

Content Stealing Jerks - kpanghmc
http://www.kevinwilliampang.com/post/Content-Stealing-Jerks.aspx

======
swombat
I look at this as a reality that has to be adapted to rather than fought. It
would be terribly inconsistent to preach that the MPAA and RIAA have it wrong,
and then get in a rut over someone copying your article.

Now, to be fair, these guys are trying to make a profit off your articles
(unlike the average joe downloading a movie on BT), but I doubt that many are
succeeding too well. I have yet to see one of my own successful articles be
supplanted by a clone in the Google search results, and sites like Reddit or
HN are usually pretty good at rooting out blogspam. These guys are more like
poor sods trying to sell a photocopy of your book for $0.10 on the street
corner, than like organised pirates making tens of thousands off illegally
copied DVDs. Even if one of them occasionally manages to get some real
traffic, considering how hard it is to monetise even when it's on your own
site, how hard do you think it is for them?

Getting angry about this seems, to me, on about the same level as getting
angry at someone for paying attention during your speech and then going around
giving that speech to others without crediting you. Yeah, so they're copying
you. So what? The minute the content leaves your computer and enters the
internet, it is publicly available and copiable, in the same way as the moment
your speech leaves your lips, anyone with a good memory and delivery can copy
it.

I'm not one for fighting fundamental reality with papier maché laws. I've
summarised my feelings on the topic in my blog's repository, at:

<http://github.com/swombat/danieltenner.com/tree/master>

 _All code is open to use for whatever purpose you have in mind (though I’d
prefer if you used it for a good purpose!). You can copy the content and
images too (though I’d really rather you didn’t copy the content, or if you do
copy some of it, please include a link to my blog). If you want to use the
danieltenner.com look/CSS/etc as a basis for your look, that’s fine too
(though I’d appreciate it if you evolved it over time rather than keeping it
looking exactly the same)._

~~~
greendestiny
To me its quite different to the RIAA's copyright dilemnas. I find the
misappropriation of authorship to be much more offensive than acquisition
without license.

~~~
blasdel
Plagiarism is so completely different (morally at least) from social copyright
infringement.

~~~
AlisdairO
What's the fundamental difference?

Bloggers don't want to be plagiarised because the plagiarism destroys the
remuneration that they get from their work: reputation, feedback, etc. Pay for
media doesn't want to have work copied because it deprives them of their form
of remuneration: money.

They're both exercising control over an intellectual property so that they get
something back from it. I see that there might be mild differences (for
example, copying still provides some _possibility_ of the owner getting
something back, since the authorship link is retained), but fundamentally,
it's the same right that is getting exercised.

------
seertaak
The hacker news community discovers that stealing ain't so cool when it
happens to you.

Various posters then tie themselves into knots trying explain this double-
standard. Proferred reasons why it's ok to steal from musicians, but not from
technical authors:

\- it's not that stealing is per-se wrong, it's the _plagiarism_ that some
posters find distasteful. That musicians' primary source of income is removed
when piracy is widespread doesn't seem to concern these posters. Their
currency is the kudos obtained from producing engaging and informative
technical articles. E.g. (greendestiny): "I find the misappropriation of
authorship to be much more offensive than acquisition without license." rcoder
has this to say: "Because of that, they can still drive real revenue for those
artists -- people may initially acquire an album or episodes of a TV show
illegally, then go on in the future to pay for new content from the same
people." That rcoder finds this theory compelling in the face of the direct
and incontrovertible evidence of a 50% decline in record company revenues in
10 years is somewhat surprising.

\- the RIAA engages in lobbying, and that's evil. Since two wrongs makes a
right, it's ok to steal from them and those they represent.

I note also that one of the typical arguments given for why recorded music
should be free is that "it costs nothing to reproduce". Which is true,
although one wonders why this argument doesn't equally apply to any other
creative content reproduced on the web. Books, articles, movies, computer
code, anything, essentially!

I'm a musician/hacker and the "fuck you" attitude so prevalent here towards
musicians and artists is really saddening. It's almost that people here expect
us to live like paupers because that somehow fits some romantic expectation of
how an artist is supposed to live, complete with alcohol problems and living
in the gutter. That, or we're expected to make barbie dolls of ourselves or
find new, cleverer ways to whore ourselves to ad companies (those that support
this method as the only method of sustaining the industry will never be able
to explain which ad company would have supported Lou Reed's "Heroin") There is
no sympathy or empathy or any trace of human compassion towards this
constituency.

And this is supposed to be the enlightened, rational hacker community?

Frankly watching some of the self-serving argumentation here is sickening.
It's watching intelligent people who really should know better engaging in
sophistry in order to justify their blatant pilfering of music.

------
smanek
"It's not like Jeff has a copyright on his CSS, javascript, or design"

Well, actually he does (and so do you). Most of the world (all the signatories
of the Berne Convention, in blue at:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berne_Convention.png>) grant you automatic
copyright on anything you create. You don't need to file any paperwork, you
don't need to have a little disclaimer, it just happens.

Now, usually it isn't worth the trouble of pursuing legal action, but you can.

