Comments on: How to Spot Content Theft on Social Media and Elsewhere

By: asithi

asithi — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:14:10 +0000

I notice that whenever I submit one of my post to Digg, it ends up on a splog. I figure it is not worth the effort any more since I really do not get too many visitors from that site even though I try to “play by the rules” and vote for good content myself.

By: onreact

onreact — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:55:55 +0000

Yeah Pat, exactly, among others. Sometimes you can’t get permission quickly enough but an attribution with a link is always a way of fair use. Also you might take just one image and make it smaller instead of taking a dozen and “making money online” off it with Adsense and lots of crappy ads.

By: Pat

Pat — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:16:53 +0000

save images i like > upload them to my site > post it without permission & add original source in the post

this process is not stealing right?

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:15:37 +0000

Content theft is indeed a major issue on social news sites. Fortunately, there are several things to consider.

First, all major social news sites have a means to report and get such articles removed. Though that requires the copyright holder be aware of the infringement, it can be done when needed. That makes it important for copyright holders to track their own work and be active in getting said content removed.

Second, you are right that the best method is to simply not vote for infringing works, but it can be very tricky, especially when some small blogs are able to post great content. However, if there is a suspected case of infringement, I encourage users to report not just the site and the link, but the person submitting it to higher ups at the site. Even if they don’t take action, they area aware of the concern and can follow up if it continues to happen.

Some users make it their livelihood to spam infringing links to these social news sites and that hurts everyone.

Finally, I don’t think that the problem is limited to SU or Mixx. I’ve seen it heavily on Digg and other sites as well. Anywhere there is traffic to be gained by reaching the front page, there are spammers and scrapers trying to exploit.

Thank you for the great article on this topic!

By: onreact

onreact — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:42:58 +0000

Jason: What about simply citing and attributing the source? Very simple measures every blogging newbie is able to master.

seema: Thank you, try to add some value to the post next time instead of just flattering as you sound like a bot. I will delete your comment tomorrow unless you prove that you’re not a spam bot by writing something less bot-like.

By: seema

seema — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:34:53 +0000

Your blog is very informative and helpful. keep it up

Thanks

By: Jason Palmer

Jason Palmer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:43:01 +0000

I just stole this

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:06:59 +0000

We’ve had our content stolen on more than one occasion, often with circumstances similar the ones you mentioned – like no way of identifying who they are – or above the fold etc…and we were never credited.

While we cover our fair share of stories that have been covered elsewhere, we always link to the sources and make mention that we read the original article on what ever site. But we always write our own version of events – we never copy/paste articles taken from other sites.

And as we write our own original content, having it stolen is a bit of a downer. So it inspired me to dream up this method which will certainly discourage copy theft.

http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=1860

‘Plagiarism Today’ even thought the idea had good potential and they blogged about it (http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2008/06/12/using-css-to-thwart-content-theft/)