Delphi 2007 Handbook








March 14, 2007

Stolen Blog Entries

I found a blog that is stealing my entries verbatim and republishing them.

I was not amused this morning when I found a Delphi + InterBase blog that has stolen many entries from my blog, verbatim, including the formatting, and without caring to mention the source in any way. I find this very irritating. Keeping a blog takes time and gets you no direct economic return, but it is a nice experience. How comes one grabs and clones other people posts (as I wonder it there is a single original post in that blog)?

I see people resurfacing articles from RSS feeds to get traffic and advertising money, questionable but technically possible (I did it for a while without fully realizing it, but was giving full credit to authors!). But I've never seen people copy and paste other people material, claiming ownership. And no, I won't post the url as I don't want to get this person the satisfaction of getting an extra hit from my link! But I might ask blogger to terminate his account...

posted by marcocantu @ 12:38AM | 9 Comments [0 Pending]




 

9 Comments

Stolen Blog Entries  

I feel your pain, but services such as pipes and
mashed feeds means that all manner of unknown,
unauthorized syndication is common place. I like your
blog because you write with the purpose of
communicating rather than the purpose of
self-agrandizement. Stick to what you know and you're
doing. For every 1 who you copies your words, there
are 10 who reword your ideas...
Comment by Athena [] on March 14, 13:31

Stolen Blog Entries  

Hello Marco,

I am using your blog, and many others, for writing
news letters for delphi3000, I am always putting link
from where I get that information. Is that ok?
Comment by Stanko Milosev [http://www.milosev.com] on March 14, 13:38

Stolen Blog Entries  

Stanko,
  no problem at all. I'm very happy to see my blog
entries referenced and quoted. 

Athena,
  unauthorized syndication can be a pain, but is
common and I can live with it. Even people reposting
similar ideas without reference (happens with material
in my books). But a verbatim copy (including
formatting, embedded graphic...) with another person
as author, this is something I wasn't ready for...
Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on March 14, 13:43

Stolen Blog Entries  

I've seen exact copies of Borland/Interbase 
newsgroups Q&A's on a website where you have to pay 
to get the answers. 

http://www.experts-exchange.com/
Comment by Ilse on March 14, 14:09

Stolen Blog Entries  

Yes, I have also seen some of my blog entries being 
converted into tutorials and FAQs w/o me ever being 
contacted .... I guess there is nothing we can do 
against that.
Comment by Holger Flick on March 14, 14:14

Stolen Blog Entries  

It happened to me years ago. A bookstore in Canada
took some book reviews I had written and reposted them
on their own site under the byline of the store's
owner. The author of one of the books noticed it and,
having read my review, reported it to me.

I think these things will always happen. There are
plenty of lazy and dishonest people in the world. But
because the Internet is visible to anyone it is much
harder to get away with such obvious copying. And the
news of someone getting caught can get around the
blogosphere really fast. Whoever did this is never
going to get any credibility in the Delphi community,
because we all know you. They'll work that out eventually.
Comment by Cheryl on March 14, 14:35

Stolen Blog Entries  

I don't know about other parts of the world, but
stealing content like that is definitely illegal under
U.S. copyright law.

If the site owners don't respond to demands to "cease
and desist", try contacting their ISP and getting them
to take action (like removing the offending site from
their servers). Probably all ISPs' Terms and
Conditions say that you can't use your hosted site to
break the law.
Comment by Joe White [http://www.excastle.com/blog/] on March 15, 20:04

Stolen Blog Entries  

It seems that stealing content becomes more and more 
important for some folks. As long as what they do is 
getting rewarded (for example them making money via 
advertising) it will keep on happening.

A few of the steps one can take are adding copyright 
notes everywhere (and yes, I have seen stolen content 
that even included the original copyright note), 
including the feeds. Contacting hosting companies, 
advertisers and ISPs when one find out about stolen 
content. At least most American and European 
companies will act fast.

Contacting a few of the search engines and point them 
to the stolen content - they usually remove the 
copycats from their indices.
Comment by Frank Kanu [http://geniusone.com/blog] on March 16, 16:03

Stolen Blog Entries  

 I'm experiencing the same thing this moment. Not only
one but many articles under different authors. I
wonder it came to be but I was told by one blogger
that it's ok since it promotes my site. But hell no,
Im not making money out of my articles yet this other
sites are gaining from it with out even giving credit
to my site as the original author. So, may I ask for
more enlightenment on how to get rid of multiplying
articles?
Comment by Br. Vince, FMS [http://www.vinceleste.com] on October 8, 09:16


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