farmboy: The question on this post remains...HOW MUCH scraped text constitutes infringement?
My opinion is this:
If the site is non-profit, it would take a considerable amount of scraped text to constitute a DMCA.
Blog scraping is a joke. Who cares! But I see blog owners filing DMCA's all the time. Isn't that the purpose of a blog, to share? I guess not, especially when they stand to loose a few pennies on Adsense Ads.
However, in our case, a direct competitor is taking text and phrases directly from our site to offer his own "derivative" of our site. I costs us big time!
This competitor recently started using every one of the scripts we use and arranged them in the exact same way to create a membership site. Then they hacked through our code to find the affiliates we use and that added the same, then they hacked through our meta tags & grabbed them too.
They offer very similar products and until recently they delivered them in a completely different way. Now they are delivering product exactly the same way we have done for the last 5 years.
It's clear the competitor is using us as his template and has stolen our entire business model. Is that infringing or just cut throat competition.
I believe that if a business saves time by "looking at your paper" so to speak, then they are cheating.
IMHO, using identical or very slightly twisted text is still cheating and infringing. Fragmenting it to make it sound like your original work also seems infringing, especially when the overall concept reads the same.
If the competitor were asked "did you use any site design ideas or text from on your direct competitors site?" the answer would be yes, and again that seem infringing.
Before anyone files a DMCA, you have to consider if it's infringement or competition and what is fair use or otherwise. IP thieves get away with it every day by changing it up just enough to make it look like they came up with it. It that fair? Especially in a niche market?
I'm interested to hear what others out there think.
BTW, to answer your question, yes, I am fully aware of the DMCA filing process. However, since this competitor has now blocked ai_archiver, it's hard to prove our case. And when they take your site concept, sales copy and twist it slightly, it again brings up the topic question, How much is enough to constitute infringement and a DMCA take down?
The report is written, but just waiting to be filed.
