jkOnTheRun illegally mirrored on elgg.net

Take a good look at Blair on the left here.  Blair thinks it’s OK to steal the entire content of someone’s web site and post it as his own material.  If you see him on the street run, don’t walk, and get the Blog Police.  Bad Blair, bad!

Yesterday Kevin noticed that one of his posts on jkOnTheRun had been posted illegally on another website.  Not just a typical blurb or mention, this was the entire post with images lifted from our Feedburner RSS feed.  It even included Kevin’s initials as typically appearing at the end of the post.  Closer examination revealed that this entire blog was publishing our content direct from our RSS feed, including the “Digg This!” link at the bottom of each post.  The person stealing our content is known simply as Blair and in addition to adding “Posted by Blair” at the end of each of our items appearing on “his” blog he is putting his photo on each article too.  That’s assuming it is even his photo.

I informed the webmaster of elgg.net, the host of “Blair’s” blog, of the copyright infringement and the fair use abuse.  This morning I heard from Ben Werdmuller of elgg.net who agreed that this exceeded fair use under the copyright laws and that he would ask Blair to take the content down.  I appreciate Ben’s prompt response and his promise to rectify the situation if Blair doesn’t remove the content promptly. Surprisingly, he also mentioned:

It is worth noting that although this appropriation does go beyond fair use, the RSS standard is designed for syndication and your copyright notice at the bottom of your site is incompatible by this.
By its nature, RSS will be stored in a retrieval system, i.e. an RSS aggregator.

This leads to an interesting debate given the wording of the jkOnTheRun copyright notice:

Copyright 2004 - 2006 by jkOnTheRun.com, all rights reserved. All materials appearing on www.jkontherun.com may not be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without prior written permission of the publisher and in no case for profit.

Feedburner is the aggregator serving the jkOTR RSS feed that Blair is ripping off and they have permission to do so by my signing up for their service so I am not sure how this copyright notice is incompatible with the situation as Ben states.  Any IP lawyers (Matt Buchanan or Doug Sorrocco) out there care to comment?

UPDATE:  I have been contacted by Blair and believe that this fiasco was a mistake and not nefarious behavior on his part. He has removed our content and is closing down the blog in question. As a result (and because I am a generally nice guy) I have agreed to remove his photo from this post.   I will continue to watch to make sure it doesn't happen again and if so the photo goes back up.

Comments

[Tablet PC User]

In case other people want to see the counterfeit website, it is at:

http://elgg.net/blair/weblog/

Don't you just hate when people plagiarize?!?!? Of course, he is referencing the RSS feed for jkontherun so it may be OK. Ideas from the legal gurus?

[Tyler - The Unknownman]

This is terrible. Stealing your content? When will people ever get it!?!? This "Blair" is luckey you're being nice about it. Most would just make this a legal case and go to court. I'm glad to see elgg.net is doing their part to help.

Keep up the fight James! Hope all goes well.

[Warner Crocker]

I notice Blair's site is now empty with ever the picture gone. Only the word sorry appears.

Sorry this happened to you guys.

[J. Matthew Buchanan]

Wow...sorry to hear that this happened to you guys. I hate to say it, but this is a problem that continues to grow on the web. Many people, for whatever reason, believe that feeds can be republished at will.

Just last week, I had an "encounter" with a website owner that was republishing my entire feed on his site. He's a business owner that serves patent attorneys...and he told me that he asked his "web guy" to do something to "increase my Google rankings." What could be better than plastering content from a patent blog all over his site? (he kindly removed my content after I gave him a brief introduction to copyright law, and told him that I'd be more than willing to tell all of my patent blogger friends about his actions...).

It's sad...but many people believe that a feed is out there for republication. They're not (in most circumstances). Content providers make them available so that people can read the content of a site using a tool of their choice...such as an aggregator.

I think the point of confusion regarding Ben's comment stems from your use of the term "retrieval system" in your copyright notice. People who read jkOnTheRun using an aggregator are making copies of your content when they pull it into their aggregator. An aggregator can certainly be viewed as a "retrieval system," which would mean that everyone reading your site with an aggregator (including me!) is violating the warning you give in your notice.

Republication is the enemy here. I suspect that you, as with most content providers, want people to read the site...in an aggregator or otherwise. You want copies to be made in that sense...but you don't want people to republish your content on another web site.

I'd change your notice to either indicate that use of the feed in an aggregator is acceptable use or to specifically indicate that republication is expressly prohibited.

Here's the language that I use:

"The content in this RSS feed, as well as the content presented on the web pages of the blog, is provided for your personal non-commercial use only and may not be republished in whole or in part without the express written or verbal consent of the publisher. All rights are reserved."

You certainly can copy that. ;-)

[jk]

Thanks Matt! I will make that change today. Fortunately in this case the individual was not intending anything untoward with the content but I see other sites almost daily that are doing this sort of thing for commercial purposes.

[Josh Einstein]

I agree that your copyright notice is contradictory to what RSS was designed for. It WAS designed for Syndication and not even for blogs at all.

[GoodThings2Life]

OK, I'm more than a little confused by this... if I use an RSS-enabled program, Outlook 2007 for example, to retrieve your RSS feeds and I store those... that's a violation? I'm not sharing them, I'm not using them for anything other than my own learning and reference... but it seems that's what your current copyright notice is saying, because I allow Outlook to collect and store them as a collection of information (generally for a week). Hypothetically if, on my own blog, I were to use the Trackback feature and quote and trackback to your blog, I'm still storing your information on my own site so that others can discover you and learn more. I never asked you if I could trackback to your site, so you never said I could or couldn't. The difference is that I'm not replicating your graphics or site design (and no offence I wouldn't simply because I, personally, don't like yellow, haha).

I'm not a legal expert by any means, nor even an IP expert, but... I do see a very clear problem with our universal obsessions over these legal-speak statements.

My own suggestion is as follows:

Copyright 2004 - 2006 by jkOnTheRun.com, all rights reserved. All materials appearing on www.jkontherun.com may not be reproduced or used for any purpose of profit. RSS Feed use is provided for non-profit reference purposes only.

Blair, after seeing his site, was blatantly-- even if not maliciously-- ripping off your content and design, so it's definitely fair to request he shut the blog down. Plagiarism is a very big deal, and I deal with it all the time as a teacher. However, sometimes it is important for us to recognize the bigger picture. I believe it's important for you to reword your statement in some way, if only to protect yourselves while not limiting your user base... providing, of course, that you wish to continue having all of us read your site on a regular basis. :)

Regards,
Aaron M. Hall

[GoodThings2Life]

Update: I just saw JM Buchanan's suggestion... and I definitely agree his wording is exactly what I would have in mind if I were as brilliant at such matters! :)

[Rabbit]

Hey there guys, love the blog!

Interesting post, because I just discovered this has happened to me.

Here is the post I made:
http://eyeoftherabbit.wordpress.com/2007/11/10/so-how-much-did-radiohead-make/

And here is the stolen content on a mirror:
http://filepack.cn/?p=544

Notice that it even lists "Malachi Romero" as the author - I have no idea who this guy is, but he's a thief! If someone has some advice on what to do next (Can't find his email address), could you please drop me a link at eyeoftherabbit (at) gmail dot com?