I don’t mind people quoting my blog in their own or using any other of the content that I create to inform their own work. But this bothers me. Someone has decided to simply use my RSS feed and that of about a dozen other edbloggers to create a “river of news” page upon which to sell ads and, I would guess, make money on our ideas. No idea who this is…
Should I care?
technorati tags:blogging
Yup, it’s a scum site; but what can you do about it? I guess it’s just a sign of your popularity.
Making money off of your work without your consent, even in the blog world is criminal. I would care. Sorry that the SamSpade.org search doesn’t bring up much though.
http://samspade.org/t/lookat?a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edutechtalk.com%2F
If it bothers you, you should care. I have a very strict policy on my blog. You can use it to your hearts content, but if you make a dime off my blog content, you will hear from me. If you ignore me, you will hear from my lawyer. It’s never gotten to the latter. The criminals usually get scared whenever they hear from me.
I don’t think so. The more you give away, the more your reputation is assured. And paradoxically, the more your reputation is assumed. This guy is quoting you and anything he takes from your pages he also links back to you.. isn’t that a good thing…? So what if he’s got ads on his page. Get some ads if you want. He performs a service by aggregating interesting reading and attributing sources. It’s a win win for you, because anyone who is reading him is also reading your name and being linked to you.
I think it’s hard not to worry about losing something, especially when you’re trying to make a living off the farm, so to speak… but it may be a temptation worth resisting. Hoarding create ill will, whereas generosity creates good will. The people on the internet who have expertise and who are generous with their knowledge and their information, who respond kindly and openly to those who are not as far along as they are, benefit from that choice. The benefits aren’t as direct a thing as revenues from an ad, but they are tangible. Your name comes up in different places. When someone has some work, they think about you. Someone remembers the help you gave. The quality of the work, the generosity and positive energy of the individual behind the work comes through and engenders a corresponding generosity in others. Miguel Guhlin, Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher), Sarah Houghton (Librarian in Black), David Warlick (2 Cents Worth), Nancy Willard, Will Richardson come to mind. I say keep that energy coming.
If permission was asked, I would probably give it, but aggregating to a site that has ads and a potential revenue stream for the site provider is dirty business. What if Will’s work was posted to the New York Times without his consent? Lots of money is made there. He has certain copyrights that are being violated. His intellectual property is being stolen by this person. In an era where intellectual property and site hits are a way to bring notice to yourself, this is dirty pool. I feel the same way about Ian Jukes’s site. He posts about two sentences of comment and then the whole article. Is that good blog etiquette? For that matter, what is good blog etiquotte? Is there a set of rules somewhere?
Will, may I suggest putting your work under Creative Commons? It appears that right now, your work falls under copyright and redistributing is technically a violation – but the technology is so far beyond that.
Creative Commons is a technology-aware licensing system that will allow you to add human and computer-readable code to your page that clearly states how you’d like your work handled.
I believe you’d probably like the No Commercial / Share Alike version. To get the code for your page and RSS, go here.
And of course, it’s free. Will it stop this site you’ve linked to? Probably not, but putting your “license” into computer readable code is a good step to take.
As you are running WordPress, you could install this plug-in:
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-to-automatically-add-copyright-message-to-your-rss-atom-feeds/
It’s designed for such feed stealers. It adds a copyright message to your feed, a sample one is suggested.
It bothers me too. I’ve noticed it as well. As we talk about technology ethics this year, I’m going to use it as an example. This is an outcropping of “gray area” folks that are profiting off of the work of others and the ignorance of newcomers to the blogosphere.
Instead of a spam blog, it is more an authentic blog that steals from others. I don’t use ads on my site for a reason, for another to profit from ads based on my content is simply unethical, in my opinion.
I find it funny that your post on this is on their front page right now!
I faced this same reality recently when a technology news site began aggregating my content. I decided that at least for now I would allow it to happen because the site only posts partial entries and then links to my own site, which draws traffic. In your case, you might get new readers this way but it is more difficult to quantify.
I have to agree with Audrey that the republication can benefit you. I would encourage you to keep “self-linking” in mind – if you discuss something that you have written about before, provide a hard link within your post to other posts, which will be useful to readers at your site as well as draw those from the aggregator to your site.
