mattg3 - 3:27 pm on Sep 29, 2007 (gmt 0)

Well answers.com operates on the same concept as all winners on the net, pay nothing for content. Google, youtube, Myspace.

The money is in presenting the devalued content in different ways. Wikipedia is the worst offender in content devaluation, it actually charges their users by asking for donations. Then they cash in now on the German Telekom which displays the German WP.

They pay and have the illusion they do something worthwhile. Especially idiotic for all these ill advised students that soon will be in a working world where knowledge counts for nothing and daddy doesn't pay anymore and their degree counts for nothing as even 14 year old #*$!le faced Sally from North Carolina can mix in with Astrophysics.

Answers.com just makes money in a world that Google created. It's not only WP that Answers has copied it's some free dictionary and and and.

See it as remixing the web, its been the most successful strategy since Google entered the arena. Why do you think there are so many spammers out there that copy other peoples content? It makes enough money to actually live of it, not endless hours writing content for a ridicolous return.

Its just a massive inflated web version of old style publishers making the money while most authors live on a pittance. With the occasional big winner that is the figure head for x million successless people trying the same.

Why do you think Google is iinvolved in scanning out of copyright books in? Cause they think republishing old pap makes them money. Should you do the same and they don'y have a profit out of you, you are competition. Look at youtube thousands and thousands of replublished telly shows, loads of money .. in copyright theft and republishing on what film and television companies paid millions to produce. Why do you think DVDs and music became cheaper? Why does the publisher in my field that has less traffic than us has web pages that try to explain that it costs them 500.000 Euros to pay for the service and that's why they charge for some their articles. They operate a massive minus operation just to keep face.

Cloning WP is about the most harmless form, its legal.