It’s Monday, and over at Simple Justice Scott Greenfield is complaining about marketers. Usually, he complains about people who leave comments on his blog with an SEO-friendly link back to their web site (e.g. “DWI Attorney”).
I never really understood why Scott was so vehement about this. Personally, I will delete the totally gratuitous comments (e.g. “You raise some interesting points! This is a great site!”), but if someone leaves a legitimate comment, I don’t object to a link back to their site. They’ve given me content that adds value to my blog, and I’m paying for that content with a backlink. This is how the search-engine-driven blog economy works.
This time, however, Scott is complaining about an outfit called USLaw.com which is republishing all his posts in their entirety.
Again, I’m a bit mystified by Scott’s reaction. It’s not like USLaw.com is scraping the content off his website. Scott publishes full feeds for Simple Justice—in RSS and Atom, both also advertised as related content in the HTML header—and USLaw.com has picked them up. This is how content syndication works.
I’m not sure if U.S. law recognizes a syndication link as granting a license, but it’s common usage in the blogosphere. If Scott doesn’t want other people publishing the full articles, he probably shouldn’t be offering the full articles in the feed.
I’ve never objected to people who repost my stuff like that. Sure, they’re trying to benefit commercially from my work, but I don’t think it hurts me just because it helps them.
For one thing, Windypundit is only technically a commercial enterprise (I make a little scratch off advertising). Mostly, it’s about getting my ideas out there where people can see them. If some other web site wants to re-post my ideas, that’s okay with me.
For another thing, reposting my content is just another way of advertising my site. I think most people are smart enough to recognize a site like USLaw.com for what it is, and if they accidentally stumble onto something of mine on the site, and they like it, they can follow the link back to Windypundit.
Finally, sites like that give me a little bit of link juice. Search engines treat every link from there to here as a vote for my site.
So, my reaction to a site like USLaw.com is to check if they include me on their list of legal blogs. Having done so, however,I’ve decided that I don’t like them using my content either.
The first problem is that they don’t list me in their directory (that I can see), but they’ve got a page for me, and I show up in search results on their site. In other words, they’re using my content to increase the likelihood of a search hit on their site, but they didn’t list me in their directory, so people who find their site by other means can’t find my blog.
The second problem is how they describe my blog:
This blawgger opines on Illinois statutes, law-related current events, links to content on other legal blawgs he finds interesting. He’ll also write the occasional movie review and post his photography.
There’s nothing wrong with the way that’s written, probably because it’s word-for-word the same as the description the American Bar Association’s blog directory uses to describe my site. I checked a few other blawgs, and this is not a general pattern for USLaw.com—usually they just use the description in the feed—but I wonder if they stole anything else from the ABA blawg directory.
The third problem is a little more technical. The page that lists my blog includes a link back to my blog, but take a peek at the HTML that implements the link:
Go to <a zclass=’snap_preview’ rel=’nofollow’ href=’http://www.windypundit.com/’ target=’blog’>Windypundit</a>
Note that the “rel” attribute is set to “nofollow”. That little bit of HTML tells search engines not to follow the link for rating purposes. In other words, even though they’re using my content, they’ve gone to the trouble of making sure the link back to my site doesn’t help my search engine ratings. I checked around, and they seem to do this to everybody.
USLaw.com doesn’t bother me the way it bothers Scott Greenfield, but he was onto something. These people may not be breaking the rules, but they’re damned impolite.
If you weren’t clear as to why this was a problem you should have asked me. What I write is mine. I think of it. I write it down. It’s my work product. It’s copyrighted. It’s mine.
I let plenty of people use it, but the choice remains mine whether my content can be used by anyone else, and if so, for free or at a cost. It’s my decision.
USLaw.com took without asking. The fact that it’s easy to take, in that you can get it the same way any reader can see what I write, doesn’t mean that it’s fine to take. If someone over there wanted to read my work, that’s fine. That’s why it’s posted. But that isn’t what they are doing. They are reproducing content in its entirety for their own commercial purposes. It’s just plain, old stealing, and the fact that its content rather than a “thing” doesn’t change the fact that it’s stealing.
I suspect the reason you don’t find it as troubling is that you don’t perceive value in original content. If it doesn’t bother you, that’s fine, but please don’t suggest that your feelings on the subject make it acceptable for someone else to steal my content.
Well, Scott, if I just asked you in private, I wouldn’t have had anything to blog about, now would I? I was just going to leave a comment, but it kept getting longer and longer, so I turned it into a post.
I think we think about blog content in different ways, but I don’t have time to think about it now, so I’ll think about it while I’m doing other things, and maybe I’ll do another post. I think.
Since I’m a professional liar, let me tell you a lie.
A friend of mine just called me up and said, “Hey, this stuff that you and Greenfield and Bennett tweet is a lot of fun; I got a twitter account, just so I could follow you guys.”
No problem. (And, in fact, something very much like that happened some time ago.) I’m flattered.
