Are Some Bloggers Becoming Like The Music and Movie Industry?
Sunday, January 13th, 2008The record industry does everything they can to be sure no one is copying their music. The movie industry goes after people who download, trade, and copy movies. The Associated Press has even tried to say copying anything they write, even if you attribute the source, is a copyright violation. Now some bloggers seem to want to follow their lead when it comes to the words they type into their blogs.
If you search on technorati for terms like splogger, spam blogs, content scraping, etc. you will find a lot of bloggers who seem to spend an awful lot of time checking the Internet to see if someone copied any of their content.
Peronally, I believe that as long as I do not copy the whole story, but copy a few quotes or a couple of paragraphs, then put that into blockquotes clearly showing I am quoting another source, then linking back to that source clearly so people can read the rest of the story at it’s source, that is not a violation of copyright.
This applies to me also commenting on that story with my own original text and comments, simply using the quote so people will know what I am commenting on without clicking over while they are reading the post..
I do not need to email you first to ask permission, just as I can quote any news source, politician, or celebrity and then comment on it. By law I can even rewrite your whole post and make changes to it to make fun of it. It’s called a parody and should be labeled as such. All copying is not illegal. There are legitimate exceptions.
Yes, it is wrong to scrape and use someone else’s content. There is no question about that. But as many have tried to ask the music and movie industry, is the copying really harming anyone?
With the music and movie industry, they answer by saying that copying music and movies costs them sales. But if someone scrapes some content of of someone’s blog, does it cost the blogger sales? Does it harm the blogger in some other way? Reputation? Money? Traffic? Readers?
If you are not making money on your blog, you will find it hard to claim the splogger is causing you financial hardship.
There are three things an attorney looks at when deciding to take your case or not.
1. Has a wrong been done? Let’s say yes. The splogger stole your content and that is wrong.
2. Have you been financially harmed by this wrong? With many of the bloggers doing the most complaining about this, the answer is no. But let’s say somehow it did cost you money and you can answer this question yes.
3. Does the person who did the wrong have the ability to pay? First of all you would have to determine which country the splogger or content thief lives in and what are the laws in that country in relation to US copyright law.
It seems that every blogger who spends a lot of time complaining about content thieves and sploggers and scrapers consider themselves at least semi-experts on copyright law. Just ask them. They read about it and now know all of their rights.
The problem is that most of these bloggers live in the US and most people in the US seem to be under the impression that US law applies to people all over the world somehow. Basically, “This person stole my content and copyright law says it’s illegal, therefore I can make them stop.”
It is not nearly that easy. US law applies to people who live in the US. Some countries respect and protect US copyrights. Some countries do not. Were you actually financially harmed by the splogger, spammer, scraper, or content thief? Could they pay damages even if they were sued? Would you actually be able to collect even if you got a judgement?
In most cases at least one of the things mentioned above would leave you powerless to do anything about it. it doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to talk about it. It just means we are all supposed to have the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can and can’t control and to not spend too much time worrying about the things beyond our control.
If your blog is say PR4 and has been around for 2-3 years or more, and the person’s blog that is scraping, reusing, reblogging, or rewriting your content is only a few months old and, as it is in most cases, they have a PR0, the search engines will still credit the original content as coming from the original blogger.
The search engines are getting much more sophisticated. They are onto the copycats and sploggers. For me, I plan to let them do their job while I get back to doing my job. I don’t plan to spend all my time chasing people who copy other people.
They won’t be successful anyway. The duplicate content will be detected in most cases. Your site will continue to benefit from original content and the sploggers will continue to chase their tails. Lazy people don’t become successful on or off the web. Well, unless you’re Paris Hilton.
But for some bloggers this has become an obsession. A crusade. They blog about the sploggers all the time as if they are losing money by the minute due to someone copying some of their text.
Some bloggers believe that even if you link back and attribute the source, copying ANY of their content that you want to comment on is still stealing content. They believe you should have emailed them and asked them if you could comment on their post and use some of the post as an example.
The only thing I can think of to ask these bloggers is;
“Do you really believe that you are such a famous writer that every word you write is that important?”
In some cases, I think it is an ego issue more than it is an issue about copyright law and being harmed by the sploggers and scrapers.
Some bloggers make their living blogging as I do. If you make your living at it, then you do have to police your content to some degree. You do not need to spend all of your time on it however. It just doesn’t matter that much.
Readers know by reading the splog that the content is not original if they have any sense at all. The search engines know it’s garbage. Let the techies who are supposed to detect it do their job while you do yours. That’s my opinion.
But many of the bloggers spending all of their time running around emailing sploggers to demand the removal of their content do not blog as a profession.
There is nothing at all with blogging because you like to blog and not doing it professionally. A blog written by a blogger that is not in it for the money is just as valuable as any blog written by a professional. Some would say even more legitimate because they don’t believe their should be professional bloggers or commercial blogs or business blogs.
However, if you are not blogging and making money and the splogger or content thief is not costing you money, there is not a lot you can do about it. There are likely exceptions where there is an action you can take that is worth the time and effort to do so. Those cases are the exception, not the rule.
Keep writing original content. You will be rewarded with search engine traffic, subscribers, and loyal readers. Let the techhies at the search engine companies figure out how to handle the people who don’t want to run a legitimate blog. It’s their job to provide users with relevant content. To do that, they have to go after the scrapers, sploggers, and content thieves, along with a whole lot of other scammers out there.
If you cannot control yourself and you find you just cannot stop talking about these people who steal content at least quit linking to them when you post about them.
Take a screeeshot or something to prove your point. Why help them with link popularity from your legitimate blog? This can hurt you in the search engines if they have already flagged that blog you just linked to.
Secondly, burn your feed through feedburner. Add an image into the footer that goes with your feed. The image should say originally posted at suchandsuchyourblog.com. If you found this image on another website address that website or blog may be stealing content.
Either way. Don’t obssess over it. There are cases where it might cause you actual harm. Save your energy for those times.
If it is to be your passion, then start a blog that is all about that. But remember, if I am a subscriber to your blog because of the stuff you normally write, then you take that away from me so you can crusade about something entirely off topic, I will likely unsubscribe. Your crusade may cost you readers since it may not be their crusade or an issue they care anything about.
Just my two cents worth on the topic. I posted about this here because many of my clients own blogs and they have raised concerns about this due to reading other blogs that make a mountain out of the content scraping molehill.
