Are todays scraper sites on Wall street too?

[JS_Harris]

If I told you that I created a revolutionary new system that did three things as follows and that I was going to use it to create my website empire, would you be as unimpressed as I was in reading this?

#1 My revolutionary new system crawls relevant sources on the Web for local content and information.

#2 Next it organizes and refines and structures it.

#3 Then it publishes the information to all of my sites and updates them frequently with new information.

I've condensed the wording as much as possible to conceal the source but this is the online business plan of several companies today. I give credit to this particular company for publishing that snippet since its the truth but still, scraped content is scraped content isn't it?

This wasn't from a search engine company, its from a company that is listed on the stock exchange and sells advertising for this "content". I'm not liking paying the bandwidth for their crawlers, having my information organized, refined and restructured without permission and definitely don't want it being duped by updating a publicly traded companies website empire.

I wish this post was fictitious. I read it three times and am still scratching my head at how they feel that this plan is a good thing.

edit: in digging a little deeper i find that none of the sites i'm looking over rank very well. Kudos G and Y! and MSN and... for watching our backs.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 8:03 am (utc) on Sep. 27, 2007]

[RandomDot]

It's the usual business model. Take a little from everybody. Restructure. Reorganize. Republish. Advertise. Nothing new. Not illegal. Search Engines does the same, why shouldn't anybody else be able to do it then? It's an ethical dilemma which has not been solved in the form of a more practical solution called a law about it which defines the do's and don't - on the internet.

The problem is still that it is about who can and who can't do it? Should one business have an advantage over another - should somebody be treated special or be above any law which was made about it because they're somehow .. above it? Can't do that in a democracy. Can do in an aristocracy or monarchy - but not in a democracy.

The next problem is that the world is not one world, it's alot of different countries, laws, regulations, governments, interests etc - good luck getting something like that accepted throughout the world...too many interests at stake, and wars has been fought and civilizations has died for less causes -

[JS_Harris]

Update.

Scraped content for starters is bad enough but when its chewed up and spit out again it looks like this.

Largest Full Service Salon, Our Salon, Now Features, Over - 40 Stylists, With Expertise In, Color, Weaves / Hi-Lights & Low-Lights, Perms, Styling & Blowdrys, Updos For Formal & Informal Events Including Weddings & Proms, Our Nail Spa, Private Pedicure Rooms, 10 Nail Technicians, Our Day Spa, Now Features A, Sauna, Steamroom, Vichy ~Rainfall~ Shower Room, Private Lounging Area, Couples Massage Room, Woman's Locker Room W/Shower, Men's Locker Room W/Shower, 17 Spa Treatment Rooms For Facials Massages & Body Treatments, Services Offered By, Botox Collagen Restylane, (Sclerotherapy-Vein Removal), Gift Certificates & Packages Available

They're scraping keywords and its near unreadable afterwards. Is this all you need to do to hit wall street too? I'm not really trying to be sarcastic but cmon, at least you know which sites are chewing up your ad budget dollars to keep them there. It also looks like they're copying google maps and swapping in their own pointer on a static image which is against Google maps tos too.

edit: fixed typo

[edited by: JS_Harris at 7:47 am (utc) on Oct. 1, 2007]