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So, a big -1 for Blogwerx Sentinel from me.
As a side note, it can be hard to tell the difference between splogs and full text link blogs these days. They both copy content and add nothing except extra links around the content. I'm actually not sure how I'd define the difference.
How worried should I be about this type of thing if I am just starting? Does this service cost money?? Cause, I don't really have any.
Let me know what I should do. Thanks.
Also, there are a million sites out there stealing content from Wikipedia, and I don't see the Wikipedia search results being penalized in Google, to the contrary.
Nice idea though.
this is a typical thought of bloggers who copy and i am one of them
www.futurebells.com/blog
Really though - they should do something like Analytics or MyBlogLog does - give you code to put in a post or in the root of your web site to verify you are who you say you are.
Rob
Did you vet this company at all before you linked to it? No being mean - just curious - since it's very odd you link to a site that seems to offer nothing beyond collecting my email address...
Rob
I had my doubts about it, since there's no great way of fighting spam just as Bayesian filters fail these days. But Blogwerx was pretty adamant about their "new algorithm" working back then. I'm not saying that their product doesn't work, but I'm one of the cynical ones that isn't impressed currently with the "beta" interface that doesn't work currently.
Rob
Rob
Should make for an amusing blog post actually.
On the one hand, this service could be handy, must like Akismet and so on.
On the other hand, you are wrong on so many levels :
- you said "Any site that copies your stuff in an automated way should be shut down." : if you believe in this just a second, then don't post a RSS feed, and make it hard to scrap your web page
- you also said "one guy created more than 600,000 sites without writing a single word of content" : tell me how your GR shared items fit into that too. Are not you republishing content from others? Sure, the way you view it as, by sharing items, you are intentionally voting for something that may be of interest to your readers. But in REALITY, that would hold true if you were just linking, not republishing their content under Google's umbrella. Whether you want it or not, you are siding the evil side here too...
Let me know what you think.
I too started using GR to share items, but I find it too easy and certainly a lack of respect for the authors behind the posts.
On the one hand, this service could be handy, much like Akismet and so on.
On the other hand, you are wrong on so many levels :
- you said "Any site that copies your stuff in an automated way should be shut down." : if you believe in this just a second, then don't post a RSS feed, and make it hard to scrap your web page
- you also said "one guy created more than 600,000 sites without writing a single word of content" : tell me how your GR shared items fit into that too. Are not you republishing content from others? Sure, the way you view it as, by sharing items, you are intentionally voting for something that may be of interest to your readers. But in REALITY, that would hold true if you were just linking, not republishing their content under Google's umbrella. Whether you want it or not, you are siding the evil side here too...
Let me know what you think.
I too started using GR to share items, but I find it too easy and certainly a lack of respect for the authors behind the posts.
See my post on the subject: http://blog.dave.org.uk/archives/001197.html
So now that I know even earlier - will it actually help me?
Svetlana: he claims that Sentinel will help you do a report to the ISP via abuse@ and help get these sites taken down. That's why this tool was interesting to me.
In the end we gave up the fight because they tried to make us jump through 50 hoops to prove the work was hers.
Not in an automated way. I'm manually picking posts by hand and I don't repost every post from ANY blog.
If you are just republishing someone else's content you should be shut down. That's like stealing someone else's homework in high school.
RSS enables new kinds of services, like TechMeme and RSS readers like Google Reader. Those services add value and don't just copy a single blogger's entire content to a new URL and slap Google ads on it.
Where's your blog so I can learn how to do this right?
Scoble huh? What are GoogleReader shared items if not a way to republish someone else's content?
Please tell me you see the difference between this and a simple link.
Yet, you still someone's audience, since anyone subcribed to your shared items will unlikely click the actual blogger's post. Hence no chance of ad impressions, no chance of anything. I stand by this, you are stealing.
I am doing that too, since I also share GoogleReader-based items. But I am reconsidering it because that's theft.
In US copyright law there's "fair use" which lets you use 10% of someone else's content. There's also laws that let Google republish parts of my content on its search engines.
Also, if anyone who gets on my link blog views it as stealing, they can request I stop doing that and I'll unsubscribe and not put their stuff on that list.
Why hasn't anyone requested that yet? Because everytime I link to something there they get 100 to 2,000 new visitors. Which invalidates your point above.
How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.
And, out of 31,000 items in the past 30 days that have come through my reader I've shared about 1,800 of them. So, I'm only using one out of every 10 posts at best.
I once had somebody copy an entire site of mine - right down to leaving my email address on the contact page.
I got his ISP to pull it, and thats when the trouble started.
The guy filed a police case against me for "harassment" (dropped due to no evidence)
He then signed my site up for automated click programs trying to get me banned from adsense (and it almost worked had I not emailed Google and told them what was going on)
He then DDOSed my site, and I was down for an entire week.
