Feed guarding: Protecting your weblog content from theft — or worse fates . . .
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Sunday, February 25th, 2007, 9:16 am MST
Category: Blogging, Marketing, Real Estate, Weblogging 101
Back in the dark days before the turn of the millennium, if you saw something I had written, down at the bottom there would be a little addendum: “Join my email update list.” If you did this, you would get a copy of every new essay or story I wrote at the time that I made it public. Not as convenient (or as annoying) as a Listserv, but you wouldn’t have to scrounge around on Usenet to find my deathless prose. Back then, a lot of people distributed content this way.
Dave Winer, the Tesla of weblogging, saw how stupid this was and invented a much more efficient alternative: RSS syndication. Instead of an email pushed from an email client, an email of updated content was pulled from a newsreader. Not only would I not have to undertake any special effort to send the email, you could receive it only if, as and when you wanted it. Genius!
What’s important about this is that, from the standpoint of my copyright to my original content, nothing has changed. Before I was pushing emails to individual readers. Now individual readers are pulling emails. But, simply because an RSS feed is easy to obtain, easy to repurpose, easy to resyndicate — this does not imply that I have waived any rights to my intellectual property.
People sometimes argue that RSS syndication creates a gray area in IP law. It doesn’t. In the United States, a transmissible work of the mind is presumed by default to be copyright protected. The presumption is rebuttable — for example by a waiver of copyright. But if you have not waived the rights to your work, you do not need to assert them by filing a copyright notice or by appending a copyright symbol to your work product. Your work is yours, and, except for fair uses for non-commercial purposes — e.g., a quote with a link in a weblog post — no one has the right to republish your content without your expressed permission.
So: Your fine young weblog gets splogged: Your feed is “scraped” and republished with a lot of creepy ads surrounding it. Or worse, some cheesy Realtor is kiting your entire feed and presenting it as his own work. A little less infuriatingly — perhaps even flatteringly — a real estate news aggregator is blending your feed with feeds from dozens of other weblogs. This stuff happens every day, probably quite a bit more often than you know unless you’re watching for it.
Okayfine — but who cares? I think you should. Some of the bigger fish in the RE.net have been talking about this in email this week, with the meta-topic being what, if anything, to do about it.
Matt Heaton at Active Rain was the first one to go public, providing an overview of the topic, and deftly dealing with some of the fears associated with the issue by pointing to some Google documentation and details on copyright law.
Dustin Luther, Jupiter Optimus Maximus in the RE.net pantheon argues that you shouldn’t worry about it. There is some truth to this. Sploggers, particularly, are a rape and run crowd. They may hit you three days in a row, then forget about you forever.
Sellsius offers some tips on how to regain control of stolen content, and Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing has also offered advice on this subject.
Bottom line: Should you worry about this or not? I think you should.
There are two potentially very negative consequences that can result from your failure to defend your feed:
First, Google and other search engines can decide that you are the bad guy. Search engines police hard for duplicate content, since it is so often the harbinger of Black Hat SEO games. In principle, you should be protected from the presumption that you are trying to game the system, but this seems to me to be a very big chance to take.
Second, if you fail to defend your intellectual property, it is arguable that you have abandoned it. I don’t think a judge would buy that argument, but how much money in legal fees are you willing to pay to find out? That notwithstanding, whatever resale value your work might have is massively diluted by wanton republication. This really may not seem like an issue right now, but you have no idea what tomorrow might bring.
If, like BloodhoundBlog, your weblog has contributing authors, you have a third reason for vigilance: You probably do not have the legal right to tolerate republication of your contributor’s works or likenesses.
So how can you tell if your feed is being stolen? First, watch your trackbacks and pingbacks and your Technorati links. If you see a link from a blog you don’t know, investigate. Half of them will be new friends. The other half will be thieves — even if they don’t understand that resyndication without permission is copyright theft. These are the good kind of thieves, at least: They’re linking back, which may protect you from duplicate content penalties.
The bad thieves you can only catch by trolling the net for your own content with software like Copysentry from Copyscape.com. If you set up an account with them, you’ll get a very eye-opening weekly report of who is ripping you off.
