Why are people so cheap?

The old content theft question...

[Leonidas]

<RANT>
Some little b*****d has ripped off some of my articles word-for-word. What's more irritating is that he's posted them under his name to several article distribution sites.

No problems - I know the drill - C&Ds to the sites, notification to Google, and so on. Tedious time spent cleaning up the mess.

But why has the idjit done it? Any sane site in the industry is now going to drop him instantly: Once they know he's a copyright thief and he's exposed them to breach of copyright, he's lost all credibility - forever.

Why, when it takes so much effort to get a decent site running, would someone be so cheap and lazy that they'd damage their business like this?

And why would they kill the resale value of their business by building it on copied content? (Yeah, scraping and all - but this looks like someone trying to build a long-term business)

Infuriating!
</RANT>

[larryhatch]

There was a janitor where I once worked. He asked me for help
filling out a job application for a regular job there.
I wound up filling in every box! ( He was illiterate as they come. )

I think _some_ of the scrapers know their own limitations and can't see any choice.

Do a Google search for "UFO Carbondale, NJ" without the quotes.

The first 7 sites that come up are carbon copies of one another.
The 8th one (or thereabouts) is a page of mine. Its worth a glance.

1) The famous Carbondale UFO crash was a confessed hoax.
2) Carbondale, NJ is in Pennsylvania.

Whoever the plagiarists scraped off of got the state
wrong! - Larry

[Corey Bryant]

A great little site I found the other day: www.copyscape.com might also help you out.

-Corey

[Wlauzon]

We have an extensive FAQ sheet on specialty batteries that NASA stole from us :P

[stapel]

Copyscape is great. Since I've started using them and have posted their little "we'll catch you, you scum-sucking morons" little graphic at the top of each page, theft has plummetted (or at least the thieves are becoming much more careful, and they're not showing up in the search engines any more).

Regarding why they steal... well, that's going to depend on what the thief is planning on doing with it. Stealing content to get traffic, when you're then going to end up in the search engines and get found and get banned, is pretty short-sighted and stupid. And you're right about it being infuriating, especially regarding all the time you're forced to waste on the little sh!t.

I have problems with people repackaging my content and selling it, or else using it to get paid. (If you've been hired to provide online instruction, shouldn't you write your =own= lessons?) I even had one woman use copies of my content as "proof" of her ability to create online lessons. This helped her pass a class in "online instruction". Which helped her get a teaching degree. Which got her a job. And she kept using "her" lessons while working on that job, because they'd hired her, in part, based on her ability as an online instructor.

It took me forever (back in the days before the DMCA) to get this theft removed. But now her web site no longer exists, and she's teaching at a =much= smaller school with no online component. <evil grin>

Eliz.

[lovethecoast]

Once they know he's a copyright thief and he's exposed them to breach of copyright, he's lost all credibility - forever.

New gmail account and POOF, he's a new person. These idiots don't care about credibility -- they're in things for the quick buck, just like any scam artist.

One has to wonder how someone can get up every day of their life and the first thought in their head is "instead of making a real living with my skills, who can I rip off today for a quick buck?"

These, of course, are the same IDIOTS who go through life doing this and then demand we pay their social security, etc because they've WASTED their lives.

[Leonidas]

Just tried it out - that CopyScape thing's good!

It shows that one of the articles has been ripped off by a very reputable, highly ethical media organization - let's see how they respond when we point this out. (I guess this is a warning to all of us to keep a particularly close eye on our content development teams....)

[esllou]

Leonidas,

just get a nice PR7/8 link back off them as a "thank you"

:-)

[Rosalind]

I just found one of my pages plagiarised by someone who is probably just a kid, going by the rest of the content.

I think a lot of this goes on because there's a general ignorance of copyright law and a lot of fairly young people building sites. They tend to get away with it because their sites don't rank well or attract much concern, but they shouldn't be encouraged to think it's acceptable.

[dizzle]

the internet is a place where one cent is worth more than one hour of your time, that is why things happen for the reasons that they do.

[HughMungus]

Two things I've learned about people:
1. Some people are just stupid.
2. Some people are just jerks.

But to address your question more fully, I think a lot of people are trying things just to see if they'll work. e.g., "Let's copy this site over here and see if it makes us some money." Some of these seemingly dumb ideas have actually worked (e.g., 302 redirects).

[larryhatch]

Hello Hugh, Stapel and others:

A few thoughts. I really like copyscape, a very uservul service.
I put up their wide-thin logo as a warning on a page or two of mine.

Some definitions are in order, hopefully mine will do for now.
I call a 'scraper' somebody who simply skims content off of other sites for lack of his own materials. Pond scum yes, but nothing worse. Judging from the messages from those who try to justify scraping, or to confuse the issues, it seems they don't spell very well. In short, they may feel unable to generate their own text, and
must scrape of necessity.

