The Pirates Of The Internet
September 18, 2008
Pirates are still kicking round. In fact, there’s probably a whole heap more that there ever was. But you don’t need no bleeding ship, or a wooden leg to join this motley crew. All you need is access to the Internet and no respect for the hard work of others.
If you’ve ever had your website content scraped, you’ll know how difficult it is to put an end to it. For a start, these content scrapers don’t usually have a contact me section on their website. But a couple of days ago, Darren Rowse of Problogger managed to catch one of these content pirates and confront him. The guy had actually announced on Twitter that he’d helped himself to Darren’s work. Sounds like you don’t have to be smart to be a pirate either.
Computer game developer, Cliff Harris used a different approach when he’d had enough of pirates stealing his games. He approached them and asked why they did it. And when he’d gathered the evidence, he concluded that if he provided better games, at a reasonable price, folk might actually pay for them.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s just individuals who stoop to this level of piracy – big organisations do it too. But Tracey Gaughran-Perez was more than a little pissed off, when she discovered that someone at Fox TV had helped themselves to a pic of her dog on Flickr. She first became aware of what had happened when she saw the photoshopped image of Truman on TV.
Most of us know that the Internet is for sharing. But it seems to me that some of these pirates want more than their fair share of the pie. What do you think?
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Image Credit: Earcoss
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17 Responses to “The Pirates Of The Internet”
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Love the Don’t Click Me button. I want to click it SO BAD!
I saw the picture of that lady’s dog, that was crazy. I read her blog and I believe she had a copyright notice on her page too. I think Fox will be paying up..
I think the problem with the Internet is that there is no New News. I mean everything comes from the AP and then gets put on the News sites and then get published on blogs and Digg and so forth. It would be best if everyone just gave up a link to the original writer, which would eventually find its way back to the “Authority”
I think things like IReport from CNN is a great idea, this allows people to get their own news published.
All we can do is keep being original on our blogs and hope to build our relationships.
My 2c
~ Jim
Jim Gaudet’s last blog post..PLEASE!!! Stop Re-Shouting Me
If someone stole my stuff that would be a violation of copyright law and yeah, I’d be pissed. I would take action.
Sometimes people are just ignorant about taking other people’s words and pics, but sometimes they know damn well what they’re doing. Really, it’s no different than stealing something of a store shelf.
Ellen Wilson’s last blog post..Do You Know This Woman?
Someone actually left a comment on Zen Habits once saying “Wow Leo, this is a great post! Is it OK if I repost the whole thing on my blog? I’d give you a link, of course.” Leo politely replied that he’d prefer that she didn’t repost the whole thing. I hope she wasn’t too disappointed.
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..The Monty Hall Paradox (And The Real Answer)
One of my best posts got copied. There was no contact info. It was a blogger blog, so I checked Google’s policy for plagiarism. To my surprise, I found Google make it oh so difficult to report such thing — it said I better talk to my attorney first because claiming such content theft can result ME losing thousands of dollars in the case it was contested, blah,blah, with a real example of someone getting into trouble. It was like punishing the victim of a crime, or at least threatening the victim.
As a new blogger, I was confused, and emailed a few fellow bloggers who are more experienced. Some sent me encouragement. And one got upset about Google.
And I don’t know exactly what happened, but by that evening, that blog was closed.
Yep, good friends are my best assets ^_^
Akemi “spiritual entrepreneur” @ Yes to Me’s last blog post..A Year Without Paychecks, Part 2
I’ve noticed a trend in the past few years: commonly accepted boundaries are becoming less commonly accepted all the time. There’s this sense of “what do you mean I am not entitled?” as opposed to “so sorry, what was I thinking?” Recent examples from my offline life:
1. I come upon a stranger who is hacking away at groundcover from my side yard and confront her. She responds by saying it’s okay because I’m treating the plants like weeds, and they’re good eating. She does not appear to be underfed. She finally gets it when I offer to come over to her house, survey her landscaping, pronounce whatever I’d like to be a weed and take it. Instead of apologizing, she wants to suddenly pay me for what she’s taking and continue! If she had only asked in the first place, I would’ve probably let her.
2. Someone for whom we are reluctantly keeping stuff as a temporary favor decides to retrieve it from our home, contrary to agreed plan, without our knowledge. This sets off our burglar alarm. She asserts that all was our fault because she didn’t know about the alarm, and thinks it unreasonable for us to expect she pay the the nuisance call charges.
3. I re-used a print image that I had paid no small amount for, but evidently the creator’s policy was for one-time usage. Suddenly the shoe was on the other foot. Although the policy language left a lot of room for misinterpretation, I still felt really bad and sent payment.
I think the Internet is real life magnified when it comes to this stuff. You have a hard time finding out when you’ve been pirated, finding the pirates, and then bringing them to account. The reality is, no one is going to stand up for you better than you.
Betsy’s last blog post..HAWK RIDGE MIGRATION
This really annoys me, I find my work gets copied a lot not only on my personal blogs but also for the websites I write for. In some cases, I do think that people honestly don’t know that it is stealing.
