You need to check out the Plagiarism Today blog. He has quite a bit of useful information for dealing with the issues created by Google’s unwillingness to penalize the scrapers.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/

Several things here.

First, they appear to have removed you as well as some of the other blogs they were scraping from. The contributor list is down to three now. You are no longer listed and your articles don’t seem to appear on the site.

Second, I would have simply filed a DMCA notice with their host regarding the theft, in this case it would have been Rackspace. You can find information on filing such a notice with them here:

http://www.rackspace.com/information/legal/copyrightnotices.php

Usually that is the best approach to handle these things. It’s fast, can be handled with a stock letter and works well over 99% of the time when working with U.S. based hosts.

It is also useful against the scraper blogs that you described and other people that plagiarized your content.

Just my two and a half cents.

I noticed someone named Tammy Camp from ComCorp on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=10080&id=594335742

Her FB profile says she was a grad from a school in Atlanta but is currently in the Dominican Republic. LOL

Good luck getting enforcement on DMCA complaints there. Your only recourse might be if you find a violation of Google’s policies.

Hi Derick

I’m the CEO and co-founder of E-consultancy.com - so thanks for pointing this content theft out. Please feel free to e-mail me direct about it.

Yes, we do get this quite a bit. It’s relatively easy to deal with when they are real companies based in countries who have any sort of jurisdication that has any teeth. Dealing with our friends in Russia and China is somewhat harder (well, impossible actually).

Depending on the company we usually point out to them what they are doing and request they immediately stop and remove all the content they’ve taken from us from Google’s cache. Or we will sue them (and we will).

However, for search agencies taking our stuff we’ve found an even more effective method is to get them completely removed from Google. That doesn’t help their business…

Ashley

@Steve: Thanks for the link… I’ll give that a look!

@Jonathan: I notice they’ve removed a couple of their “contributors” content as well. The Editor-in-Chief over at ClickZ emailed me and said they usually send C&D letters to places like that… so I’m guessing they did.

@Lee: I wonder if she’s the “Dominican Republic Office”? Haha. Violating Google’s policies wouldn’t look good for a “search marketing” company, would it? Hmmm… *gears turning*… haha. Thanks!

@Ashley: I think this company is made up of people spread all over the world. As Jonathan pointed out, they have a US host. But as Lee discovered on Facebook, they have employees in the Dominican Republic. Hopefully the fact that they’re based in the US would make enforcing DMCA easier… but you never know where in the world they could have backup hosting.

And I think Ashley touched on why this content theft bothers me so much. 1) It’s supposedly a “corporation” and 2) It’s a search marketing company. They’re basically stealing content from their own community. Every site they’re ripping off belongs to a community they should be trying to join… not rob.

So far I’ve got some great feedback from a lot of the folks I emailed. Everything from email to DMCA to public shaming to contacting the big companies that supposedly use these people’s services.

Thanks to everyone who’s responded, emailed, or left a comment here. We really appreciate your feedback and advice!

The Debate on RSS Article Syndication

First off all ComCorp, Inc. would like to apologize for any harm you feel we have caused Derick Phillips and Internet Marketing Monitor by the republication of content from your RSS Feed on our website.

We assumed that as you had submitted the content as an RSS feed you would expect and agree to the republication of the content without prior agreement or negotiation. We believe this is the whole purpose of RSS feeds. If you do not want Syndication of your content then WHY submit it as an RSS feed?

Please see articles below and advise us of any other interpretations you have for the use of RSS feeds.

From the US Copyright Office RSS is defined as the following:

“RSS is an easy way for you to keep updated automatically on changes to websites you like. Instead of having to go to websites to see if they contain a new article or feature, you can use RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, to find out every time your favorite websites post something new.” Sourced: http://www.copyright.gov/help/rss.html

“Most people publishing content via RSS support republication of feeds. I would advise that publishers using RSS to assume that the contents of their RSS feeds will be syndicated and replicated.” From http://www.feedforall.com

“RSS is defined specifically for syndication; in fact the acronym RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This means that webmasters serving RSS content do not need to negotiate complicated content sharing partnerships in order to use content contained within an RSS feed” From http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/article44.html

From that definition we have derived that RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.

