PhotographerMentors.com Steals Blog Content From Leading Bloggers
I truly believe that our world is a better place because of the open exchange of ideas and information that happens through blogs. For me, that’s why the theft of blog content is such an insult.
Blogging is hard work. Remember that “blog” rhymes with “flog” and “slog”. To build a blog entirely on the content of others is #1 illegal and #2 lame.
This week a number of bloggers who cover photography around the world discovered that their content had been posted in its entirely and without comment or analysis on PhotographerMentors.com. In addition to a post from PixSylated, I found posts by David Hobby (Strobist), Joe McNally (blog), Scott Kelby (Photoshop Insider), Rob Haggart (A Photo Editor), Chase Jarvis (blog) and many other great bloggers.
If you are a blogger (or a voyuer), you’ll find all the details about the fight along with a gallery of stolen web content below.
The Right Ways To Use Others’ Web Content
The blogosphere is woven together with links and references from one post to another. I love it when other bloggers provide links to PixSylated. [See links to PixSylated on: Joe McNally's blog, Strobist, Photoshop Insider, Wired, Gulf Photo Plus...]
There are sites like StumbleUpon, Technorati, Delicious where readers can post links to or bookmark favorite posts. Here’s a snapshot of a post back to PixSylated on StumbleUpon. I’m always grateful for Stumblers and others.
There are sites like Photo News Today that aggregate short snippets of content from blogs that cover photography. PNT always provides direct links back to the original sources.
The common factor among all of these sites is that #1 they did not extract my posts in their entirety and #2 they provided open and numerous links back to the original posts.
How I Discovered That PixSylated Had Been Ripped Off
I discovered that PixSylated had been ripped off three ways:
- Kerry Garrison at CameraDojo kindly sent emails to a number of bloggers after he discovered that his blog had been ripped off by PhotographerMentors.com.
- it popped up in my daily report from Google Alerts.
- the offending post showed up as a pingback to PixSylated.
How I Fought PhotographerMentors.com
Thanks to the encouragement of Kerry at CameraDojo, I pursued this theft with a vengeance. The more people who push back against stolen web content, the faster the issue will be resolved. The more people who know about it, the less likely it is to happen again (at least by the same guy).
1. I tried to contact the blogger directly through a link or information from his site. No surprise that there was nothing on the site that would help me here.
2. I did a WhoIs search at GoDaddy (search link here) to find out who owns the URL. (Answer here.)
3. I sent a takedown demand to the contacts listed in the WhoIs search. The guy who owns the site wrote back “My apologies. The material was removed. I thought only an excerpt was posted but was wrong.” Only an excerpt? Liar, liar, pants on fire.
4. I determined the IP address for PhotographerMentors.com by using the IP search tool at Network-Tools.com.
5. I determined the ISP from the IP address by using the same search tool at Network-Tools.com.
6. I pulled up the legal page at website of the ISP for the offending site (turns out it was ThePlanet.com – their legal page here).
7. I followed the detailed instructions for filing a DMCA complaint (“Digital Millennium Copyright Act”). Be exact. If you miss one step, the ISP can ignore you. Give them all the info in the form they require and they have to respond promptly.
8. I emailed the details of my complaint to many other impacted bloggers along with a link to the material stolen from their sites and a request that they also file a DMCA complaint with the ISP. Several did so immediately.
9. I blogged about my experience to let even more people know.
10. I posted about the experience on web forums hosted by ASMP, APA and others.
11. I emailed every blogger I know and asked them to spread the word. Photo Attorney was one of the first to join the cause.
12. I emailed the presidents of every ASMP and APA chapter across the country and asked them to let their local members know. APANY put it up on their Twitter.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Resources
If you find that your site has been ripped off, check out the following:
- Google on the DMCA
- FAQ about the DMCA at ChillingEffects (a legal consortium)
- PDF on the DMCA at the US Copyright Office
- The dark side of the DMCA as seen by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
A Gallery Of Stolen Web Content
Click on any of the photos below and you will go to the original post at the site from which it was stolen.
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A Word of Warning About Stealing Web Content
PhotographerMentors.com has been taken down. By the owner? By the ISP? I think by the collective efforts of the bloggers who were ripped off.
As a blogger whose own material was stolen by these guys, a sincere “thank you!” for your efforts; and for your suggestions as to how to minimize the chances of this happening in the future. One welcome irony: as I was CCed on your efforts (emails and such), I also learned of many wonderful legitimate blogs that I was unaware of and can now look forward to reading. So thank you on many levels!
