Saturday June 14, 2008
Thievery on the Internet
Stories by ELLEN WHYTE
Got a bit of valuable property online? Check out how you can safeguard your work.
Put something interesting, fun or valuable on your web site, and someone will steal it.
Some take surreptitious copies of whatever they come across and repost it on their site. Others automate the process by sending “bots”, small software programmes that are designed to search your pages for specific types of content eg. pictures, video clips, text with certain words like “Angelica Houston”, and then take copies of this content without your knowing.
Jan Stuivenberg’s website from where material has been taken without permission.
Content is stolen because it helps thieves beef up their site, which entices more traffic, which means they can make more money from adverts on their pages.
“I had this guy taking every single one of my entries, putting them on a blog of his own and making money,” fumes Sharon Bakar, owner of thebookaholic.blogspot.com.
“I feel very used and cheated, especially as I do not blog for my own profit.”
“I sell print rights only but some of my clients ignore this and pass my pieces on to their e-mags,” says travel writer Erik Fearn.
“And once it’s online, the resale value is gone. Not only is it out in the wide world but everyone just rips work off. They argue it’s in the public domain but that’s an unethical interpretation. Furthermore, saying your conscience is clear because you leave in a by-line is nonsense. It’s my work, and they are depriving me of selling it by taking it and giving it away for free.”
There are plenty of websites that offer aggregated content. Sini-Sana at sini-sana.blogspot.com is just one of 10 sites run by the same owner that offers articles by journalists working for The Star, the New Straits Times and other Malaysian newspapers. It has also reproduced articles without permission owned by travel writer Liz Price.
The writer has asked the blog owner repeatedly to remove two of her articles taken from The Star website without permission on January 11 and March 22 this year. But her complaints have fallen on deaf ears.
“I’ve written to him twice and left comments on the posts he took but he’s not replied or removed them,” she says.
“The e-mail didn’t bounce so I know he got it. And he updates his blog regularly.”
Even web masters working for government departments should know better than to take content without permission.
Jan Stuivenberg who runs waterfallsofmalaysia.com checked his access logs last January and noticed a high number of requests from a website run by Pejabat Majlis Daerah Lenggong at mdlg.perak.gov.my.
“When I visited this site, I was quite surprised to find that they had copied a complete web page from my site about the Kekabu Waterfalls.”
Checking it out, Stuivenberg realised the Lenggong Perak page had copied his text but was linking to his server for the images. This allowed him to take direct action.
“I replaced all the pictures with one that said ‘This page violates copyright’,” Stuivenberg reveals.
“After that, I wrote to the e-mail address given on the site, asking for an explanation. That was in February and I’m still waiting for a response. I should have continued sending e-mails, but I have been lazy.”
Bafflingly, the site owners don’t seem to be aware of the effect this has on Perak’s image. Copyright online can be hard to understand at first, and it is common for newbies to make mistakes. The online community is usually quite forgiving if sinners are genuine.
“Governments and corporations should know better but I can forgive ignorance from individuals,” says Price.
“I recently found a girl in Indonesia had copied one of my stories but when I contacted her, she removed it at once and was so very apologetic that it made it better.”
However, some web masters are simply irresponsible or unwilling to learn.
The Perak Department of Veterinary Services at jphpk.gov.my was informed in November last year against taking content from newspapers without permission, yet the message doesn’t seem to have penetrated.
The Department removed the content originally highlighted but an analysis of their site last week showed they simply moved on to new sources and repeated the same behaviour. As a result of the survey, other victims are now taking steps to have their copyrighted material removed.
Cyber-savvy sufferers might retaliate in a number of extremely nasty ways but the reality is that most limit their response.
“I sort of had the last laugh because I stalked him (the thief) back, know where he lives and learned an awful lot about his life!” Sharon says, adding meditatively, “I might put him in a piece of fiction, sad little man.”
Fearn considers pursuit a waste of time.
“When you’re a single person rather than a powerful multinational talking to people in India and the Philippines about the rights of things, what are you going to do?” he asks.
“I safeguard myself by listing my articles and giving the first 300 words on my site. It’s enough so visitors can see what it’s about but they can’t write a plausible conclusion. I just don’t put anything online that is worth stealing.”
And that’s the pity.
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