A few weeks ago we decided that we would provide a public service that would syndicate industry related content on our website. As we did some research on this, we found that this was very common and well supported by people or companies that provided Real Simple SYNDICATION (RSS) feeds.

After reading many articles on the web that basically stated the same as above, we assumed that syndicating content from RSS Feeds was okay and legal and actually expected.

To credit the original authors We clearly sourced the author and website the feed was originally posted on.

At no time did we credit ourselves with the writing of content and so are not guilty of plagiarism.

The syndication of these feeds was in no way malicious or for profit. As you can see on the blog there are no banner ads. They were merely used to promote the content of the author and the author’s website and to provide quality advise on Internet Marketing. We had direct links to every associated website, therefore providing promotion to your website.

All the links were pointed back to the original website. We felt the syndicated content would provide a service for readers that could go to one place to read industry news. We apologize if you think we were using these feeds in a malicious way. That was not our intent. The RSS feeds will be removed immediately from our website upon request.

We wished that you had first contacted us in this regard before publishing your article as we would have gladly removed your content immediately. We are not hiding and just a phone call a way. If you don’t like the way something is syndicated on the site, then just call us on the contact information page. We would be more than happy to cooperate or remove any unwanted Syndicated content….and that is exactly what we have done.

As for your article saying that we have “stolen” your SYNICATED content and that we are “thieves”, we find that unfair. We respectfully ask you to remove the article and especially the personal comments about ComCorp, Inc. staff.

We replicated the articles in good faith that pre consent was given by the RSS provider. We have not or would never plagiarize other people’s work. Please understand that we feel that the accusations of Theft in your article are untrue and Slanderous.

Regards ComCorp, Inc.

[…] for the article “A Call To Readers & The Blogosphere For Content Theft Advice” saying that we have “stolen” your SYNICATED content and that we are “thieves”, we […]

[…] I published a post in regard to a company that was republishing our content on their corporate blog without receiving prior permission to do so. Several other blogs were also […]

Thanks for responding, ComCorp. I’ve posted a follow-up in response to your comment here.

I did want to address a couple of very specific statements right here in the comments:

First off all ComCorp, Inc. would like to apologize for any harm you feel we have caused Derick Phillips and Internet Marketing Monitor by the republication of content from your RSS Feed on our website.

Thank you. That’s very gracious of you and more than I suspect most would have done.

If you do not want Syndication of your content then WHY submit it as an RSS feed?

I think it’s a generally accepted idea that most content publishers don’t use RSS to syndicate content across the web in a free-for-all manner. They publish RSS feeds to make it easier for THEIR customers and readers to keep track of what’s new on the site. Perhaps there is some implied or technical meaning beyond that. But most people who do business online know the difference.

To credit the original authors We clearly sourced the author and website the feed was originally posted on. At no time did we credit ourselves with the writing of content and so are not guilty of plagiarism.

I never said you were guilty of plagiarism and fully acknowledged in my post that you were linking back to the places you were scraping content from.

The syndication of these feeds was in no way malicious or for profit. As you can see on the blog there are no banner ads. They were merely used to promote the content of the author and the author’s website and to provide quality advise on Internet Marketing. We had direct links to every associated website, therefore providing promotion to your website.

Advertising is not how I assume you make most of your money. I would assume that selling search marketing services would make up the bulk of your revenue. And for what other purpose would you have created a blog that used content from the web about search engine marketing other than give the impression that your company was an expert and up on the latest news? But I don’t even think that was really the purpose either. There was one tiny link to the blog in the footer of your site. That really leads me to believe that the search engine benefit of including posts dealing with those topics was the real motivator. Again… I could be wrong. That’s just a guess. But I’d think you’d want to publicize this blog a little more if was to be of value to your customers.

We wished that you had first contacted us in this regard before publishing your article as we would have gladly removed your content immediately. We are not hiding and just a phone call a way. If you don’t like the way something is syndicated on the site, then just call us on the contact information page. We would be more than happy to cooperate or remove any unwanted Syndicated content….and that is exactly what we have done.

