatantly steals your article and slaps it on their site and calls it their own, it boils my blood!
What can a blogger do?
Mike Shea said,
August 4, 2006 @ 8:05 pm
By the way, I think there is a big difference between the example you brought up, a website that was clearly using your content to generate revinue for their website and a site like the Memory Hole that was designed to let users capture web content so they can reach it later. I think you are fully justified to press the former to release your work, and while within your rights to press it with the latter, I think the purpose is much different.
Mike Shea said,
August 4, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
I can’t tell you how surprised I was to get a note from you saying that you wanted your page removed from the Memory Hole - a site that tries to help archive pages for the long haul. I make no money from that site, I have no advertisement, and I never removed your name from the site at all.
I removed your page, since most of the information is available elsewhere and it has no real historic value.
You have the rights to your work and you have the rights to determine how it is and isn’t used, but I think, if you really want to protect your work as much as you say, you have a lot more work to do. You cannot prevent pages like Google Notebook, the Internet Archive, Clipmarks, Google’s own searh cache, and a whole pile of RSS readers such as Bloglines from caching and distributing your data. What about people’s web browser caches? How will you prevent them from saving it locally?
If you really feel this strongly about your material, that you don’t want anyone anywhere else to have a copy for any reason, you picked the wrong medium.
It doesn’t look like you make money from your work and I don’t know how many of the emails you sent out went after people who really did steal your work, called it their own, and generated income from it, but I think you’re fighting the wrong people to go after websites that copy your work simply to preserve it or help more people read it.
Again, it is your right to do with your media what you wish, but I think you might want to reevaluate why you write what you write and what you want people to do with it.
Mike Shea
Steven Hargrove said,
July 24, 2006 @ 3:20 pm
Robert, if you mean to say that I dwell on the fact that others are stealing my articles, no I don’t, but when I see it regardless of what or what will not be done about it - it bothers me and any blogger that it happens to.
No, of course I won’t sue somebody the second my article is stolen, however if it continues and begins to happen more, then I do care enough to do something legally about it.
And once again “Robert”, there is nothing cold-blooded what-so-ever about protecting your proprietary material. Cold-blooded is stealing somebody’s artcile without even asking permission, and in some cases blatantly claiming ownership of somebody else’s article.
In any case, for the moment I am done caring about the subject. You have no leg to stand on when you are defending any form of piracy, “Robert”. Take your foot out of your mouth and save yourself the effort. Piracy is wrong, blog article piracy is wrong on a personal level.
Robert said,
July 17, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
“Steven”, if protecting your proprietary is major concern (which is your legitimate right, of course) you will have to sue those you won’t remove your stolen content upon request.
Else, stay cold blooded and ignore them. What other options were at your disposal which wouldn’t just hurt yourself with anger and bad moods?
Dan Freakley said,
July 17, 2006 @ 2:02 pm
This all just means you are the man my brother, you’re my disco biscuit finky raver shaver man! The man who can, blog first that is!
These guys shouldn’t get too far in G’s eyes anyway, so they’ll always see your article as the original, just get a few Techno links in to it before you advertise it too much
Steven Hargrove said,
July 17, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
Excuse me “Robert”, but since when is protecting proprietary and hard-worked material cold blooded?
I’m not jumping the gun here, I saw one or two sites doing it and let it slide, then 2 became 15+, thats when I did something about it.
Perhaps you could write more than a paragraph on your blog and see what it feels like to get it pirated.
Robert said,
July 16, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
You could do nothing more than stay cool blooded, as you probably won’t sue them. Ignore.
Aj said,
July 16, 2006 @ 4:04 am
good job
Joe said,
July 15, 2006 @ 11:39 pm
One thing I do is to always include links in your articles that are valuable to you in some way — either as backlinks to your sites or affiliate links or anything else you may value. This way when (not if) your content gets ripped off, you will still benefit from the thieves in some way…
Steven Hargrove said,
July 10, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
Update: Webknowhow.net has removed my article per my request. Thank you Webknowhow.net.