Aardvarks are Funny - Copyright Infringement Isn't
I am a strong advocate for public dissemination and sharing of knowledge, but I’m not a supporter of copyright infringement. As I see it, it is a matter of respect for peoples work. If someone puts effort into a creative or inventive body of work, then it should be their choice whether and how that work is distributed and to what degree it is shareable.
Copyright infringement seems to be all the vogue on the internet at the moment. While the internet might make copyright infringement technically simple, thanks “cut ‘n’ paste”, thanks Pirate Bay, don’t people have any moral lines any more? Or, have people always had so little respect for other’s efforts?
I’m sure most people have copied a music album or two from their friends. I don’t think many people would then claim that music was performed by themselves! This is something that even reputable firms seem to be up to, these days. A friend recently blogged about Gartner appropriating some of his work. The impression that anyone reading the Gartner report would get was that this was original work by them. If they’d bothered to properly cite the original source then there would be no problem because the original work was freely shared. (Gartner did cite the work, but not clearly and actually just citing the distribution channel!)
This piqued my interest. Had content from my website been copied? I decided to search for a phrase that was unlikely to occur anywhere except in my (poor) writing. My first website had a page of really quite unfunny jokes. A later reincarnation of that aardvark jokes page is now available locally. I used google to search for the text of one of the least humorous jokes on that page. I chose this specific joke because I remember writing it for the first time, and it wasn’t funny even then. If someone really wants to copy something, then they should be able to find a better source!
The original form of the joke had a mouse rather than an aardvark and was marginally more amusing as a result. I found that in a Christmas Cracker (just like all of my best jokes!)
A huge elephant was stomping across the country when he came across an aardvark in his path.
“You’ve very small,” the elephant said fiercely.
“Well, I’ve been ill,” replied the aardvark.
The first line of that joke became my search term in google.
When I ran this, there were ten hits… some of which were quite obviously pure scrapes of my entire page text.
One of the more interesting content stealing sites was a site of animal jokes. My set of jokes was included on their site, in my site’s original order. But the interesting part was their own copyright notice:
Unauthorised use.
Over the last few years there have been many instances of severe copyright infringement. These usually take the form of websites including large sections of the content from this site. In every instance the author or owner of such websites has been successfully requested, or where required forced, to remove the unauthorised material. Copyright infringement is taken very seriously, it is a internationally legally enforceable law. Those considering using content from this website without prior permission are advised to consider their actions and the likely consequences seriously.
We actively search out unauthorised use of our content. Consequences of unauthorised use have included the web site being removed by the ISP, advertising contracts terminated and writs, with punitive damages, being served.
Right. There’s nothing like double-standards for getting the heart pounding in the morning.
Of the other hits, one was a content stealing blog, one seemed to be just a blog for bad jokes, and one did cite the source, but the source itself was a copy! Several even included my disclaimer, “Warning: I accept no responsibility for any of these jokes (except the funny one)”.
There seems to be a lot of content stealing jerks around nowadays. Not satisfied with scraping content, some even duplicate the look and feel of the copied site. One high profile case is the excellent StackOverflow being cloned, with a slight Chinese adaptation as cnprog. In this case, I’d take this as great flattery for StackOverflow.
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
— Charles Caleb Colton
0 comment