And we thank you for removing that content. But we, too, wish we had been contacted before our content was added to another site. Especially since you used the word “Contributors” to describe the sites you were scraping. That word implies that we were in some way voluntarily contributing to your site. A ‘blogroll’ or link list says that the current site likes or endorses the people on the list. A list of “Contributors” goes beyond that and suggests a relationship of some kind. Obviously there was none.

As for your article saying that we have “stolen” your SYNICATED content and that we are “thieves”, we find that unfair. We respectfully ask you to remove the article and especially the personal comments about ComCorp, Inc. staff.

I’m sorry you feel that way. The article talks about corporate content theft and stolen content in general terms. At no time do I directly refer to your company as a “thieves”. In fact, this post is more of an outreach for advice than anything else. I simply presented the facts of the situation. As for personal comments about ComCorp staff… I’m lost. If you’re referring to the mention of an employee’s Facebook profile you should remember that that information is freely available to anyone on the Internet and is therefore in no way “unfair”.

Like I said in my follow-up post, better communication - from both sides - could have avoided the situation.

But I stand by every word of this article. If you disagree, I’m sorry. Hopefully we’ve both learned from the experience and can move on to bigger and more important things.

Hi all

I agree with Derick’s replies and comments. Thanks to ComCorp for taking prompt action and removing our content. However, I find it hard to believe that ComCorp genuinely didn’t think they were doing something a bit wrong by republishing our content and I suspect the real motive was purely an SEO one for themselves.

We do occassionally allow people to republish our RSS feeds but only when they’ve asked us first. The issues in this case were:
- We were not asked by ComCorp whether they could republish our content
- We were labelled as ‘Contributors’ which suggests to any reader that we knew about this. This is potentially damaging to our brand and reputation.
- I couldn’t find any links back to our full articles

Apart from that it was just a poor customer experience - our RSS snippets don’t make much sense unless you can then read the full article. With no link to the full article this meant the whole thing just felt amateurish and that doesn’t reflect well on us (or ComCorp).

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancyc.com

p.s. it is also clear (if you have a look at http://www.google.com/search?q=%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comcorp.com%2Fblog%2F%22) that ComCorp was using “their” blog content, based on other peoples content, to get coverage and links on sites like Technorati etc.

If you look at http://www.blogcatalog.com/post-tag/e-consultancy for example there is a whole load of E-consultancy content that just links back to CompCorp.

If ComCorp know this is happening (I assume so) then again it seems a clear attempt to use other people’s content to market themselves. If they don’t know this is happening, or aren’t clear on the implications, then it is still worrying as they are a search agency.

I think I’d feel more comfortable if they said “it’s all been a terrible mistake by someone junior who’s got it all wrong” than the current line which seems to be “we thought this would be fine with you”.

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com

Hi Derick,

Jake Matthews from 10e20 here. Thanks for pointing this out. Can you provide a link to a page where you see some of our content? Or do you have an old screen shot of anything from out blog that you saw there?

I appreciate their apology and the fact that they have removed this, but at the same time, the initial action seems just a bit shady. RSS, in my opinion, at least from internet marketing blogs is to help readers and subscribers stay up to date with information from multiple sources and sites, in one central location (the RSS reader). The unwritten rule is DO NOT to syndicate each other’s content on corporate sites. ComCorp seems to have only mentioned it in footnotes, and NEVER contacted the companies….and it just seems a bit out of line. Some readers of their blogs may not look closely enough and just assume that our work is their original content and that makes me sick.

I hope ComCorp begins to produce really good content on their own.

@ E-consultancy.com

The seed of the idea to use RSS Feeds for content was from your website E-consultancy.com. As you offer exactly that service. Please see below.

Source: http://www.e-consultancy.com/about/content-feeds.asp

Now you are saying that we cannot use these feeds without your prior permission. This is contradictory to what is clearly stated on your website, “E-consultancy has a number of XML / RSS content feeds which you can use.” We actually subscribed to e-consultancy for this very reason. As this image clearly states “why subscribe?” and next to it says “content feeds –rss/xml”.

