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Internet Marketing Coach
Can Spammers Legally Steal Your Blog Content?
December 28th, 2007 | 17 commentsOf course not, but some seem to think so. A few days back, while browsing the WSO forum of the Warrior Forum, I noticed an offer for a piece of software that takes RSS feeds from random blogs, forums, article directories etc, creates a bunch of blogger blogs and publishes that content to those splogs.
Being the nice guy that I am, I replied to that thread (I’m surprised my account wasn’t deleted for that) letting people know that this is a spam tool.
Of course other spammers came and tried to candy coat it, defending the original spammer, saying things like:
C’mon…You have a big orange button on your blog and when it’s clicked it offers me the abiity to embed your content on my site, then you tell me if you do, you’ll report me? What’s up with that?
I suggest you research what RSS is all about before threatening to take way someone’s ability to earn.
… after I threatened to report anyone who steals my content to Adsense.
This guys believes that since I’m using Feedburner to deliver my feed to you guys and gals and the following is displayed on the feed page -
…that he has the right to steal my content.
What he doesn’t realize is that:
1. It’s not ethical!
2. Since every post/page of this blog has a Copyright statement at the bottom, it’s ILLEGAL to steal the content!!
3. RSS Feeds have multiple uses. Just because someone uses RSS doesn’t mean they are offering their content for syndication!
He seemed pretty confident and I have to admit, I wasn’t 100% confident of the legality, I just knew it was the wrong thing to do whether it was legal or not, so I looked into it.
First I posted the following to the official FeedBurner forum:
Althought the original purpose of RSS was to easily syndicate content, it has evolved and is now great for other uses as well.
The only reason I offer a feed is so my readers can get immediate updates. All of my content is copyright.
I’m no attorney and the FB TOS, of course, is incredibly complicated.
Feedburner provides the option of syndicating my content. However, my content is copyright.
So, is it legal for spammers to syndicate my content on their splogs, since FeedBurner provides that option although I claim the copyright and do not allow it?
Thanks!
I didn’t get a straight answer, instead one of their admins pointed me toward this article in their help center, which tells you what to do when your content is copied. What I get from that is that it’s obviously not legal to syndicate a feed without permission from the author.
Oh course I would need to get with an attorney to know for sure, but the sensible answer is that it is very much illegal. Just because FeedBurner has an option of syndicating the content doesn’t mean I grant that permission. It’s just one of the many features they offer.
I also found an article over at The Blog Herald that touches on just about every aspect of content theft including how to report it to Google Search, Adsense etc. Very good read!!
-edit- Another thing I forgot to mention initially is Stephen Cronin’s “Feed Entry Header” WordPress Plugin, which adds a copyright statement to the beginning of your feeds along with a link to the original post. If everyone used this there would be very few splogs out there!
I’m really disappointed in the WSO’s that have been accepted lately. The Warrior Forum has always been a great place to teach and learn for me and many others and I’ve referred hundreds of people their way, but after seeing several spam tools on that forum, I’m seriously questioning the integrity of the mods. They’ve been cracking down on negativity, but accepting WSO’s which promote trash content being spewed all over the WWW.
When it all comes down to it, others must have your permission before publishing your content. A statement by a third party company that makes an offer to syndicate the content isn’t a statement by you granting consent!
God I hate spammers!
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28th December, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Josh,
I can relate to the spammers point, however, one thing to consider is you are getting a backlink from them as long as they refer to the original article, or use a trackback.
Now, before I get jumped on, I AM NOT advocating taking other peoples content like this. Spamming is spamming, and scraping is scraping. I have gotten quite a few trackbacks and incoming links from scrapped stuff from my site.
It just makes you wonder, however, how many times your stuff is taken without a trackback or way to find it?
28th December, 2007 at 7:54 pm
If tools like the one mentioned were used to build quality sites and they syndicated my content simply because they honestly felt it was useful, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
The problem is, 99.9% of the blogs generated by “software” like are complete trash.
I’d rather my content remain unique on the web than receive a few worthless links.
CopyScape.com is the best I’ve found. They run off the Google API, so it’s very accurate in finding traces. I have a premium account, which I use to find plagiarism and to help reduce articles that have been mass submitted from appearing on my article directories.