[...] Source and Read More: pixsylated.com [...]
Way to go!! I don’t write or publish a blog and I can only imagine the work that people like you, David Hobby, Chase Jarvis, and others put into producing the high caliber and informative information you all put out on your sites. The bottom line is when someone steals your work it is theft. It isn’t an oversight, it isn’t an error, and it sure as hell isn’t unintentional.
Congrats for putting him or her out of business.
Good for you to pursue this. I was on their site a day or two ago, but didn’t bother to look much deeper once I was taken to the site. I’ll keep my eye on future developments with this. Thanks for the info.
Syl–Great post on the specific details of how you defended your rights, responding to outright theft. While I am not blogging at this point, I’m offended at this behavior. I read each of the other photog bloggers who you listed. Based on your efforts that I read about on Carolyn Wright’s blog (http://PhotoAttorney.com ), I am subscribing to your RSS feed. Thank you for standing up for photographers, Syl. All the best.
Huuurah for Pixsylated ! Thanks for taking the stand- and then educating all as to how to go about it.
The website PhotographerMentors.com seems to be down. Looks like the ISP pulled his plug. Good work!
Awesome story of retribution! Thanks for sharing the great details about how to track down the jerks. Congratulations for shutting them down!
This was immensely useful, in particular the details about what you have actually done. I am a photographer (with a sometimes ripped blog) but also a wine writer with frequently ripped blogs. This has been very annoying.
Google Alerts has been increadibly helpful (depressing) to find these occurrences.
Now I know what to do about it.
Thanks.
As one of the offended parties, I would like to note that this happens to me *at least* once a week in some form or another. I have developed a TOS, which you can see on Strobist.com. But I also try to take into account that there are some people who truly do not understand the rules and so I try to take a lighthearted approach on first contact — which I did with Steve, the publisher of this blog.
This almost always works, FWIW. But is does take a significant amount of my time and is totally uncompensated.
To some extent, I am becoming agnostic to the issue and am in some ways torn between the traditional copyright stance and the very interesting argument by the highly trafficked blog, Tech Dirt, seen here:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090116/0348223430.shtml
As such, the fact that I do internally link within the posts to relevant archive material on my site in many ways mitigates the negatives of stolen content. This is not to say that I condone it. It is only that in the real world you have to find a way of dealing with it that does not take all of your time and mitigate the damages if possible.
That said, I have also had content stolen by larger, corporate sites — unattributed, no less — and can and do go after them to the full extent possible.
David Hobby
Strobist.com
I think most bloggers, even small-time folks like myself, have had content stolen by splogs to make money on someone else’s content. It’s just a matter of finding it, since Google’s (and presumably other search engines’) ranking heuristics penalize these types of sites, so sometimes just searching for it won’t work. Bravo for taking one down, and especially for showing the world what the DMCA should really be used for.
I subscribe to Google Alerts too – that’s how I found several links from this site in my feeds a few days ago. A quick look at the titles and excerpts told me that I was being ripped off by the site. I clicked through to check out and try to document the damage, but the site was already down.
Thank you for taking action against these plagiarists. Thank you too for such a detailed discussion on the steps you took to take the site down.
Thanks for doing this.
I still think that some folks believe that the information on the internet is free to use in anyway they see fit.
Joe McNally chimed in here – scroll down 5 paragraphs below the photo to find his thoughts on PhotographerMentors.com.
Unfortunately a lot of people make such sites composed completely of other peoples content. They have no real drive to be successful, they try to take every shortcut they can. Hopefully one day there will be some effective duplicate content filter on the internet.
I’m struck by the irony that one of the plagiarized articles was about “fair use” and the Obama poster.
I am very interested in reading your article and your fight, since I recently found all my blog contents, photos and articles, stolen and placed on another site. Repeated emails to the site owner and ISP went unanswered. Not only myself was affected by this theft of work, but photographers from around the world. I’m not sure I can paste a link to the offending site here, but I would have thought it would be a simple process to have this site banned. Not so. My next option is to turn to Google Adsense and hope they can ban the site. It’s disgusting behavior, and profit driven. If anyone has any advice on what more I can do I would really appreciate it.
That guy definitely should have approached the content owners before republishing. Why don’t people ever steal the stuff that I want them to and spread that around? Seriously, there’s plenty of content that people wouldn’t mind having posted on other people’s sites.