You may have noticed a site called "New York Articles" (http://nyarticles.com/) which "aggregates" content from a bunch of different blogs, including this one as well as a number of other scienceblogs.com blogs. It copies and pastes everything that is in the RSS feed, i.e., everything that is above the fold. As you know, I only occasionally place stuff under the fold, and some people never do.
Sure, it does provide a link at the bottom, so in that way, it is a tiny little bit better than some sites that don't (you may recall this case - see Part I and Part II). But how much better? What does it accomplish? Who is actually going to read the stuff on that crappy-looking site site instead of the originals?
Is it as bad as this pathetically uncreative guy and his notion of "creative editing"?
Unfortunately, the NYA site brings in Google and Yahoo searches, it shows up on Google Blogsearch and Technorati, and someone somewhere is making money from Google AdSense by stealing other people's content.
But, what personally irks me the most is that our content is mixed up with content coming from places I don't want to be associated with, e.g., that den of racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, femiphobic jerks at Little Green Footballs. That is not the kind of neighbors I want to have. I like my neighbors at Scienceblogs.com and that is why I am here - it was my choice (and Seed's) and I'd like to have some say in where my content appears online.
So, if you are reading this at a place that is NOT http://scienceblogs.com/clock/ you are at a wrong place and you are unwittingly helping some lowly parasite earn undeserved money from advertising. Skip it. Come here and get my real RSS feed instead.
And....
...don't make me put everything under the fold in order to protect my work, OK?
And check what Janet, Karmen, Craig and Razib think about this.
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If it weren't for "below the fold" stuff, seed would lose possibly valuable advertising. Plus, having them open up this scienceblogs page familiarizes them with you and scienceblogs - something that would otherwise be much less noticable in rss feed readers. These "plagarist" sites are helping you get publicity, and advertisement too, provided you leave things below the fold.
But anyways, http://cognews.net/ does a similar thing. This site that you are linking to literally copies the post, whereas something like cognews.net only gives a little taste of what is posted.
Rather than just getting outraged, I think you all should just take advantage of the folds. Getting mad (even if you have good reason) doesn't solve the problem, whereas using the folds does. It also gets advertising and familiarizes people with scienceblogs (who have lots of things on their rss readers). If it weren't for constant exposure to this site (and not just one persons blog posts on my rss reader), I probably never would have thought to check out what else is on this site.
It seems more like "fair use" to me.
I have no intention of visiting the site and giving them ad money, so this is based on what I've read here...
Plagiarism is passing another person's work off as your own, so it doesn't sound like it's plagiarism. It does sound like copyright infringement, though. From the sound of it, it goes well beyond fair use.
It might not be plagiarism in the legal sense of the term, but it's not far off either. I know I wouldn't want someone essentially copying my posts in their entirety and putting them up somewhere else, even if a link was included. Even if it isn't "wrong" it's still bad blog ethics and exceedingly impolite; it's not as if they're commenting on what's being said, it's just a cut-and-paste job.
This issue is a little bit of a double-edged sword; I get frustrated when bloggers essentially copy and paste entire news articles to their blogs and then submit those posts to carnivals and such when they didn't really put in any effort themselves. If they copy the article and then discuss it of help to further illuminate the story, that's one thing, but to me simply copying and pasting news stories isn't really blogging.
Google makes money. Google generates none of the content it points too and, in those pointers, it displays not more than a line or two of the originals. most of us want to show up in google. That might be the extremum on a continum of situations where the scale is "how much does this 3rd party profit from work they did not do vs how much they benefit the originator". The other extreme has been cited: the out and out plagiarist such as the one taking ad revenu from Danica's pages without any credit at all and no collateral benefit to the originator [whereas a Google has a widely recognized and intentional collateral benefit of visibilty to the originator].