Very true
-edit-
Syndication was one of the strong points of article marketing in the past. It can still occasionally drive traffic (usually when published to ezines and/or newsletters) but these days authority sites aren’t looking for articles that have been submitted all over the web.
Using a trash tool like the one mentioned could be used legally if syndicating articles from article directories, but syndicating the same content that is already circulating all over the place isn’t going to help anyone.
btw, nice blog. I just bookmarked it.
28th December, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Josh,
Thank you for taking the time look into that. There are diverse groups of people in network marketing some with ethics some without. It is funny to me how old expressions like “what comes around goes around” absolutely still apply.
In my opinion, people will eventually see through the BS and want to partner our join with other quality people. We don’t need to be used car sales people to make an above average living in this industry in my humble opinion.
Thanks again,
28th December, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Hi Scott,
Yep, I’m not a spammer so I can’t say whether it’s profitable or not, but I’d imagine even if these people are making a few bucks off of our content, it’s not a solid business model.
It’s just too bad these people don’t understand that providing quality and doing the right thing is much more profitable in the long run.
28th December, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Such quality –> blackhatplanet.com/?p=2556
28th December, 2007 at 9:40 pm
The best month I ever had doing black hat stuff was $32,000 and some change. I have tried various white hat strategies and have never come close to that amount. So I’m not convinced that it’s more profitable in the long run.
Having said that, however, I never bothered with RSS feeds because of the duplicate content issues that arise. Of course, there is software out there now that will help you get around that to some extent but I’d rather have a page that is semi-static so that the churn on my sites is lower.
Incidentally, according to copyright laws in the US, all you have to do is publish something and it’s copyrighted. You do not have to file any special forms or even put Copyright 2008 on it.
G-Man
28th December, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Well, you know I don’t agree with that, but I suppose as long as you’re not hurting anyone it’s not that bad. That’s not to say it’s good though.
Personally, I prefer the white-hat route, even if I could be making more money.
I know it all comes down to the oldest trace of the content, but this guy was trying to say it’s OK since Feedburner gives the option on their default RSS page.
28th December, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Happens to me from time of time, and I must admit that even if I know in my guts that it’s wrong, I never know how to deal with that.
I don’t care about spammers’ backlink, I just don’t want to be on splogs. Period. I work hard for my content and I’m happy to share it with other bloggers, but people making money out of it? No, thanks.
29th December, 2007 at 12:12 am
There is no doubt that content in an RSS feed is protected by copyright as it easily meets the requirements for copyrightability and, under the law, the fact that something can be rebroadcast does not mean that one has the permission to do so.
A good analogy is TV signals. The mere fact you can rebroadcast them and that they are sent out to anyone and everyone with an receiver in range does not means you have the right to do so. Cable companies ran into this issue when they started transmitting local TV stations over cable lines. Broadcast stations eventually won the right to charge the companies for that access.
There is, with RSS, the issue of an implied license. An implied license is a license granted to a user by the actions of a copyright holder. For example, when you post works to the Web, you give users an implied license to cache copies and for search engines to index the content. Both, however, become invalid if you offer an express license, by either adding nocache or forbidding search engines through robots.txt.
An implied license, for the most part, extends only as far as what is physically necessary for the user to use the content in the intended fashion. It extends only to directly foreseeable consequences of a use and, in most cases, RSS’s most foreseeable uses involve RSS readers. The fact that so many are surprised that their content is syndicated via RSS indicates that they are unaware of the possibility and did not intend for it.
However, even if there is any implied license with RSS for resyndication, something I see as highly unlikely, it can easily be trumped by an actual license. This can be done by either using a copyright statement or applying a Creative Commons License. That is, until a fully automated means of providing a copyright license comes along (something similar to either meta tags or robots.txt).
All in all, I would agree wholeheartedly that you have full rights to go after anyone that republishes your feed. Whether you should do so is, of course, another matter. But that I leave up to the individual.
If you need any help dealing with a scraper, please let me know and I will gladly assist. If you need any contact information or stock letters, I should have that on my site.
I’ll gladly do what I can to help!
