Elsmarc - 8:16 pm on Oct 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

To me the bottom line is almost nothing is new, and almost nothing has not already been said in one form or another. This is all about competition, and we're all subject to it every day. I'd be lying if I said I had never copied things. Years ago when I got into giving certain training courses in companies (I'm a semi-retired business systems consultant) in part I prepared by signing up for, paying for, and attending the same course topic as I planned that several other training companies gave. I also had a lot of material from other resources. I took everything I had and developed my 'own' course from that material as a whole.

On the other hand, back around 1998 I put my courses, developed in Powerpoint, on my site as .pdf files and html files. I charged people if they wanted to download the Powerpoint file of a course. I sold, and still sell, quite a few of them. In the years afterward I have gone into quite a few companies where I noticed that they took what I put out there for free and made their own 'in-house' courses. I even have it pointed out to me by people from time to time (such as an email) that such and such a company copied my courses almost word for word (and sometimes even the graphics) in company "X"'s internal training. I have always been sorta proud that companies did this. To me it shows that the people there who did take the time to take a pdf file and make an internal course out of it apparently liked my material. Several times I mentioned it when I was in a company and the person would say something like "...yeah, it's good stuff". Maybe they were thinking "Uh, oh..." at the time, and a few did ask if I minded, but my position is I put it on the internet and as such I am essentially putting it in the public domain. And several said "That's why we've hired you as our consultant".

I'm not big on copyright. Copyright (not to mention patents), in my opinion, inhibits innovation. Everything is a variation of someone elses work or theme, or a combination of other works / themes. There is no one here, including the OP, who can say they have entirely 'original' works. All of our works are derivative of the works of others. I am so anti-copyright that the footer of each page on my sites clearly state: "This Site is Copy-Free".

One thing that makes me very happy is how many colleges/universities and other types of schools have contacted me about using the content of things I have done and posted online for a book or a course. I always say "Go right ahead". They usually offer to cite the source. I tell them I don't require it, but it would be nice. If they do, although I have never checked to see, that's all the more eyes that see my business and/or web site and/or my name.

These days I see the internet at a point where it's "After the Gold Rush" in a way. Everyone wants to be online and make a living from home. Those of us who started back in the early to mid 1990's had a head start. Competition wasn't anything like it is now. That in and of its self helps we who came early and are still here. I don't care if someone copies from any of my web sites. I work on them every day, 7 days a week. I make my living these days from my web sites. I'm almost 60 years old and I feel I am very lucky that I don't have to get up and leave the house to go to work, and that I can 'work' from anywhere in the world where I can get connected to the internet. I have built a strong reputation for my web sites looking at all aspects from the time it takes a page to load to (what is very rare now) down time. I respond to emails promptly and - Well, I *care* about my sites. There is no way anyone can copy all the content on my sites and 'run me out of business'. There's just too much more to success on the internet than worrying about someone copying/scraping content.

If a person has a good site (or sites), understands that this is not a short term money making 'scheme', perseveres over time, and 'cares', the site(s) will rise in the SERPs and will flutter around the top (it may not *always* be on page 1 of Google, but page 2 works for me, too).

My advice: If someone feels another person is copying their content, rather than complain they should make their site better. They should continue to work on it every day. If someone copies text and includes pictures, and your page didn't have pictures, add some. The *last* thing I would do is get into a pissing match over scraped or copied content.

I will deviate here from my overall opinion here in that if some one is copying text and pictures, particularly if they are copying the text verbatim, I would consider notifying them with a complaint (take screen shots for evidence as a minimum) and if they didn't cease I *might* take it higher up (like contacting their ISP). I've never done that, but I wouldn't consider it totally out of my options.