It is very much a question of degree [which seems to be in the eye of the beholder]. My judgment is that the originator should have the final say in whether they even want to play the game or care for the alleged benefit...it is their work after all. Publication on the web is NOT the same thing as printing books and leaving them in piles on every street corner in hopes money will come to you. If someone else is going to print your book, they license the right to copy first. That is one use of the creative commons copyright: to inform others of the license conditions you wish to impose on what you have published.
in other words, its all plagiarism and the question is, where does the originator set the threshhold of offense? Where will the courts, either of law or of public opinion let the originator set that threshhold?
Thanks for bringing that to our attention, ny articles won't be getting indexed by us. We try to index only original sources and to avoid aggregator/planet sites; we definitely don't want mechanical feedscrape-and-adsense sites.
cheers,
-Ian (from Technorati)
Based on my (admittedly limited) experience, this is a copyright violation, and could probably be dealt with through a takedown notice. As the "publisher", I'm guessing this should probably be SEED's job.
I hate to disagree with you Bora, but it's not plagiarism. The site (in albeit bad English) makes no claim that the articles published there are its' own. Furthermore this is what RSS was designed for -- to allow people to create their own information streams to use as they want rather than top-down media hierarchies deciding for us. I'm not sure about copyright infringement (possibly -- I don't recall seeing a copyright notice on your feed specifying fair use) but it's definitely not plagiarism and in a way boosts the visibility of your site and its' credibility with search engines.
Is it sleazy? Oh sure. Like Janet said, there's no value added. This guy's site is purely leeching. I just don't think you can complain very much about it because you are making your feed publicly available and often putting the whole post above the cut. I think the best bet would be to have Seed Media's lawyers send the dude a nastygram.
NYRarticles are not the first using indexing and breaking the licences. I've seen as you mentioned, other commercial sites that use some of my posts, and others I assume, adding their adsenses. I agree that Google has great deal in this, silly situation e.g.: my account for using the adsenses was already 'taken' when I checked out few weeks ago after the 'chinese guy' copied my blog. I still do not understand this idiotic deed. So this is pure unauthorized violating of 'call-it'whatever'. I do not care if that person earns money or not, but noone asked me if It is o.k. to use adsense on my account (apart from copying entire blog).
What kind of licence do you use? Make sure to use non-commercial, as the sites that use our content as you described ("racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, femiphobic jerks ") are 99% commercial.I fully understand your protest on mixing your blog content with other posts that are off your blog topic. Be lucky not to wake up one morning and see your whole blog copied...
Issue of copying and using content in commercial purposes is definately for legal help.
I hope SEED use some kind of licence?
Well, hopefully the appearance of these posts on there will shame the guy. And it will not be indexed by Technorati any more (see Ian's comment above). I never intended to sue, but wanted to voice my displeasure at the existence of such sites.
Apparently, Janet, Craig and Razib have almost exactly the same words to say about this.
Compare:
And:
That's a pretty clever meta-joke.
It's definitely not fair use. Fair use is quoting, extracting, and mining, but it's not wholesale redistribution. Otherwise, I'll start "fair using" every book I own and selling the whole of each text for a personal profit.
It's theft, Bora, and copyright infringement. That is, unless those being copied have given up those rights through creative commons or similar licensing. I've seen this in a lot of cases, not the least of which has been my own--used for advertising revenue no less!--so I feel your frustration. Unless you've granted those rights, it is illegal. I hope you get it resolved without too much frustration.
Coturnix,
I am very sorry to hear about your problems with this. I wish that I could say it is a shock.
To answer some of the above comments, this is NOT fair use in the least. This type of abuse fails any fair use test almost out of the gate due to the nature of the use and the amount taken.
This site is nothing but a pure spam blog. I have a lot of experience with these and it is a trivial matter to get these shut down. If you want, you can shoot me an email and I'll have a look at it. I believe that we can get the revenue and the hosting both cut, in that order.
Just send me an email if you want me to see what I can do, I don't want to be rude and butt in unwanted...
Hope that you're able to get this resolved!
FYI, the site is now serving up popups from a .tr domain. You must block this site now, and any associated IPs. The registrar is key-systems.net if you'd like to file a complaint there.