Sometimes people borrow and rewrite content, but it is just plain out sick when they steal your site design and content without the decency to even bother changing it. Tonight in the SERPs I saw a weird site that looked awfully similar to a friend's site.
You judge the similarities between the content at CollegeScholarships.org (original site) and at ScholarshipsInTheUS.com (thief). Their site design looked similar to the original, until the site went offline. A few of his internal links even point at the real site!
Earlier tonight I called the number that was on the WhoIs data of the site stealing content. He was mad someone called and bothered him, but claimed he did not have anything to do with the content theft or domain. Within hours of the phone call the site was offline.
I bet they hope my GoDaddy representative doesn't look at the link to Design's cache I just sent them, and that they hope their Design AdSense account doesn't get banned. If either of those happened that would be a real shame.
The Anonymous Web of Theft I am not listing a name or the AdSense account number here because someone may have spiked the guy by putting false data in the WhoIs or publishing someone else's AdSense code to try to get them burned. What is to prevent me from doing that to someone who I don't like?
Part of the great strength of the web is that it is anonymous...so that people like you or I can do what we like and find a way to spread our ideas and profit from them (I use the term profit loosely there...I am not just talking about money). But I think some of the central network operators need to take on a bit more responsibility in who they are willing to partner with.
Design's Lack of Respect for Copyright The real issue I have here is not just with the content theft, but also with the central networks on the web. Design is currently lobbying to soften up copyright warnings, largely because they have no respect for copyright. Design's Youtube Copyright & Piracy Claims Design claims they can fingerprint video content to prevent piracy and copyright violation (although the world is still waiting for that technology). If Design can fingerprint duplicates to remove them from the search results, and claims they can even find copyright video content, then why do they allow 100+ page websites that nearly 100% match current sites in their index to run AdSense ads without doing either of the following flagging the site for automated or human review to compare it to related content sites before approving ad distribution notifying the other publishers of the potential content theft being sponsored by AdSense
Maybe they are slow to getting around to that because doing the right thing would cost them a couple dollars. But delaying on that issue is actually going to cost the web as a whole, because if people think that by publishing anything online that they are granting someone permission to steal it and Design permission to run ads on it then Design isn't encouraging the production of the high quality content needed to make their search service more relevant and more useful.
eBay Also Supports Theft Design isn't the only large network which openly and proudly profits from theft. eBay, which has made $10,000's from my Paypal payments, is allowing this dirtbag to sell my ebook on eBay over and over again. I have sent complaints using eBay's internal system, and talked to my Paypal representative, but so far they have not yet banned the thief and I am stuck monitoring eBay for theft that eBay's policies clearly and openly encourage. Making Anonymity Work Yesterday a leading search engineer at another search company informed me that he thought my book was good, but it was being distributed by another thief on another site. Here I am with a Technorati top 100 ranked blog, thousands of subscribers, millions of inbound links, giving these large companies tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and still eating crow.
How are new entrepreneurs to compete on the web if many of the central networks place a $0 value on content? How is that good for the long-term health of the web? Unless you sell ads, are syndicating misinformation or public relations spin, or have a large back-end up-sell you are screwed.
If the web is to remain anonymous the large networks need to make it easier to inform you if they are partnering with thieves to share in the profits from stealing your content. Or perhaps they could put a little effort into avoiding the issue by limiting their partnerships.
Designbook.com