Short on grey matter, the scraper (not scrapper ..see above) is the same guy who wanted to copy your term paper, as if the professor (more likely a high school teacher) would not know the difference! Commercial damage aside, the scaper's worst sin seems to be an inability to give credit back to the originator of the content.

There is one level of scum that even a scraper can afford to look down however. The plagiarist. [PLAY-jar-ist]

The Plagiarist claims the hard work of another as if it were his own! Dogs and cats won't pee on an exposed plagiarist.

I loudly exposed two or three in the 7 or 8 years my site has been up. None were ever heard from since.

Best wishes - Larry

[edited by: engine at 7:55 pm (utc) on Mar. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] formatting [/edit]

[larryhatch]

Above, I said a "uservul" service.

Clearly I meant a 'useful' service. (Beer-fingers strike again!)
Somebody please tell me how to edit my own posts
before I do this again [burp!] - Larry

[edited by: engine at 7:57 pm (utc) on Mar. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] Just hit "Owner Edit" ;) [/edit]

[FourDegreez]

Just checked out copyscape ... wow, there are indeed people who stole content from me! And the worst part of it is, in some cases it wouldn't have been much of a big deal for them to do something original. Guess it was just easier to steal my words and use them as their own.

[stapel]

I loudly exposed two or three [plagiarisers] in the 7 or 8 years my site has been up.

Wow; that's pretty good. My site has been up for about five years, and the number of plagiarisers is already pushing a hundred.

Somebody please tell me how to edit my own posts....

You have only a limited window of opportunity within which to edit your posts. During that time, there will be a button (under your name, if I recall correctly) that you can click. Once the window closes, though, the button disappears and your post is fixed in its final form (unless the moderators edit your post for their own reasons).

Eliz.

[vincevincevince]

It's not those who steal the whole article that annoy me - it's those which steal snippets, in the style of search results.

That kind of spam really annoys me. It's got my words, and my content within it, and coming up on 'my' keywords. But the site owners rarely reply to emails or take any action to remove the listing, I even had one claim that because I didn't block crawling with robots.txt he was entitled to use my content on his site.

[Wlauzon]

We have some javascript "encrypted" email addresses on our site to stop the spam bots, and once in a while someone will rip off some text and not know what it is, so they end up with our stuff on their page, but with our email address :).

[stapel]

...they end up with our stuff on their page, but with our email address.

I hide my copyright notice, in white text, on all of my pages (which have black text on a white background). I've had people steal my stuff and post it on their pages -- which were NOT white. So they'd be claiming the stuff was their own creation, but my copyright notice would be visible against their yellow (or blue or whatever color) background. Made it very easy to get them taken down.

Eliz.

[larryhatch]

Hi Stapel: Very clever. I would try it, but think there is a great risk.

That same method is used to hide "keyword stuffing", i.e. keyword spam.
IF the SEs see this, they may penalize your pages based on that alone.
Anyone else? Am I off base here? -LH

[stapel]

But keyword-stuffers hide loads of text, in the form of lists of keywords, usually at the top or bottom of the page. How many keyword-stuffers hide only seven words in the middle of hundreds of words of content-rich text? (I'm hiding the copyright notice, and that's it.)

I haven't yet had a problem with the white-on-white text. Unless a person is searching for "Copyright © [my name] All Rights Reserved", he'll never get a "hit" from my hidden text.

Eliz.

[larryhatch]

Hi Stapel:

That sounds innocent enough, just a copyright statement.

Still, it would scare me. Its SO damned easy for an engine to
look for white on white, or any color on same color,
that I fear an automatic penalty regardless if its an
innocent copyright statement or total KW spam.

When/where I put up a copyright, I want it seen.
I put the small copyscape.gif warning on a page or two
and I'm considering using it more.

What I REALLY want, is for G and Y, G especially,
to give us the tools to take stern and effective
measures against plagiarists, 302-redirect doctors
and scrapers in general. Something doable. -Larry

[stapel]

When/where I put up a copyright, I want it seen.

I'd already had plainly visible notices. The thieves just wouldn't copy-n-paste that far down the page. But these weren't rocket scientists I was dealing with, so they didn't even notice the white-text copyright notice within the text, even after they'd posted their copies onto non-white backgrounds. Morons.

I put the small copyscape.gif warning on a page or two and I'm considering using it more.

The number of infringement incidents at my site has gone through the floor since I posted the Copyscape image at the top of each of my content pages. I've been very pleased.

But you may also want to put a notice of your own next to the Copyscape image, stating that people are still allowed to print out your pages for private use. After I inserted the images, I got people e-mailing me, worried that they'd infringed, when all they'd done was print out a lesson for when their kids got home from school and needed help with their homework. So I had to clarify the "for personal use" thing. Other than that, though, Copyscape has been great.

Eliz.