As a leading authority in e-commerce you are actually condoning the republication of RSS feeds for content. Leading us to believe that it was common practice (and “genuinely didn’t think they were doing something a bit wrong”).

We are confused. Could you please explain?

Thanks,

ComCorp, Inc.

PS. Your XML feed http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/all/rss.xml has errors.

Edited to include image

Please view this image source:

http://www.comcorp.com/images/contentfeedsfromeconsultancy.jpg

or IMM please insert the above image for reference.

@Ashley -

I noticed the same things (including a Technorati badge on their site). So I agree - obviously there was some sort intention for gain from what was going on. Otherwise, why publish a badge with an authority rating that you hoped to build from other people’s content?

@ComCorp -

I don’t think that “Why Subscribe?” link has anything to do with their RSS feeds. It appears on every page and, if I’m not mistaken, is in reference to a completely different E-consultancy service.

I could be wrong… I’m sure Ashley can clear it up for us.

@Jake -

Thanks for your response! 10e20 wasn’t one of the blogs being reproduced (those were the ones listed toward the top of the post). 10e20 is one of the organizations I listed with bigger readerships and whose opinion I value that could offer some advice and input (I sent an email too; Chris responded to it). I figured something like this had happened to you before. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I think you hit the nail on the head about the “unwritten rule”. I don’t think most publishers consider their RSS feeds an all-access pass to their content. The generally accepted rule - whether written or not - is that you get permission before you reproduce other people’s content. I’m willing to bet that 95% of the RSS feeds out there are being published so that readers can subscribe to the site’s content and stay up to date on what’s new - not content syndication. And as you said, most readers don’t take the time to look for or would even notice something like a sidebar reference.

@Anyone & everyone -

Perhaps a little more research on ComCorp’s part could have brought this unwritten rule to light. And as an example, think about this: as Matt pointed out to me yesterday, the AP produces a syndicated feed of their content - but it’s not just out there for anyone to use… you have to pay to reproduce their content. So even among those organizations that publish feeds for the use of reproduction, they’re not always just free for the taking.

A good general rule of thumb: always ask before using something that isn’t yours. Even if you’re 100% sure it’s ok… asking is just the right, polite thing to do.

Perhaps we have to improve our copy and usability then…

I certainly wouldn’t understand that web page to mean that if you subscribe then you have permission to republish our RSS content on your own and other peoples sites to your own commerical gain..?

You can use our RSS feeds as an individual for your own consumption. You just shouldn’t republish them, attributing us as ‘contributors’ and use them to get links from other sites.

I accept that we should probably include explicit information about this on our RSS feeds page (like the BBC do at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm#mysite) and I would mind less if this mistake had been made by someone who didn’t know any better but I do find it hard to believe that ComCorp, as internet marketing professionals, seem to have a very different view of what is acceptable or not to everyone else.

Regards

Ashley Friedlein

@ Ashley & E-consultancy –

If you look at archive.org, in March 2007 their are no postings of content in the blog of ComCorp, Inc. The blog and the website has had a complete overhaul and redesign since a couple of weeks ago. This blog is merely in it’s infant stage. Actually, it hasn’t even been launched. We had just finalized the design the day of this blog posting.

Amy, you are correct about the junior programming. We should have have finalized everything in a test space rather than having the blog live during it’s testing stage. The “Technorati badge” was at zero and had been added 5 days before this blog posting. That is why it is at “0″. Again, we should have tested the Technorati technology in a private area before going live with this site.

@ Everyone -

Addressing the “Contributors” Title.
This is the default of the software we were using for syndication. Since we did not have the blog in a private area and was live, we had not even gotten around to changing it as it was hard coded in the plugin.

Please find the blog plugin at the following:

http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress

Now, we are putting this to bed and moving forward.

Thank you for that. Indeed, we can now all move on.

Regards

Ashley

[…] we were having. This is more of a response to a post that ShoeMoney made.  As you can see from our first post, we contacted him to ask what he does when people use his […]