Social Media: Exacerbating the Content-Theft Problem
Imagine my surprise when I opened Digg today and saw that an article titled 37 Famously Stupid Celebrity Quotes had been promoted to the front-page of the site. The last time I checked, the story had been submitted and buried at 74 Diggs, about 2 weeks ago!
Upon a closer inspection (i.e. after clicking the link), I found out that someone had scraped the entirety of the original content (including hotlinked images) and duplicated it on his own site, which then got submitted to Digg and reached the front-page. This incidence raises several important concerns:
1. Why was the original submission buried while the latter of the two was promoted to the home-page? Was it buried because of the url, because of the submitter, or simply arbitrarily? Have a look at the presentation of the two posts and tell me which one you would've Dugg:
Original
Ripped Content
2. Are Digg users incapable of policing the content? The reposted content begins with the statement, "I thought these were pretty funny when I read them HERE, So I decided to post them on my blog :)" In effect the person scraping the content points out where he has stolen the content from and says that he is merely reposting original content from elsewhere to his own blog. Furthermore, you can see that the second submission is a duplicate of another post because its Digg url is appended with a URL_2 at the end. If that wasn't enough, there have been a multitude of comments on the story pointing out that it is simply stolen content (and therefore shouldn't be Dugg, rather should be buried) and even point to the original link.
3. With over 70 million blogs in existence, it takes a lot of hard work to write content that distinguishes you from the rest of the blogosphere. If Diggers are incapable of distinguishing between original and unoriginal content, what steps should we as content producers take to protect our content? Content-theft is nothing new, and in fact I have written about it before. The problem becomes even more exacerbated when the scraped content gets submitted to a socially driven site.
Getting on the front-page of Digg can bring your site thousands of visitors in a matter of hours. However, when your content is being scraped, and the scraped content gets submitted to and promoted on Digg, all that attention and traffic is diverted away from the content producer to the site that is merely re-posting content.
As a result, you lose the exposure, you lose the traffic, you lose the links, and you lose money (especially when the content-thief hotlinks images to your site). It only makes sense to bury the stolen content.
**Disclaimer: I am a Netscape Navigator.
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Reader Comments (7)
- Jeremy Steele, April 17, 2007
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What needs to happen is 2 things - #1, Google Adsense and other advertising networks need to get off their butts and start back-charging scrappers and actually remove their ads without DMCA notices being required. There is NO REASON to require a DMCA notice, all it would take is a very simple visit to the scrapper's site to figure out if they stole the article. 9.9 times out of 10 the splog will have nothing but stolen content, so chances are it isn't a "whoops" type of mistake.
and #2, Digg should ban users who don't properly do research on an article before posting it. All it would take is a simple Google search to find out if the article is the original.
In fact, I just typed "37 Famously Stupid Celebrity Quotes" into Google and guess what? The original article was #1.
- Jeremy Luebke, April 17, 2007
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With all the things Digg bans people over, 1KrazyKorean fits the bill for a ban.
He obviously knowingly copies a buried story and posted it to his own personal blog and then submitted his own stolen blog post.
That's one of the worst offenses I have seen. Most users would be smart enough not to post the stolen content they are gonna submit on their own blog.
- Muhammad Saleem, April 17, 2007
- hombrelobo, April 18, 2007
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To be honest .... that is the same that Slashdot or BoingBoing do ....
So it is right if a big site does it ?
(ok, ok, is not exactly the same, but very close .... :)
- Paula Neal Mooney, April 18, 2007
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Excellent post, Muhammad!
Think I'll scrape it and pay those Diggers 5 bucks a pop to Digg it to the homepage!
Just kidding...
- rocco stifready, April 18, 2007
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Full credit to you Muhammad for bringing more light to this.
Digg truly is the new axis of evil as far as supporting content scrapers and copyright violators.
That celebrity hack site is interesting, notice all those photos without any attribution to the photographer? At magazine rates there is thousands of dollars worth of photography there, perhaps they have bought them, who knows.
I think that, before any eminent action, that digg should start playing a larger role in relation to content ownership and all it's members, contributors should familiarize themselves with law relating such matters and be aware of the ramifications.
I wouldn't dare play journalists, photographers or the media for fools.
- Jonathan Bailey, April 19, 2007
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The issue is a tough one. Social media definitely needs to work on these issues, especially the users directly involved in this, but content owners, such as both you and me, need to get more involved in protecting our content.
There are lots of tools out there that can detect scraping and finding plagiarists. Once found, there are ways, especially under the DMCA, to shut down people that are ripping off other's work. The DMCA isn't a perfect law, but it is very useful to people with legitimate copyright concerns.
I also agree with Jeremy that both Adsense and Digg need to get more involved stopping this issue. I've written many times before about how Google has remained complacent with spam, hosting it, promoting it and monetizing it, Google is really going to have to step up to the plate on this one.
All in all, it is an interesting question and one I'll definitely have to write about soon...