I also agree that if you want to fight it, you can. You could always start posting announcements aimed specifically at that aggregator, which your own readers would probably find merely amusing if the tactic was short-lived, and could even band together with others whose feed is “captured” there. But the person who set this up probably doesn’t even check on it, they just wait for the ad pennies to roll in. Who knows, they may have dozens of aggregator sites.
But in the long run it may do you more good to approach it as an uninvited but potentially symbiotic relationship, rather than merely a parasitic one.
More thoughts:
Put in an occasional plug for your book, which will also be aggregated to this “river of news” site.
Links from this site can benefit your blog’s rankings in the eyes of Google, Technorati, etc. and make your blog easier for newcomers to find – and, ironically, will ensure that your blog is ALWAYS easier to find than the aggregator itself, which no one in their right mind will ever link to.
Uh… dude. If it bothers you, you should stop licensing your work under Creative Commons and stop raving about Lawrence Lessig all the time.
The Google Ads owner is listed as:
http://addisonrd.com/
As a subdomain of my site (feeds.mrbelshaw.co.uk) I’ve got a EduPress (my custom version of WordPress) installed with auto-RSS feeds for my favourite education and tech blogs. There’s some advertising on it, but not a great deal. I do this for people who aren’t into the RSS thing properly yet…
Does this bother you, Will?
and odd that your posting complaining about them is now on their site!
I see my blog is on the roll as well. I suppose I should be flattered to be in such fine company, and to know that someone deems me worthy of exploitation. Who knew that I could be monetized?
The fact that this site does not identify the proprietor does not reflect well on the apparent intent.
I’ve seen my work aggregated elsewhere like this, and have usually been cool with it. I figure there’s a tiny chance someone might encounter my stuff, like it (it’s theoretically possible) and check out the source. I’ve heard that redundant content floating around the web might degrade pagerank, but other than that I don’t see the harm. And I do aggregate content on a subpage of sociallearning.ca (no ads).
The rub, of course, is the aggressive use of the Google ads. I’m happy to let people take my stuff if it’s useful to them, but I chose the non-commercial element of the CC license for a reason. Because I’m a dirty, lazy pinko, and I don’t like people making money.
I definitely use your website in two educational newsblogs: Musicing News and Views musicingnews.blogspot.com/ and Literacy and the Performing Arts http://literacywitharts.blogspot.com/. These ar designed to introduce students and other professionals in the arts education to some of the leading thinkers in educatiuonal technology. I don’t appropriate your work. My newsblog incorporates about three lines of your entry and then the reader must go to your website. I don’t see what the problem is. I don’t make money on these newsblogs, and it just increases the traffic to your own Blog. If it bothers you so much, then just let me know and I will remove you from the newsblog, although I think my profession has been well served to discover you. To have a place where my colleagues and students can go to regularly for updates that have relevance to our profession is very useful, informative, and saves time as well.
I definitely use your website in two educational newsblogs: Musicing News and Views musicingnews.blogspot.com/ and Literacy and the Performing Arts http://literacywitharts.blogspot.com/. These are designed to introduce students and other professionals in the arts education to some of the leading thinkers in educatiuonal technology. I don’t appropriate your work. My newsblog incorporates about three lines of your entry and then the reader must go to your website. I don’t see what the problem is. I don’t make money on these newsblogs, and it just increases the traffic to your own Blog. If it bothers you so much, then just let me know and I will remove you from the newsblog, although I think my profession has been well served to discover you. To have a place where my colleagues and students can go to regularly for updates that have relevance to our profession is very useful, informative, and saves time as well.
I hate those sites that collect links from all over (and now blogs) and then put in lots of advertising and do not identify at ALL whose site it is. I NEVER take this type of site too seriously. If someone wants to do a service by collecting the information in one place they should identify themselves and their biasses. I think this is all a part of contemporary literacy that we so desperately need to be educating kids (and teachers and other adults)about. Someone is making money off of this site. This type of thing is going to happen. I guess it is not worth too much stress or time to worry about them, but we MUST be selective about where we get information and teach others to be!!