You don’t have to do this. Dustin may be right: It may be a better use of your time to just press on regardless. My take is just the opposite — and I am extremely vigilant to make sure BloodhoundBlog does not get resyndicated. You have no way of predicting the downstream negative consequences that may emerge from failing to defend your intellectual property. But, stipulating that they could be very bad, a small effort today could save a lot of trouble later…
Our story so far: If you’re studying Real Estate Weblogging 101 from home, be sure to peruse these mission-critical posts:
- Apprehending Realtor 2.0: Seven essential skills of the 21st century real estate agent…
- Real estate weblogging is a journey, not a destination…
- Think globally, blog locally: If you want local leads from your real estate weblog, pursue local interests…
- Podcast: Local results in real estate weblogging will come from making local connections, not SEO results
- Feed guarding: Protecting your weblog content from theft — or worse fates…
- Weblogging as if it really mattered: How to write with integrity and passion
- What is the difference between a weblogger and the press?
- Webloggers and the press, Part II: Oversight and S.W.A.G.
- Perfectibility in weblogging: Revising yourself to genius
- Can yet another easy-blogging local-content solution beat community-building local real estate weblogs?
- Hi. I’m Teri…And I’m aghast.
- Got Voice? And other questions for which I have no answers.
- In Case You Just Tuned In
- Neighborhood-level real estate weblogging: Traffic is not about traffic, traffic is about conversions
- Scale your locally-focused real estate weblog down to the size of a good time. Why? Because there’s no place like home…
- How to make Google your weblog’s best friend…
- Resource recourse: For the budding real estate weblogger, opportunities for self-improvement are everywhere — and every where is right here
- Want to make sure you can defend yourself from internet bad guys? Aim for the body, not the head…
- TheBrickRanch.com: As warm and fuzzy as an Easter Bunny
- Advances, none remarkable.
- Profitable real estate weblogging: Burning the midnight oil to make family out of your farm
- An insanely great hyper-local real estate weblogging strategy: Be the community
- Real Estate Weblogging 101: Our story so far
- Exploding Heads
- Dancing on bridges: Understanding great real estate webloggers
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Related posts:19 comments
19 Comments so far
Gregg, as you know, I hate these guys. I’m not using “hate” lightly either. They may as well be stealing my shirt. It was the driving reason for me to creat REMBEX. Anyway, I just put up a long post on the subject with a few tools I use to fight them like Google Search and Go-Daddy.
Inlookers: Todd’s excellent post.
With such prolificacy of acumen, it seems that it would be next to impossible to use tariffs to favor the penalization of the “splog” with control exerted (actively or passively) by group action within what is considered domestic industry.
After all, you are the Will Durant (“History of Civilization”) of Realty Weblogging.
Just as this country allocates the imposition of duties or quotas on imports in order to protect domestic industry against foreign competition, I’d set up a PayPal account for the “splogmeisters” so they can purchase a license to reproduce content. Sort of like buying sheet music online.
RSS is syndication, syndication means you are allowing others to repurpose your content – that was what it was intended for, to pull it outward and get broader coverage. I dont not think it was intended for a ’subscriptions’ only type context.
A little more info:
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2006/11/03/does-rss-imply-permission-to-reuse-content
“”In my mind, there’s no question that a blogger grants an implied license to the content in an RSS feed,” wrote Goldman on his Technology and Marketing Law Blog. “However, because it’s implied, I’m just not sure of the license terms. So, in theory, it could be an implied license to permit aggregators to do whatever they want.”
It does not matter what Goldman thinks. There is no such thing as an implied waiver of copyright. Who doesn’t love a sleazy lawyer, though?
Greg,
Goldman talks of an implied “license”, not an implied “waiver”. The concept of an implied license is very much alive under Federal copyright law. It is asserted as an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement.
-Russ
[...] Interestingly, both Steve Rubel (Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center) and Greg Swann (Feed guarding: Protecting your weblog content from theft — or worse fates . . .) wrote articles today that either demonstrate the blurring of email and blogging (i.e. blogging via email) or take it for granted (i.e. RSS syndication). [...]
> Goldman talks of an implied “license”, not an implied “waiver”. The concept of an implied license is very much alive under Federal copyright law. It is asserted as an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement.
Bullshit. “Implied license” refers to improperly transferred (assumed but not explicated) copyrights in works for hire. It has nothing to do with RSS feeds if they are not contracted for hire.
Hi Greg,
Would the concept of “constructive notice” be worthy of a refresher ? Seems the same logic afforded the recording of a deed might offer a shield of protection for a blog.
Just a theory….
Hope your having a fine morning.
> Seems the same logic afforded the recording of a deed might offer a shield of protection for a blog.