A couple of days later, he calls up and says, “You know, I don’t want to have a twitter account — I’m tired off all those babes ‘following’ me to try to sell me stuff — so I dropped it, and put up a web page that grabs those tweets, so I can just tune in without the bother.”
I don’t have a problem with that. Greenfield and Bennett can speak for themselves, I’m guessing, but I’m also guessing that they’re not considering going to war.
Three weeks later, he calls up and says, “You know, I’ve been showing that web page to a bunch of folks, and they all like it.”
I’m still kinda flattered. The guy sends me the URL. Kinda neat.
Here’s where I get ticked off:
“Geez — that web page is so popular that I’m now either going to password protect it and sell subscriptions or just put up banner ads.” (He doesn’t even get to, “You don’t think Greenfield will mind if I sell ad space to blawg marketers, or that Bennett will be bothered if I sell some to Sacramento attorneys who specialize in real estate, DUI defense, and freelance prosecution, do you? And I know that Coconut Charlie guy would love to buy some ad space with your name on it.”)
It’s about there that I know I get mad. Why? Not because somebody’s pointing at stuff that I’m putting out in public, but because the SOB is selling my stuff, without my goddamn permission.
And that’s what makes it “stealing.” Doesn’t matter that I put it out in public for anybody to look at — he’s got no right to sell it for his benefit without my permission, explicit or implicit, and I didn’t give it.
bingo
From the Twitter terms and conditions:
It seems to me that by accepting Twitter’s terms, you’re agreeing to let your material be provided to other web sites. I don’t know exactly what basket of rights you are granting when you post to Twitter and which of those rights, if any, they grant to people who receive their feed. It could be that no rights “flow down the feed,” in which case they’re limited to fair use, which can almost never be commercial.
(Where’s Randazza when we need him?)
Not being a lawyer, I’m going to forget about the law, and talk about what a “contract” looks like to radical moderate philosopher-without-portfolio: it’s not an agreement as to what to do, mainly, but agreed-upon conditions of contest when two sides go to war over an agreement.
It’s the agreement that interests me. The real one, not necessarily me signing off to be Bill Gates’ towel boy when I opened the box with my new computer.
So let me try another analogy — and let’s forget the law. I know this guy named Al, and, over the years, we’ve been talking about Al’s friend Betty. Betty, Al explains, is, well, kinda loose. She likes having sex with guys — pretty much any guy, as long as he asks nice, treats her politely and gently, and all that; doesn’t have to buy her dinner, but does have to engage in a little preliminary conversation. She’s a nice lady, and all, and has lots of friends, but one of the reasons she likes Al is that he understands that she just wants to meet lots of guys and bump uglies.
So Al’s been, over the years, introducing her to guys. Lots of guys.
Which makes Al kind of a nice guy, both from Betty’s POV and the POV of the guys who have been the beneficiaries of the introductions, and — you see where this is going:
It was when he started charging for her phone number that Al went from being a nice guy to a pimp . . .
For the record, Scott Greenfield granted USLaw.com permission to include his blog feed in it’s Blog Directory. His recollection has been refreshed on this point and we await his response.
In the meantime, the fair-minded among your readers will appreciate there are two sides to every coin and a potentially good reason USLaw.com would have preferred to give Scott the time to receive and evaluate that recollection.
http://www.uslaw.com/simpleinjustice
You know what USLaw could do? Pay the writers they’re using for the articles that are hosted by USLaw.
The underlying problem that I seem to be picking up isn’t breach of contract(1) or fraud(2) or breach of copyright(3) but simply unjustified enrichment.
One man is doing the work, another is checking his RSS reader and making the money. I agree that it is often perceived by some that there is no value in online content but there is profit in this situation, that’s got to be value. One man appears to be getting rich off of another man’s efforts, that’s instinctively wrong to me. I find that self-evident, really. It happens everyday, of course, but people cross against the lights every day too.
(1) Although I would consider the statement in the original offer that being in a “high quality directory is a greet[sic] way to increase your exposure and web traffic” to be suggestive that your exposure would be increased by agreeing, unless this is sneakily implying that USlaw isn’t a high quality directory and so scrapes by that comment. This seems to run counter to the reality of nofollow tags and content mirroring that goes on. It’s marketing speak but, hey, you’re holding yourself out there in my eyes.
(2) Bloggers sign up expecting to benefit from increased traffic and exposure, that’s the claim that gets a rational blogger to agree – you make advertising money, I get traffic. They don’t get it because of USLaw’s practices hugely differ from the email – could that be fraud by misrepresentation?
(2) Although I do have my suspicions. The only way there’s not at least theoretical copyright violation is if the blogger agrees to it. If the blogger and USLaw don’t agree on the same thing there’s no consensus, at least one blogger was agreeing to allow his content to be referenced in a directory in exchange for more traffic and better search rankings while USLaw was agreeing to take all his content and keep it while preventing him from benefiting from links. There was no consensus between the parties, so the contract is void ab initio, so the content on USLaw shouldn’t be there.