Janice
I’d be royally ticked. This is not an educator who is trying to spread the good word, this is somebody who is trying to profit off of other people’s work through Google Ads.
In my mind, here’s where it crosses the line between cool and uncool: There’s no way to contact the person to opt out of it. If it was on the up and up, there would be contact information or some way to choose to remove yourself from the list.
I have no problem with re-feeds, but I’m not a huge fan of public facing re-blogs.
your feed has been removed.
You should check out this article from USA Today addressing this issue:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-31-net-plagiarism_x.htm?csp=34
Will Richardson writes: “I don’t mind people quoting my blog in their own or using any other of the content that I create to inform their own work. But this bothers me. Someone has decided to simply use my RSS feed and that of about a dozen other edbloggers to create a “river of news†page upon which to sell ads and, I would guess, make money on our ideas. No idea who this is… Should I care?”
Tom Hoffman responds, “Uh… dude. If it bothers you, you should stop licensing your work under Creative Commons and stop raving about Lawrence Lessig all the time.”
He adds on his website, “Isn’t it also true that Will’s blog can’t use other people’s by-nc-ca content either, since it also has ads? Nor can David Warlick’s blog, as it has advertisting for his books and is generally part of his commercial enterprise. Tim Lauer has an ad.”
The suggestion here is that the NC condition is so vague it can’t be understood and should hence simply be abandoned. “I’d say whatever Will isn’t selling he should give away, but give away freely.”
So far as I can tell, neither Will Richardson nor Tim Lauer use other people’s work in violation of an NC clause. Sure, they quote other people’s work and link to it from time to time, but that does not constitute ‘use’, it constitutes ‘reference’. There is a significant difference, one which is captured in the doctrine of fair dealing (in Canada) or fair use (in the US).
As for me, Hoffman writes, “What about Stephen Downes? How much paid work has resulted from his blog? Is he untainted? Do we need to examine his tax return? My point here is not that we all ought to be working for free, but that these non-commercial content licenses are terribly vague, and in my opinion for that reason should be avoided.”
I am certainly not going to worry about whether I am ‘tainted’. My ‘business model’ has always been clear, and is certainly not a secret. And my ‘use’ of other people’s work arguably falls under the domain of ‘reference’ rather than ‘use’ (though one might want to quibble about Edu_RSS, though since it publishes short excerpts only, and not entire articles, is probably safe under the same legal precedent that protects search engines).
But (as anyone who actually looks into this knows) in fact I do not obtain “paid work” from my blog. I certainly receive offers. But as an employee of the National Research Council, part of the government of Canada, I would be in breach of conflict of interest legislation. When I do external work, I do not charge any fees (form example, I charge no fees for my presentations, or for consulting on software, publishing articles, etc).
To take the other side of this now, my work is certainly ‘used’ and not merely cited. Commercial use of my work (and this typically includes academic journals, commercial websites, books, etc.) requires permission from the National Research Council of Canada. My website allows non-commercial use and some software is available by GPL, a condition that NRC has tolerated but doesn’t exactly enthuse over. With others at NRC, I am working to increase the agencies open publishing and GPL practices.
Some of my content is reused on a commercial basis, though not by edutechtalk. My site has been syndicated by NewsIsFree since the late 1990s, despite the oxymoronic name of that site. More recently it has been picked up by Technology4Teachers, an annoyance mostly because it messes up my Technolorati listings. Funny that Technolorati doesn’t use the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to weed out such echo blogs. My worked is aggregated by Yahoo!, Bloglines, and other commercial aggregation services.
The suggestion in this post is twofold: first, that I should get hot under the collar about such obvious and flagrant violations of my license conditions, and second, that I should abandon such conditions, because they are too vague. Some services that use my work may be ‘tainted’ by their making of money in one way or another.
First of all, life is too short to be bothered by such things. The sites out there that flagrantly violate my license are very obvious to my reader and others. They reveal through their own actions that they are not to be trusted (perhaps something that Google’s search engine doesn’t recognize yet, but that’s Google’s issue, not mine).