Check. The 1976 Copyright Act (as amended) doesn’t require explict copyright notice, but if you build a copyright notice on your weblog template so it’s on every page, put one in your feed and explicate a copyright policy on your About page (we don’t have this), then it is impossible for a thief or even a sleazy lawyer to argue that you have waived your copyright by implication.
I don’t actively go searching for ripoffs of my blog content, but sometimes I find them by mistake through Google Alerts or Technorati links. When I do, I insist that the content be removed. The latest excuse I received was, “We didn’t publish your entire article,” which tells me that many who swipe blogs simply do not understand copyright law. So I take the time to educate them and explain that one to four lines with a link is acceptable.
However, last month, a San Francisco freelance reporter for MSNBC plagiarized an entire article. Just lifted paragraphs and sentences verbatim. It was a silly little piece about 10 tips to selling in winter, nothing remotely insightful nor particularly proprietary, yet she stole it. Was I upset? You can bet I raised holy hell over it. And that reporter no longer writes for MSNBC.
As we have talked about before Greg, there are many people out there scraping posts. I figure there has to be 20 or so I have contacted and dozens more I have not dealt with yet.
We will see more of it in the real estate blogging world than others because what we write about is much more valuable to the scrapers. If a topic generates Google ads for 10 cents, few are going to steal new content for their sites. However, there are keywords from the real estate sphere that can generate over 5 dollars a click. So sploggers and scrapers are going to target real estate bloggers even more so.
What is the answer? Those of us who got in early to real estate blogging do not have much to worry about with Google rankings as we are already considered authorities. The scraping needs to be monitored and this thread has some good ideas. One other that I would throw out is adding a copyright notice at the bottom of your RSS feed.
For a new blogger, I would be vigilant. You do not have the authority to let Google know you were first with the information. If Google finds the data on someone else’s site first and regularly, they may target your blog as a the splog, and penalize you in the SERPs.
Thanks for spending the time and putting this post up Greg.
> Thanks for spending the time and putting this post up Greg.
Inlookers: Here’s a pay-it-forward, one that Tom and I do quite a lot:
If you see someone you know getting ripped off, let him or her know. A common occurence is an echoed trackback: The Real Estate Bloggers links to BHB, so a splog stealing from The Real Estate Bloggers also ends up linking to BHB. This is my chance to let Tom know that his rights are being stolen. Chaos spreads, but so does order, if you give it a push.
“Bullshit. “Implied license” refers to improperly transferred (assumed but not explicated) copyrights in works for hire. It has nothing to do with RSS feeds if they are not contracted for hire.”
Not so fast, IP lawyer (oops…I mean Realtor) Swann.
Go back and read my response. You said there was no such thing as an implied waiver. I corrected you. You (again wrongly) called BS.
Read the case law. There is a defense to copyright infringement based on implied waiver. It is usually applied in work for hire situations but that does not mean it could be not be applied elsewhere. It has been argued in a number of non-work for hire cases including the now infamous Napster case.
Anyone with an ounce of knowledge regarding the Web and IP would acknowledge that it is a rapidly evolving area where new law is and will continue to be created. The law regarding copyright, Blogs and RSS will likewise evolve.
BTW, why the strong words and “sleazy lawyer” name calling?
-Russ
> Anyone with an ounce of knowledge regarding the Web and IP would acknowledge that it is a rapidly evolving area where new law is and will continue to be created.
Is it your claim that legislatures or courts are likely to sanction the hijacking of intellectual property? I’m pretty sure that any danger to my RSS feed will be vanish the first time a Federal judge has his blawg ripped off. I would rather we had a nation of laws and not of gored oxen, but even a blind pig can find an acorn when he stayed up all night composing and editing it.
> BTW, why the strong words and “sleazy lawyer” name calling?
Because lawyers rationalize crime. Thank god they usually fail.
Hope you find a good non-criminal lawyer to help you when your IP is hijacked…
> Hope you find a good non-criminal lawyer to help you when your IP is hijacked…
Did you miss this post? We get ripped off at least four times a week. The law — in the guise of Officer Beer-Bellied Batman — is not nearly as vigilant as it might be. Google, OTOH, is a bitch…
[...] It’s no secret that Mr. Swan holds splogs in same high regard that the Viacom holds YouTube & Google in right now. In fact, he has even attempted to contact splog owners in order to get them to remove the offending content. (Good luck with that Greg – your gonna love this blog post). Mr. Luther has more enlightened attitude toward the problem. He believed that if someone is stealing your content, that almost always means that you’re writing good stuff! [...]