First and foremost I want to point out that this post isn’t meant to reopen any debates. It’s not meant to address the recent content issues 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 content.

A few days later, a post appeared on his site that dealt with the issue. Now whether or not we had anything to do with that post is anyone’s guess. Regardless, it goes to the heart of the issue and there are a few points / rebuttals that I would like make.

First of all, Shoe talks about not having a written policy on how feeds can be used. I won’t discuss whether or not we need one. What I will say is that, even if we used one just like Shoe’s, the problem we had would still have been a problem:

• He allows you to share and remix his feed, but only if you state that said sharing is not endorsed by him. We were listed as “contributors” on the other site and that implied endorsement.
• He specifies that it must be for non-commercial use. Our content was being used on a corporate blog which we can assume was intended to drive commercial gain.
• He specifies that the creation using his content must be shared. The copyright notice on the site in question prevents sharing.

Next Shoe goes on to ask “how bad is it really”. I assume he’s talking about content theft in general. This is another point I think we disagree on. Stealing is stealing, whether you’re talking about someone else’s content or a car - it’s all the same. I actually pay employees for this blog so we’re talking about real, hard cash that I’m spending. I would rather be the only place that has our content - even if no one else reads it but me. As you can see from our “About” page, that’s what this blog is ultimately for anyway.

The last issue I take with Shoe’s post have to do with his assertion that low PageRank and huge Alexa numbers make the entire issue moot.  This is a position that can ultimately lead to a lot of trouble.  You have to protect your copyrights at all cost - big… little… PR0… PR9… it doesn’t matter.  If someone big steals your content, and you try to go after them, their defense could easily be the fact that you have hundreds of other sites with the same content.  When you tell a judge or a lawyer “well… those sites just weren’t big enough to mess with”, that’s going to be a problem.  I’m no attorney either.  But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  If you want to have a shot at making a case against someone big, you’d better be able to prove you treat all parties equally.

But that’s enough on the issue for now.  Derick had his say and now I’ve had mine.  Thanks to the company who was using our content for taking it down.  Good luck with your blog!  And thanks to Shoe for the post… even if it wasn’t specially related to us.  I still learned a bit and enjoyed looking at things from a different perspective.

- Matt