Pimp My Blog - Do You Have The Right To Republish?

Recently, I received an invite to join a mobile community platform.  Basically, a portal with several contributors contributing their posts or at least thats what I thought.  Since I wasn't too familiar with exactly what that meant I decided to contact some of them to further understand just what this was and what makes it work.

The list of conributors was very very impressive and to see my name along with theirs made me feel honored.  However, I wasn't blinded by that.  What I did realize however, was that this particular invite basically stated that all contributors will receive revenue on their contributions.  Money didn't blind me either.  The more my vision cleared the more I realized what was going on.  My content along with 40 other prominant bloggers was being replublished by their feeds without permission!

Some of the contributors listed there have feed archives back to September of 2005.  There is no where on that site that takes you back to the home of the contributor.  And here is the kicker... they have ads which generate revenue for themselves with the contributors getting a percentage.  All of this without the contributors permission.

Now in their defense I will state that the idea might very well have been a good one, with good intentions, but as you can see the outcome is not good.   The method they used was to send an email to all the contributors, however, not all of them received the email for whatsoever reason.  I had to contact Debi and chat with her about it because it didn't make sense to me.  Her post basically extends to what I'm trying to say here and has drummed up a very good discussion.  The bloggers listed include:

    * 3G Portal
    * Alan Moore
    * All About Symbian
    * Blethers.com
    * Daily Wireless
    * Darla Mack
    * Disruptive Wireless
    * Erik C. Thauvin
    * Euro Telco Blog
    * i-Mode Strategy
    * m-trends.org
    * Marco Casario
    * MobHappy
    * Mobile Analyst Watch
    * Mobile Enterprise
    * Mobile Guerilla
    * Mobile Jones
    * Mobile Mentalism
    * Mobile Opportunity
    * Mobile Read
    * Mobile Society
    * Mobile Talk
    * Mobiledia
    * Mobility W e b l o g
    * Mobilog
    * MocoBlog
    * MocoNews.net
    * Open Gardens
    * PicturePhoning
    * Pondering Primate
    * Postneo 2.0
    * Russell Beattie
    * Smart Mobs
    * Tech Dirt
    * Telecoms Korea
    * TeleGeography
    * TelematicsWire
    * Telepocalypse
    * Tomi Ahonen
    * VoIP Watch
    * Wireless Moment
    * Wireless Stock

Another noticeable thing is that my tags are replaced with those chosen by Wireless Watch meaning that my content on Wireless Watch can in fact be ahead of my original content from my site on all of the seach engines.

I can really only speak for myself but knowing certain bloggers such as Debi, Russell Beattie, Postneo and maybe half of this list I can say that we have all taken valuable time to write articles, take pics, use screenshots, and its just like any other site to properly give credit or link back to the originating source.  We don't work for you, we work for ourselves which in some cases is hard enough.

According to the invite this was the general idea:

The fundamental idea is simple: to combine our individual and regional voices into a global portal, a "gathering of the tribes" if you like, which aims to increase the credible exposure, and returns, for all parties involved.

So, I guess what I'm saying is... who the hell as the right to republish my stuff?  Have control over my feedsm get revenue from my hard work and then control the amount of revenue that I get from them?

Note:  I am not posting the link to the original site due to the fact that it was login and password protected, and that just wouldn't be the right thing to do. :)

Comments

[BigBerries]

Man, I was just going over this. My site is so small you wouldn't even think. I just posted about this last week as a result of a few things that happened.

I'm glad a person on your level in the game has the guts to speak up about this, it's enough out here for everybody without the need to blog leech!

[nico]

I do not know exact details about this case, but of course if you have a RSS feed and have no copyright policy I think it´s more or less ok to use the content in that matter.

A different thing is of course to republish the whole text without permission. This is violation of copyright and should be taken seriously. Do not let anyone come away with this. If the ads were Google Ads you can report to Google.

You can also fill a dmca here:
http://www.google.com/dmca.html

The splogs (search Google if you do not know what that is) are already a big threat when it comes to content on the internet. Also remember that Google and other SEs are fighting duplicate content. If many sites copy and republish your content´it might hurt your rankings in SEs.

[Perry de Havilland]

Perhaps I am missing something (and that is always a possibility!) but are you really complaining about a site synicating your content??? Unless the site in question is a splog taking your stuff and misrepresenting it as 'their' content, I cannot see the problem. Blogs quote other people all the time.

Cheers!

[spud]

I understand your frustration but it really is a catch 22. When you publish a blog and make available an RSS feed you are setting yourself up for this sort of thing don't you think? Really, this could be applied to loads of related cases. For example... when you (or I or others) simply author a posting that is nothing more than rephrasing what someone else has already written or blogged then you are capitalizing on someone else's ideas. I see you do this quite often with AAS and Tommi's S60 weblog.. what's the difference? Check out http://planet.spatiallyadjusted.com/ - it's merely a blog aggregator and the developer could easily add Google ads and capitalize off other's content... the kicker is that they gain exposure. If nobody ever did this or linked into your posts then nobody would know about you.