Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Andres Guadamuz recently noticed that articles from his blog are being republished in their entirety on apparently purpose-built websites. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, because Andres has licensed his whole blog under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
But in this case, (a) they're not relicensing their web pages, and more importantly (b) they seem to be doing this solely for commercial advantage - the pages are glossed with prominent Google ads. In fact, in Andres' case, I don't think they even realise the content they're stealing is licensed. If you look at some of the other content they've (most likely) stolen (e.g. http://g38.bgtoyou.com/Miscellaneous-local-events-Free-medium-psychic-reading/ or http://g91.bgtoyou.com/Body-Snatching-Updated-for-The-Times/) they do link back to the original. In fact, this is the only reason Andres found out his posts were being so copied.
So what's going on here? It looks to me like these people have an automated system to download new posts (via. RSS, most likely), and then republish them on random subdomains of bgtoyou.com. Andres suggested that it was a link farm, but I don't agree - I don't think you need content for a link farm, you can just create heaps of pages with no (or random) content and link them to each other. But if it's not a link farm, that raises two questions: If they're doing it for ad revenue, who are they expecting to read the page? And why are they bothering to link back to the originators of the posts, especially given that in doing so they're advertising they're copyright infringement?
I don't know the answer to these questions. In the mean time, it looks like Andres is going to try to enforce his licence, which is to say that he's going to try to get the infringing copies removed from bgtoyou.com. Like I said, I don't think bgtoyou was willfully breaking the licence - I think they were willfully infringing the copyright, but it will be interesting if they do realise, and then try to use the licence as a defense.
But in this case, (a) they're not relicensing their web pages, and more importantly (b) they seem to be doing this solely for commercial advantage - the pages are glossed with prominent Google ads. In fact, in Andres' case, I don't think they even realise the content they're stealing is licensed. If you look at some of the other content they've (most likely) stolen (e.g. http://g38.bgtoyou.com/Miscellaneous-local-events-Free-medium-psychic-reading/ or http://g91.bgtoyou.com/Body-Snatching-Updated-for-The-Times/) they do link back to the original. In fact, this is the only reason Andres found out his posts were being so copied.
So what's going on here? It looks to me like these people have an automated system to download new posts (via. RSS, most likely), and then republish them on random subdomains of bgtoyou.com. Andres suggested that it was a link farm, but I don't agree - I don't think you need content for a link farm, you can just create heaps of pages with no (or random) content and link them to each other. But if it's not a link farm, that raises two questions: If they're doing it for ad revenue, who are they expecting to read the page? And why are they bothering to link back to the originators of the posts, especially given that in doing so they're advertising they're copyright infringement?
I don't know the answer to these questions. In the mean time, it looks like Andres is going to try to enforce his licence, which is to say that he's going to try to get the infringing copies removed from bgtoyou.com. Like I said, I don't think bgtoyou was willfully breaking the licence - I think they were willfully infringing the copyright, but it will be interesting if they do realise, and then try to use the licence as a defense.
Labels: ben, infringement
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