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I started this post to an affiliate manager, he seems like a smart guy, nice enough, and I thought maybe I could get him to see my point of view, however as I typed it, I thought it might make a bigger difference here..
I read a thread regarding a recently scraped site, and immidiately recognised the site as belonging to a regular customer of mine.
The owner of this site buys much of his content from me, he posts some stuff himself, but the majority of his content is bought from http://www.spiceyournet.com, If you look at that site.. you will see that content is available with and without copyright, this affiliate buys everything original, so he owns the copyright.
His average monthly tab is well into the thousands.. Over time he has purchased tens of thousands of dollars in content, that comes with copyright..
When his site gets scraped, his content gets diluted, they stole content i just wrote for him, so basicly google gets to choose who is duplicate, there is no history to protect him.
Here where I live, you could go steal $300 worth of clothing from a store, thats theft, you’ll probably spend 4 hours in Jail and be fined $600.
If you jump out of a taxi without paying your $20 cab fare that’s ‘theft of services’.. a much bigger offence, starting fine… 10grand..
Even though the cab fare is less than the worth of the clothing, what you’ve stolen was a service.. I write articles as a service.. so in this particular case you’ve stolen content .. a material item from my customer, and and you’ve stolen the service from me. That’s just an example however..The point I am trying to make is that my customer paid very high prices for very well written (Thank you very much
) content. Not only does this affiliate owe him any profit made from the theft of his content, he owe’s part of the price that my customer paid me to write that conent .. dontchya think?Since we are all in various countries, and I don’t begin to know how a lawsuit would work, it makes perfect sence to me that we take the earnings from the scraper affiliate, and give them to the affiliate that spends hours of his time away from his family promoting his site, paying for good content, or writing it himself.. belive me, it has a value..
I’ve heard different points of view on why we do and do not shut down the offending affiliates account, and I agree with both sides here.. so if it makes programs happy, you wouldn’t need to shut him down entirely, because every time he steals, his profit is given back to the rightful owner.. eventually he’s going to have to get tired of that.. and in the meantime some of the damage done to the originating site is paid for..
very nice Lady:)
app:chearlead lousI hope the program managers will listen to this
Great thread LadyH, nice to see someone really take action. Who exactley is the customer of yours….just curious if it was me?
Heya Jason,
Nope you weren’t the one I had in mind when I wrote the post, not quite into the tens of thousands yet.. but gettin’ there aren’t we
.. Yet another example though.. your site was recently scraped in Japanese right? Thats a tricky one to track down 
I did bable fish that link a few minutes ago though, and definately recognize your content, some that I wrote and some that you wrote..Another great example of the expense these scraper sites are causing affiliates.
~LadyH
Yea it is really annoying when you see your paid content getting scrapped. I just found some more of my site getting scrapped….I almost don’t even feel like telling CPays anymore, not like they do anything about it but send a stupid email to the scrapper.
Ok … I don’t know US law. But based on your outline it’s “theft of a good” (the articles) not “theft of a service” …
And as you say the assumption that it could ever be taken to a US court assumes that the owners are both US citizens, and the stolen articles are on US servers.
(internet cases seem to get very messy with jurisdiction – especially once eastern European or Asian countires are involved.)
Now as for the second point – the redistribution of revenues – it’s a nice idea – but simplistic in the extreme.The idea of the internet being tied up with a whole lot of red tape and US style legalese arguing about puntive damages worries me … and that is a scenario where the cure is worse than the problem.
:crazy:The problems that I foresee …
1) More than one site will likely be scraped / stolen from.
2) It’s difficult to determine what percentage of revenue came from which scraped items.
3) The scraper may have different affiliations to the original site.I’d rather see the scraper affiliates revenues frozen (until the claim is proven) – and then all revenues forfeited and donated to a worthy cause.
(no idea what this would be – internet neutrality – feed the world – red cross – animal protection – something worthwhile).
The benefits of this scheme is that the scraper is punished – removed from the program and loses any fraudulent revenue – but also that there is no incentive to start a whole barrage of false claims.
:bigsmile:
Again that’s just my two cents worth.
:wavey:Actually it is likely possible to sue.
Maybe even a class action suit against the party that pays for the scraping.
One should ask Larry the Lawyer or another internet copyright lawyer with a gaming background.
TheGooner wrote:I’d rather see the scraper affiliates revenues frozen (until the claim is proven) – and then all revenues forfeited and donated to a worthy cause.Yep – I agree.
What the managers do not really get when we get scraped is that the money is so very secondary to me. It is the SE positioning and listings that worry me most.
The affiliate managers MUST act faster and swftly. Freeze the offenders account IMMEDIATELY and all earnings forfeited. Simple.. for all I care, if the programs act that fast, they can keep the money. As long as the thief does not see a cent and is compelled to change his or her ways.
peralis wrote:The affiliate managers MUST act faster and swftly. Freeze the offenders account IMMEDIATELY and all earnings forfeited. Simple.. for all I care, if the programs act that fast, they can keep the money. As long as the thief does not see a cent and is compelled to change his or her ways.Exactly my sentiment.
If this person is paying 10s of thousands of dollars per month on content; they are most likely making 5-10x that on profits. Agreed; the affiliate programs should close the accounts and confiscate the profits.
The only way we will ever see this sort of thing stop is if programs refuse to pay the thiefs. As long as there exist a program willing to pay anyone; we will have our content stolen for profit. Thus do NOT support any programs who do not have strong a policy against unethical behavior. Oh and make damn sure they enforce it too.
hehe I wish i had a customer paying 10s of thousands per month!
That was a total, more like 2-3 thousand per month.. in the same token i have customers that spend $45 per month, and thats still big money to them.. hell that’s big money to me!Whether they write their own content, or I write it for them, the value in the content remains the same.. either they are parting with their $$, or with their time and energy.. time is pretty darn important to me, life just wasn’t created with enough of it.
I only mentioned the $$ amount paid for content to give some real examples about the worth.. and the damage that is actually being done..
I’m fine with the charitable donations, paying the affiliate, keeping the money to pay for the investigation or whatever.. Those were all good ideas.. I’m also fine with letting the program merely suspend the account until the offending content is removed… so long as there is no profit from theft.