~~~
jrockway
I think CNProg just copied the design. Chinese companies copying American
design is not exactly anything new.

~~~
whacked_new
TaoTao (twitter), youku (youtube), digg.cn, faceren, and now cnprog.

I heard that there are teams in China that take orders as simple as "copy site
X," and get it done within a month or so.

~~~
jasonkester
Google the name of any tech startup and you'll come across oDesk projects
titled "[startup] clone", with tons of bids. There are teams actively cloning
Twiddla right now (as evidenced by accepted bids to projects like the above).
It's just the way it goes.

------
trapper
I always find it interesting when articles like this take the stance that
piracy is bad, but articles about copying movies/music/game piracy take the
opposite stance (piracy is good).

Perhaps I am missing something? Content is content, if someone copies you and
shares it without you getting the payola, how is this any different from what
happens in the movies/music/game industries?

~~~
mahmud
People who download movies/music/games do not edit the content to make
themselves appear as the creators and artists. Quite the opposite, warez
releases usually come with a synopsis and background info on the distributed
work.

~~~
atarashi
To add to that, the offenders here are not only lifting content but presumably
profiting from it (with AdSense) as well.

~~~
trapper
Mininova make 1million pounds per year, probably more. What's the difference?

~~~
carbon8
Mininova doesn't host or distribute the content.

~~~
seertaak
Right, so actually storing the illegally-obtained copyrighted content is what
you consider wrong.

In other words, you oppose the RIAA going after The Pirate Bay. But by your
own argumentation going after, say, a college kid with a terrabyte of
fileshared music on his computer _is_ ok, because the material is hosted on
his computer.

Could you please confirm that this is what you are saying, or admit that
you're in fact engaging in sophistry to justify you stealing content (music),
but at the same time defend yourself from others stealing your content (blog
entries, technical articles).

------
jorgeortiz85
What do you do? You exercise the rights that deep-pocketed copyright holders
have acquired through lobbying Congress.

Send a DMCA complaint to the CSJ's ISP or hosting provider. The ISP or hosting
provider gets safe harbor from the DMCA, but only if they promptly remove
access to the infringing content.

------
mustpax
Out of curiosity a question to the HN community at large: how would you defend
yourself against a particularly cheeky content stealing jerk who claims that
you stole her content? I have been wondering about this in the context of non-
watermarked photos/images. How do you prove you were the actual original
creator?

~~~
tokenadult
"how would you defend yourself against a particularly cheeky content stealing
jerk who claims that you stole her content?"

I defend myself by embedded comments, and sometimes by fictitious entries

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>

that mark my work as plainly my own. I learned a story about this when I was
in school. In World War I, the Heast newspaper chain appeared to be copying
Associated Press stories from the eastern front, and the AP started running
stories about a Russian general Nelotsky who was enjoying great success
against the Germans. Pretty soon the Hearst newspapers picked up the story
too, and then AP revealed that "Nelotksy" was a completely fictitious name of
a nonexistent person, based on a reversal of the spelling of the word
"stolen." I was able to catch a plagiarist red-handed with a similar
technique.

I will say that I like the post-Google era better than I liked the era of the
hand-edited Yahoo directory, as Yahoo's original directory pointed to my site
in one category, but also pointed to a very blatant plagiarist of some of my
best content from another category. Since Google page rank has ordered search
results, generally people who search for content on the issues I write about
best are able to find my site first, not the plagiarists.

------
ChrisXYZ
One distinction for me between copying an online article and copying music or
a game, is that with the latter, people are pirating it because they'd can't
otherwise access it. They'd have to pay or inconvenience themselves somehow,
so they go for the free version.

A piece of online content, assuming it's free, is something anyone can
effortlessly access from anywhere.

So they may as well go to the original source, reward the author for his work,
and not support someone else who's being more parasitic.

~~~
dbrush
One could argue that propagating(copying) the content across disparate site
removes the inconvenience of finding the original content while still not
rewarding the creator of the work.

------
zvikara
Delimitdesign.com are using wordpress with WooThemes' "The Gazette Edition"
premium theme: <http://www.woothemes.com/category/themes/page/2>

They removed the credits from the footer and the css file, so I bet they stole
this too (Torrents for this theme are available).

------
teyc
and to think all this is supported by Adsense. Surely to hit them where it
hurts is to get G to pull their ads from the site.

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paul7986
I think the idea you propose is a good one, but there is no need for a firefox
plug-in.

It can just be a site where content providers post side by side articles
detailing their content was ripped off. Just as you did. Also the community of
said site can thumb up or down the poster's argument; labeling who the real
jerk is!

~~~
froo
There are sites like this that already exist in the web design field.

<http://www.pirated-sites.com> is one that I remember.

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rbritton
Where are you? The site you referenced in the post is registered in the UK,
which may or may not make pursuing copyright infringement feasible.