If you ask me, it would have been better to let him copy. How do you fight back against that?
One way is to publicly embarrass the guy. But that probably won't work either.
I shut down one copier and then six more sites popped right up too.
Weird.
Does Sentinel work as stated Yes. Right now you are registering for the free base version of Sentinel and I should have made the clear. My mistake and this will be corrected. The turn around time for the free solution is 2 weeks. Some feel this is long, but once again it's a start. So, if you log right back in, there wont be anything there. The shortest amount of time that we have developed into Sentinel for paid tier when we make them available is 24 hours.
The reason that some buttons don't work is that being in the free version, and us not being ready to roll out the paid tiers yet. They are visible but not data will be attached to some of them.
Sentinel is a work in progress. We want feedback, good and bad and will weigh them out and see what we can do.
When Sentinel was first being developed, the idea that to make it as simple as possible for bloggers to use. Having you cut and paste code to authenticate you as the original blogger placed into each blog post would work, but over time and in some cases when your in a hurry etc., would be that one extra step that would fall by the waste side.
As far as the black lists and white lists. The concept of their use was developed to be simple as well and offer SOME effectiveness over having nothing . Launching at Demo has already given us some user feedback that is extremely valuable. We can hear what you as the community of bloggers is looking for in such a tool and make it happen if possible and it makes sense.
I will be the first to admit that Sentinel is not perfect by any means. Yet, it's a more effective start to combating the problem.
If there is anything I missed or have not fully address please, post it here or feel free to email me personally tony(at)iwerx.com
As far as using CVO. When I thought about it. Thats what I basically am and have done. I had the vision for Sentinel, who would need to use it and what I think they needed. I then spoke to a good friend to code it for me. Looking at code gives me a headache. So, a guy with a vision needs to surround himself with people that believe in that vision and are willing to put in a huge number of hours to pull it off.
Thank You
Tony Moura - CVO / head bottle washer
Iwerx
I happen to catch Robert in the hall at Demo and was looking for feedback and to let him know that we had launched.
I will be the first to admit and not shy away from, that there is still additional work that needs to be accomplished with Sentinel. Its core is currently active and running.
The issue with "What can I copy and what I cant?" Sentinel will show anything it finds to the originating author, its then up to them to figure it out. At the same time just since Demo alone, I have come to realize that a way of placing filters to an extent is needed.
Most authors / bloggers dont mind if you re-use their content as long as they get the credit as I'm sure most of you would agree.
Once again, Sentinel is not a fixed solution but will evolve and grow as the blogging community needs it to and it makes sense.
Tony Moura
Iwerx
You're committing corporate suicide if you have a paid tiers and your free one has buttons that doesn't work. Doesn't instill faith in a product.
In this sense, if Sentinel was my product, I probably would not have rolled it out. Take the leave, go show it off at DEMO and come back and turn it on when it's ready. When it's shown to Scoble, that's when I was ready to take a look. I'm hoping to see something a bit more mature in the next round from a business perspective.
Also, the next time for a product launch, get some real beta testers. The reason I say this is because if your beta testers actually "tested", they would have caught some of these pretty simple issues as explained above. This would have been warning flags for a delayed launch date. Also, some communication on your blog would have been nice if there were some of these issues.
Regards.
I think actually, it was the entire contents of a particular tag I use, which obviously has a feed on wordpress.com
I like the idea of busting someone who steals content. This is plagiarism and should never be tolerated, even if it doesn't generate ad money. The principle of it is just as significant, so I can see where you are coming from, Scoble. This practice is illegal for one thing. Any writer knows that not only is this unethical, but it will shame you forever in the world of intelligentsia.
I am just curious though how this will actually get anyone shut down from a blacklist.
Nevertheless, this was a good post, if at least for the sake of concept and/or theory. Perhaps Automatic ought to look into offering something like this.
Ah ah! I have to laugh my ass off. And how many visitors did you get on your "link" blog for that? 100,000?
I can tell you the kind of visits you bring, since you linked (that was a simple link) to my blog months ago when I wondered what was going on when googling your name. I can give you the results : that day I got 500 new visits. And next day they were all gone, despite the fact that I had posted a number of follow-ups (including answers to Matt Cutts who took the time to send a comment).
In other words, your reasoning does not fly.
You are taking the lion's share of it all.
Stealer.
What an hypocrit. You are the one complaining that others steal your content...
Ah ah!!!
I will be the first to admit that there are some things on the interface that should function but don't as of yet.
I just brought on another developer to help address these issues as quickly as we can get to them.
Although you cant see it, the underlying core of Sentinel is in operation.
We'll address the issues that have come up and hopefully some of the concerns that go along with them.
Ahoy!
Anyone seeing results yet? I was kind of excited (and a bit disappointed to have to wait two weeks in the first place!)