An open letter to Line56

I submitted this to Digg :
http://digg.com/links/Open_Letter_to_a_Screen_Scraper_from_Nick_Carr

Sorry to see this happening to you Nick.

Plagiarism = Web 2.1.

Dear Mr. Carr:

"Mr. Carr you should feel privileged we bother to read your stuff and choose to provide you wider circulation. We were under the impression your blog was something about vanity. We did try to be fair and share with you at the rate of $ .0001 for every hit we have received for your article. Since that comes to 40c, your Amazon honor system would not take a contribution less than a dollar. As a fellow scoundrel you know it is diffcult o trust people over the web - if you can arrange a transfer of 60c, we will happily contribute $ 1 there."

Nick, it is shitty but they did credit you. I have seen blogs outright lifted without attribution.

Any thoughts on solutions.

That is tremendously arse.

Nick, you just made $50,000. If they are even remotely real, you have an uncontestable lawsuit that should net you $50k - and all costs if you need to pursue it. I've been able to get that when companies have only internally distributed some of my copyrighted materials without the right - on two different occasions - it seems to be the number. If they are a scam it may be tough, but then you can probably put them out of business. A former collegue who runs TechTarget formally had a business called Reliability Ratings - and the same thing occurred to him on several occasions, always leading to a handsome payout. Be aggressive if you are right, screw the pirates.

Mr. Carr, take it easy!


I will put a link to your site, ok!?


So long!


--


DB

Line56.com Editor

Hi Nicholas:

I was appalled to read they'd be so careless or cavalier about your work, which I love madly and which helps me move my own brain out of neutral...anyway I left a comment on their site, and just got this back:
---
From: john@line56.com
Subject: RE: L56 Article Feedback: Is Web 2.0 Enterprise Ready?
Date: April 28, 2006 1:44:17 PM CDT
To: Kim@bananamarketing.com
Hi Kim,

That's exactly what our editors are supposed to do, I'm not sure where the
mistake happened, I've written our managing editor and he should be taking
care of it...

thanks for your feedback,

John Akin
Business and IT Manager
Line56 Media
---

So maybe just scoundrel out of ignorance. Giving them the benefit of the doubt feels better.

Kim
http://kimklaverblogs.com

I'm sure it's already occurred to Mr. Carr that he's bringing them far more attention that they deserve.



I too have had my blog writing recopied onto so many spam blogs that sometimes I can't submit to Pingoat.com because it has identified my (original!) blog as a splogger.



Worse, sometimes the spam blogs come up first in Google, way before mine, presumably due to the SEO that they do.



Folks like Numly are trying to fix the problem with serial number schemes but I fear that it's going to be a long road before bloggers get their due (hear about the guy in Maine being sued for $1,000,000 for exercising political free speech?)



Dion

Makes one wonder how many other folks' work they're ripping off. That's the nice thing about feeds - you can catch them quicker...:)

I add my vote to those favoring a ruthless response to this.

Dion,

Spam blogs I ignore. This wasn't a spam blog.

Nick

Nick -

I believe that's the dark side of user created media - how easy it is take some one's thoughts and make them your own. So, I would say that Line56 and their editors are both - types of scoundrels - but I attribute the ignorant part to the fact that they stole your article - instead of looking for an eloquent, yet obscure blogger to steal from. But maybe that's how they get all their other content!!

Well you have to say they have guts - now the top story on their site is a critique of the post they previously tried to steal!

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?articleID=7569&TopicID=7

... but just to be on the safe side isn't it time you used a creative commons license instead of just saying you are "giving it away"? A commercial organization could argue (disingenously) that since you claim to be giving it away what they do with it afterwards is none of your business!

I have had precisely the same issue with one of my articles (different violator though).

Basically, they took a word for word copy of my original article on startup hiring, with nothing more than my name provided as the "source".

It seems the business model here is to steal copyrighted content and monetize traffic with advertising. To add insult to injury, a search on "startup hiring" ranks the offender higher than the original article on my site (onstartups.com).

If anyone has ideas of what to do about this, they would be appreciated.

Well, I'm apparently a "resource person" at this company: http://www.mindtraffic.com/profiles.htm . I've given up after several emails went unanswered in the belief that their pathetic page rank is on my side.

did you see his version of the story?

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7818

death threats? Nick, that's way over the top no matter what his crime...

Vinnie,

Death threats aren't just way over the top, they're criminal, and I hope that if he considered them genuine he reported them to the police. Needless to say, I deplore any death threats and the idiots or creeps who send them, and Mr. Barlas has my sincere sympathies in that regard.

That doesn't excuse his action, though, in reprinting a substantial piece of my writing (a complete 750-word article), without permission or compensation (or even a link, fot that matter), in a professional, profit-making publication. That's a very, very serious error for a professional editor to make. I do thank him for promptly removing my article, however, and for ceasing the practice of using other writers' material without their permission. I wish him and Line 56 the best.

I do not think it's wrong to hold online publications to the same standards as I would hold print publications.

Nick

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