Ripping off copyrighted content

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Hi guys,

I have seen several signatures on these forums, listing websites with ripped content without mentioning the original source and/or copyright owner.

Do you think that's a correct way to do business?

[nohaber]

Well, I posted two articles on ideamarketers and goarticles. Some webmasters put them on their sites and removed the link to my site. Of course, they don't have contact information on their sites etc.etc.
In the cases that I manage to contact them, they say: "I didn't know that this was a link..." :mad:

It is not right, but the real problem is "How do you protect your content from being ripped off?"

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

If the ripped content is valuable the only choice is to contact a lawyer,
but most of the time it doesn't worth the hassle.

[incka]

Whose sites are they?

If you are talking about mine, my content is either from Wikipedia which is free to distrobute and I give them credit, or on my games sites I only gets game from sites that allow you to put them or your website or if I asked permission.

[Mike]

Yea, whose sites are they? I think they will have some sort of arrangement anyway :)

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Whose sites are they?

I don't like the idea of pointing fingers, so I won't answer this question :).
I see ripped content all the time (not only here of course) and I wanted to discuss how do you feel about this issue, what do you do if somebody has ripped your content, etc.

[Mike]

If someone rips my content, I contact them.

Although once someone ripped my msn emotions. Instead of contacting them, I just changed the images that he'd ripped into advertisements for my site :p

[incka]

I consider ripping off articles bad, but possibly taking parts of designs and small msn emotions that I see on hundreds of sites...

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

If someone rips my content, I contact them.

Although once someone ripped my msn emotions. Instead of contacting them, I just changed the images that he'd ripped into advertisements for my site :p


:)
So they hot-linked the images?

[r2d2]

I heard about someone who linked to someone elses images in an ebay sale - the pictures were changed to something amusing :)

[Mike]

:)
So they hot-linked the images?

Yea, that's what you call it :)



If you are talking about mine, my content is either from Wikipedia which is free to distrobute and I give them credit, or on my games sites I only gets game from sites that allow you to put them or your website or if I asked permission.


And the msn emotions? ;)

[incka]

Read the comment after that...

The only msn emotions I made were for Mike's site - LOL...

[cameron]

I've had people rip off my content before and it sucks. I usually just email them and tell them that it's illegal. In one case though, an angelfire site, they are still there. I can't find a contact email for the person who runs the site, and I emailed angelfire but they didn't reply or do anything about it.

[Mike]

Not surprised that angelfire didn't reply. I just can't stand big companies not replying to emails from users.

[Jaffro]

It really bugs me when people rip off my work, in the case of msn emotions all i ask for is clear credit and link. I think people put a lot of time and effort into making sites and their content and for someone to come along and use that work without asking is somewhat disrespectful and cheap.

What really becomes annoying is when people do this and then dont have a contact info, or dont reply to emails. Because at that point there's nothing you can do.

[Mike]

Jaff, just to let you know I fixed that link problem? As you thought, was a mistake :)

[chromate]

Hi guys,

I have seen several signatures on these forums, listing websites with ripped content without mentioning the original source and/or copyright owner.

Do you think that's a correct way to do business?

Are you sure you're not getting confused with public domain content? Quite often there will be public domain content published on a site and the webmaster will still display their own copyright. So if you found some content in one of the sigs on this site that you've also found on some other site that's displaying a copyright, then that original site may have sourced their content from a public domain source. It's not always easy to follow the chain back to the original source.

You said there are several sigs ripping content. That sounds like a lot of illegal content. I think you should point the finger. :) Or at least PM them.

[incka]

I use alot of public domain stuff, and alot of stuff from amazon, so do other people, including the owner of the forum. If it is this your are talking about it is perfectly legal.

[chromate]

I used a public domain database for my carb counter / nutrient sites and a lot of public domain stuff for my Weight Loss site. The less public domain stuff you use, the better if it's already on the net. I hate wikipedia clones and the like. I'm even embarrassed about of my AWS sites because there is just so much duplicated stuff that it's hard to find any unique info about a product now.

However, I can't quite find it within myself to bring those sites down now though because they are making money. :/ Hmmm. Oh well, I'll leave it to google to do the dirty work and ban my AWS sites from the index for me. lol

[ASP-Hosting.ca]

Are you sure you're not getting confused with public domain content?

No, I'm not talking about public domain content. I'm talking about copyrighted articles used without permission.

[chromate]

How do you know they don't have permission? Why don't you just say what's been used without permission and then whoever's site it is can defend their decision to use it, or they can remove it. No one will hold it against you. :)

[incka]

Well if it's articles it's not me, I've got permission for all mine, either public domain, sent to me via email, given to me by shawn weeks, paid for by me and written by me...

Chromate - Who cares how you make money as long as you do, then when you are making money you can spend it on getting people to write content for you...

[chromate]

Chromate - Who cares how you make money

What sort of an attitude is that!? :) I CARE! I suspect people with a dislike for spam care too ;) I'm fed up with seeing cloned rubbish all over the place preventing me from finding unique information of some real value. I'm trying hard to write unique content for my sites now.

There's nothing wrong with replicating some public domain content. But on the other hand, stuff like complete clones of wikipedia, for example, are becoming the scourge of the net.

[Mike]

Yea, while you are still trying to make money, you've got to make it in a "fair" way. Otherwise google could just come one day and remove your sites from it's index and your left with nothing.

[incka]

Wikipedia clone... Um... Did I meantion a site I was making, online-encyclopedia.net?

[chromate]

On your head be it ;p