29th December, 2007 at 1:08 am
As you know, I used to frequent the Warrior Forum. However, I realized the time it was frittering away. It is a place where you can learn, but compared to blogging, forums are old technology. I can learn (and share) more reading blogs of those I respect.
I guess there isn’t an easy answer to scraping, other than not sending out your full post in the RSS feeds. In that case, any scrapers truly are giving me a link and anyone who wants to read the entire article has to visit my blog.
At the same time though, that handicaps the use of an RSS reader, so I’m torn.
29th December, 2007 at 7:08 am
Josh,
It’s just plain wrong and, I’m pretty sure, illegal. The problem is what we can do about it?
I reported a splog to Google’s Adsense team 3 weeks ago (for including content that breaks copyright agreements) and so far the site still has Adsense showing.
Really we need Google to take the lead on this and banish splogs from the Adsense program. If they don’t, then they are sending a message that it’s bad to sell links or write sponsored posts (which aren’t illegal), but it’s fine to rip off people’s content (which is illegal).
Anyway, for now I’m sitting tight and waiting to see whether they’ll take any action or not. Of course, I’m also using my FeedEntryHeader plugin to put a copyright statement and the url of the original post at the top of my feed…
30th December, 2007 at 4:26 am
@ Zhu - It sure is annoying isn’t it? Every new post I publish is picked up on 3 splogs every single time. And then there’s the random splogs that pick up random posts. I recommend clicking that link above to the article that Jonathan wrote for the Blog Herald for info on what to do.
@ Jonathan - Thanks for stopping by and leaving such a valuable comment. I think I understand a good majority of what you explained. I was fairly certain it was illegal and your statements reinforce that. Thanks alot for the offer of help as well.
I, myself don’t worry too much about it. Most of these splogs will never go anywhere and theres very little chance they will do any considerable damage to my rankings. It’s really just the fact of the matter that they are stealing the work of those who take the time to create it that gets to me.
@ Terry - Well thanks to you for setting this blog up for me when I had no idea what blogging was all about, I have the same realization now
I still visit the forum from time to time, but I’ve found so many excellent blogs, I just keep up with them and learn much more.
@ Stephen - I reported one a few months back and I got a reply laying out exactly what to do. Unfortunately the things they needed would have taken hours, if not days, to produce so I just gave up.
I’m almost to the tipping point in favor of installing your FeedEntryHeader plugin. Not sure why I haven’t already. Laziness probably
I’m going to give that a plug in the main body by the way. I should have initially.
30th December, 2007 at 6:45 am
Josh,
I didn’t have to do anything! Here’s what their email said:
then some links to their policy pages, then:
That’s it. There’s nothing for me to do, but sit back and wait to see if they do anything (they’re not going to tell me). Gotta say my hopes aren’t too high…
Thanks for plugging FeedEntryHeader - you don’t have to, so it’s appreciated!
31st December, 2007 at 5:32 am
Hey i too have a blog site .Is that possible that some can steal my content of mine.Some one help me out of it, I am aware of it very much.And finally thank you for
your wonderful post.
31st December, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Hi Raving. Please see above.
1st January, 2008 at 4:57 pm
This is definitely not ethical!! How could you take someone’s content and embed into your own site, yet claimed it is ok? Come on, it takes time and effort to write good content. I hope Google can do something about such spammers
5th January, 2008 at 12:15 am
It’s happened to me on several occasions and my position has gradually grown to “well, whatcha gonna do?”
It is annoying, particularly when splogs on Blogger remove the nav bar and there’s no way to contact the “author”. If it’s running any kind of PPC, Adsense or otherwise, I report it to the company serving the ads. It’s not much but maybe they’ll lose their accounts and any of their ill gotten earnings
The trouble with RSS is it’s a double edged sword - if a quality site wants to syndicate my headlines, that’s probably a good thing, but a crappy splog/scraper site, even if it links back to my original work, is not something I want to be remotely associated with. A link from such a site may well be a link, but it’s worth very little even if it’s not nofollowed, which of course most will be on Blogger splogs.
One site a few months back actually completely plagiarized some html from an old static site of mine - they even had the decency to leave all the affiliate links in place LOL
Ah, well, whatcha gonna do………