I can think of a few of my blog buddies that copied and pasted work into their blogs thinking the information was free when I sent them an email alerting them about it they took it down however, there are others that no what they are doing and simply don’t care. It surely is frustrating when you see your work copied. 8
I remember the first time my content was stolen…I confronted the blog owner about it that her guest post is stolen from my blog. I never got a response…After that , I decided to not sweat it…I figured that if I want my stuff not to get stolen then I can’t post it on the net.
chris’s last blog post..One Fine Day
I haven’t given a lot of thought to this. I remember when Leo put up his non-copyright post ( forgot his exact words) I was like WOW.
That’s one way to handle it.
I guess as a new blogger I haven’t really thought about the fact that I could write something that someone would steal. What are they going to do with it? It’s always staying at my place first and it isn’t really taking it away. It’s not like the good china left the building.
Wendi Kelly-Life’s Little Inspirations’s last blog post..Remembering Pen Pals…
Copyright laws are always difficult to enforce, on and off the net. Music pirating, for example, is also a HUGE problem.
Re Zen Habits, it’s interesting, because he actually has an “uncopyright” notice on his blog so supposedly shouldn’t care?
Vered – MomGrind’s last blog post..Wordless Wednesday: Mona Lisa, Enhanced
This was another new learning piece for me. To the best of my knowledge no one has stolen anything, I do notice that some bloggers write on subjects that I have written about so maybe I inspired their new thoughts?
Wow so much to learn and understand. Powerful media stuff.
When a news bureau buys my research then it becomes their stuff.
But what they don’t buy I sometimes put up as posts. Hmm very interesting article Thank you
Patricia’s last blog post..PTSD Part 4: The Big Picture For Healing
One time the scraper had the cajones to list me as a contributor. He also provided no contact info of his own. Fortunately, comments were open, so I left a rather snarky comment about not even being aware that I was contributing scraped content to the site of someone not brilliant enough to write a thing him/herself.
Anyway, he got back to me and was shocked that I’d left something so snarky. Accused me of being unprofessional.
I ended up removing my creative commons license so he couldn’t do that again. I kept an eye on the site and e-mailed other bloggers whose content appeared. I also reported the site to Google Ads (click on the “Ads by Google” and then select that the site is stealing your content…scroll a bit). It went down after a month or so. Win?
Mrs. Micah’s last blog post..Recipe for Tofu with Peanut-Ginger Sauce
Hi Jim – Do click it – you never know what you might find. A lot of the news stuff is rehashed, as you say. I don’t mind when folk write things on a different slant though.
Hi Ellen – exactly. I don’t understand why they think lifting something non-physical should be any different.
Hi Hunter – I remember that – it was so funny. I don’t understand why these people think they can just take something that someone else has spent ages working on.
Hi Akemi – I’m glad you managed to get the blog closed. I wish Google would clamp down more on these spammy blogspot blogs.
Hi Betsy – your friend going in to your home to get her stuff when you weren’t there is totally shocking. Especially as you were doing her a favour.
Hi Opal – That must be really annoying. It’s quite amazing that your friends didn’t know the copy and paste thing was stealing. It does make me wonder how many people think plagiarism is ok.
Hi Chris – I can see what you mean – we don’t want to let it get to us so much that we just don’t write anything at all.
Hi Wendi – I found that really interesting. I wonder if it actually stopped folk doing it when they realised that it was available to everyone? Maybe it was quite a smart move and it doesn’t seem to have affected the popularity of his blog.
Hi Vered – I can imagine the music industry suffers a lot because of the theft. Leo’s uncopyright idea is unique isn’t it? I know no other blogger who has one.
Hi Patricia – it does happen. You will find lots of bloggers blogging on the same topic as you. I guess they search the Internet for inspiration. Plus we’re all sharing a huge melting pot of resources, so there’s always going to be heaps of stuff on the same topics.
Hi Mrs M – I can’t believe he had the cheek to accuse you of being unprofessional. I wonder if Google banned him from Adsense?
I remember shortly after I launched my blog, I would find my content all over the place. It infuriated me! It’s really hard to monitor such activity and the thought of going to court over a republished blog post just isn’t realistic.
But you can bet that if Fox news used any of my property without permission, I’d hire a lawyer and have a glass of champagne.
Melissa Donovan’s last blog post..Behind the Scenes: Writing as a Business
Hi Melissa – I guess the court expenses and the hassle aren’t worth it if you’re not going to be compensated. But like you say – if the right people steal from you, it could be worth it.
Hi Catherine,
It’s sad how our online stuff can be stolen so easily. Some people want all of the glory, but don’t want to do the work. But I guess it’s not that different in real life either.
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Priorities – Signatures – Open Mic
Yep. These guys suck. There are some javascripts out there to limit people from right clicking and saving your picture to their computer and there’s a WordPress plugin called Antileech which helps limit bots from scanning and copying your blog’s content.
But nothing’s full-proof.
It’s just something we have to deal with as web entrepreneurs.
John Hoff – eVentureBiz’s last blog post..General Partnerships: A Not-So-Great Business Structure
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