I JUST CAN’T STOP WRITING ON THIS BLOG!!! June 23, 2008
Posted by unemployedalcoholic in Domains, curious finds, internet, trends.Tags: aggregators, copyright, Domains, news
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Man, this sux. Just found a site linking to a whole bunch of my domain-related posts… availabledomains.biz
Looks like a news aggregator where half the screen space is articles re-posted from legitimate blogs such as mine, and the other half is Google ads… Discovering schemes like this one is really de-motivating to people like myself to keep writing and offering original content to the world. I run one blog, where all or almost all of the posts are my own, but this joker aggregates domain news from across the internet, gets huge traffic because of the sheer amount of replicated content, and probably rakes in tons of adsense cash… I swear to god, it looks like there’s not one bit of original content on this entire website… Never once did the owner ask permission to reprint my articles… Where’s the love? Where’s justice???
Well… at least he seems to have a link back to the original sources. What more can you ask? I guess this is a site I’ll just have to write off as “clever web development” in my book, though the webmaster is risking serious legal trouble by reprinting content without permission, if his activities are discovered by someone who cares about this more than I do at this time…
Fuck it. I’m going to bed.
I’ve been thinking about this recently, with regard to using feedzilla, for example. Is there really any harm in having a news feed and aggregating articles from other blogs, if only headlines or snippets are aggregated, and it drives traffic to the original sites?
I do agree that in this case, availabledomxx.biz, it’s not obvious that the stories are aggregated. That’s more than a bit cheeky. But would you object in principle to, say, the feedzilla way of doing it? I think some RSS advocates would say that news aggregators can benefit all parties; your posts get exposure all over the internet, and hopefully an increase in traffic.
Cam, thanks for the comment. You do bring up a good point. The site that links to my blog is currently much better ranked in Alexa and actually does a decent job of linking back to the original sources, so I guess you could say that our “relationship” is symbiotic, despite the fact that I had no say in its establishment. I have not had a chance to use Feedzilla and don’t really know how it works so I won’t try to comment on that one… Hopefully that’s a tool I will add to my arsenal in the near future.
As you said, the webmaster of the aforementioned aggregator does not explicitly or even implicitly try to demonstrate that all content on his site is created by others (judging by the front page only). In fact, he actually has a copyright notice at the bottom of the blog… what exactly is he copyrighting? the code that steals other people’s work? interesting thought though, right?
I would favor an opt-in service, such as Domaining.com , or DNHour.com over this scheme, although there are reasons why I choose not to parttake in these services either at this time… At the very least, the aggregator should approach the blogs he tracks and request PERMISSION TO REPRINT. I’m sure most would not object to having their articles featured on a legitimate source that offers them more extensive exposure as well, as long as the gesture’s there… Or am I just a glutton for formality ? ? ?
The offending site appears to be down (maybe he’s been reading this post….)
Things do get a bit fuzzy, ethically, if you publish an RSS feed. If you do that, I think you relinquish some control over how and where that feed is used, albeit with a reasonable expectation of being linked back and properly credited for your work. Ideally, the aggregating sites would just show a headline or snippet, and link to the original blog for the full post.
So I don’t like the way that avdomains did it; there was even a line at the end of each post that appeared to suggest that you were a contributing author to his website (it’s down right now, so I can’t confirm what it was exactly). That was a step too far. It should have been made much more clear that it was an aggregation of stories from the blogosphere.
As for being asked for permission by an aggregator, I feel (just a feeling) that if you publish an RSS feed, permission to be aggregated is given de facto. If you want a bit more control, one can set up the feed to only show snippets of stories. Do that, and a reader has to visit the blog for the whole story. The downside of that is that people reading your site in a feedreader like bloglines won’t get the whole story. It’s a tradeoff between reader convenience and protecting your traffic, and an RSS publisher has to decide which way to go.
I do have to concede, cam. Placing an RSS link on my blog does give turn over certain assumed permissions. I guess originally, I had thought that the primary purpose of RSS was for interested individuals to aggregate favorite news in their brower or something for private use, but now I do see how the line can get blurry with these technologies…