As Janice Friesen says on Will Richardson’s site, “I NEVER take this type of site too seriously. If someone wants to do a service by collecting the information in one place they should identify themselves and their biasses. I think this is all a part of contemporary literacy that we so desperately need to be educating kids (and teachers and other adults)about.”
But the main issue is whether I should simply abandon my license. I should, it seems, either change the conditions to allow such licensing, or I should pursue the instances of violation and get them to stop.
This is to misunderstand the principles of content licensing, at least, the principles as they should be, and not the principles that have been corrupted by a litigous and self-serving publishing industry and so-called ‘information economy’.
What I have done with my license is to express what I want, to express how I would like my content treated. Sure, there is recourse under law, as there is recourse under law for many things. But it is hardly a practical recourse, nor a reasonable recourse.
I have also in my life expressed other desires. For example, I have from time expressed the desire to be treated nicely. I have expressed the desire that people tell the truth. I have asked that people be courteous to me.
True, sometimes these requests are vague. Precision is for lawyers. It’s for people who are trying to obtain the maximum benefit, without any real regard to my interests or desires. If someone finds a loophole in the wording of my wishes, and exploits that, they demonstrate that althought they can read and infer, they don’t care about what I actually want.
We learn a lot about the actions of such people. Vagueness is what allows a person’s charater to emerge. If Will Richardson, for example, want to use my materials, and if he wasn’t sure about whether it would be all right with me, he wouldn’t parse my license, he would ask me. Because he values his relationship with me more than he does the money he might earn in this instance.
For me, like for everyone else, there are those inconsiderate boobs who lie to me and treat me as though I were beneath them. People who don’t ask, who just assume. Who behave dishonestly out of some sort o self-intrest, financial or otherwise, rather than taking what I want into consideration.
This bothers me, as it should. And I am not going to change that; why should I give up on my self-respect because others behave badly? I will continue to want to be told the truth, because that is what I want. The people who think they can just push their way around and act with no consideration for who I am and what I want cannot be allowed to define for me what is right and what is wrong, what I want and what I don’t.
True, I don’t sue such people. I don’t take them to court when they lie to me, at least, not unless there was significant material harm caused by the lie. As I said above, life is too short.
But I don’t embrace their behaviour either. When people lie to me, when people disrepect my wishes, when people use my content in violation of my license, they harm themselves because I will have nothing to do with them, I will not recommend them, and I will not trust them. And when such people do the same to others, again, they harm themselves, because people like me will have nothing to do with them.
Sometimes it may appear that dishonesty and disrespect prosper, especially in an increasingly anonymous society. The person who has cut into line ahead of you may appear to have gained something at your expense. My my belief is that a life led thusly is not one that profits. It is a life led solitary and alone. The essence of living in a community is to respect the interests, rights and desires of the other members. Those who disregard that essence soon find themselves excluded from the community, and from the benefits to be derived from the community.
And these benefits, I might add, go well beyond merely financial gain (and we blind ourselves if we limit ourselves to looking at money). Reputation, for example: as Audrey Hill says, “The more you give away, the more your reputation is assured. And paradoxically, the more your reputation is assumed.” And mutual support. And friendship. And sharing. And loyalty.
Jym Brittain, from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for example, simply copies my website and makes a few pennies from the Google ad. But what is his standing in the educational community? What is his relation with the rest of us? How much does he participate in the dialogue, the discussion, and indeed even the joy and accomplishment felt by those who, together, achieve?
None of it. None. Whatever it is that prompts a person to behave dishonestly, it isn’t worth it. Never.
That’s why I don’t have to take action, and why it is important that I not abandon those desires, needs and values that I express on my website, either as a Creative Commons license or as any other part of my work.
(Also posted on http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2006/08/will-richardsons-business-model.html )
“By that interpretation, none of the cases Will, Stephan or I have mentioned would violate the license.” — which means you brought up these cases… why?
I think you needn’t pay more attention to it.Firstly make sure what the main reason of writing your blog is. If you think you may make money from your blog some day, so paying more attention, or …
blog is to use sharing your perspectives, feelings with others browsing the site.
Obtaining the support from others should be very happy thing.