I've been cloned!

Or rather this blog has. Doc Searls spotted this post over at the spammy-looking site, Lalaia - the virtual city, and blogged it.

It doesn't take a close read to spot it's word-for-word the same post. If you look further down the site you can spot pretty much all my other posts this month.

On the one-hand if it's a spam blog then I don't really see there's much I can do. But if - as Doc points out- they making commercial gain from the content then where does that leave me? I can't see any form of  contact for the site's owner/author.

There is a link at the bottom of each post directing the reader to the 'oriinal post' which sends them to my blog. BUT... as Michael May points out in a comment on Doc's post Lalaia are breaking the Creative Commons 2.5 I use for my blog because "no CC license copy is distributed on the copy site."

For the time being I'm inclined to do nothing but keep a close eye on the site. Doc's linked to what looks a really good post I need to read - and I'd welcome others' thoughts too.

But, if nothing else this occurance seems to reinforce the growth of flogging, splogging etc etc. Even Technorati seems to have atrophied under the volume of these sites.

Technorati tags: Doc Searls, splogging, flogging, Creative Commons

Comments

[Dave Briggs]

Hi Simon

I have found that my stuff is copied on several different splogs - it's mainly different posts so they pick them up by tag or something. I don't think there is anything you can do about it, really.

The main issue for me is if Google interprets these splogs as me trying to boost my pagerank with loads of spammy links!

[Social Networking Designer]

Yeah..lots of sites got a lower pagerank after Google discovered lots of spam links and content in the site..

[Ian Green]

Twats!
It happens all the time - it's even happening on Twitter now. Spammers - I hate them

[Chris Norton]

I hate spammers - can't they develop a creative way to get traffic using other people's posts and links to drive traffic is just plain annoying.

[Nicolae]

Hello,

I saw that you do not want your posts to be used in a RSS aggregator so I deleted it. It was not my intention to spam, but to aggregate news and articles with a common top[is - eDemocracy.

As far as I saw your RSS feed, it has a Common Creative License, and under this license:

You are free:

* to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
* to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

* Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
* Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

As far as I know I respected all these conditions I place a link to the original article and did nor alter the original article taken by RSS feed.

And, because my intention is really to respect the rights, I have a question for any other web site where I will use the RSS feeds in a RSS aggregator:

If I (or anyone else) will use articles under CC and respect the conditions, is it spam or just a different site with aggregated news and articles?

If a publisher do not want his articles to be used in other web sites under CC license, why it is displayed the CC License on his site? If he want more restrictive conditions, why not to write it down under the link for CC?

If I will be convinced that the aggregation of the articles under CC License is spam, I will avoid to use this method of any of my web sites. But till now, almost all the publishers that I contacted asking for permission to aggregate their articles, told me that they agree and that it is an usual and legal way to use it as long as I kept a link to the original article

Related on this subject, I red a very good article by John Palfrey, Berkman Center at Harvard Laaw School, at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2006/01/17/rss-and-copyright-circa-2006/

Best regards,

Nicolae

(BTW, I have myself several blogs with completely original articles, where I displayed a CC License, and I am glad every time when someone else use my articles in his web site keeping the links to my blogs, so I do not believe myself to be a spammer, but if an aggregation of other articles is generally considered as spam, it means that I was wrong and I will remove myself these aggregators rather than to be considered as a spammer, I dislike too the spammers)

Best regards,

Nicolae

[Sherrilynne Starkie]

Simon I recently had a similar, but different experience. An acquaintance of mine recently took some brochure copy I wrote for Strive PR and used it on his site as a description of his services. Word for word. I was shocked. I sent him a jokey email complimenting him on the 'excellent copywriting' on his new site and he thanked me. Then I pointed out a bit more strongly that this was MY copy about MY company's services and he offered to 'give me a credit'! I politely asked him to take it down. He did. I haven't seen him since. This is the behavior of someone who calls himself a friend. What can you expect from perfect strangers?

[Sherrilynne Starkie]

Simon I recently had a similar, but different experience. An acquaintance of mine recently took some brochure copy I wrote for Strive PR and used it on his site as a description of his services. Word for word. I was shocked. I sent him a jokey email complimenting him on the 'excellent copywriting' on his new site and he thanked me. Then I pointed out a bit more strongly that this was MY copy about MY company's services and he offered to 'give me a credit'! I politely asked him to take it down. He did. I haven't seen him since. This is the behavior of someone who calls himself a friend. What can you expect from perfect strangers?