MC Blog With OUR Copied Content
Thursday, August 24th, 2006 at 8:36 pm by angrybob
They say imitation is the finest form of flattery. Maybe, but only if credit is given. I am neither professional moto-journalist nor an overzealous ‘owner’ of the articles I / We write here. But I have to admit that I’m pretty annoyed right now.
While its the labor of love, this stuff takes time, care, and thought to produce and knock out…at least from my little brain. And while motorcycle blog aggregator sites exist based on RSS feeds, proper credit is given as to the origin of the article. Well, I found a blog that has a bunch of our articles simply with the author’s name changed.
It’s the blog section of a commercial site called leatherup.com which sells imported leather products among other things. Obviously the intent of these ‘attachment sites’ to commercial sites is to generate traffic. I’m cool with that. I’m not cool with the fact that all of the articles in this section but one WE wrote. Yet these are simply exact duplicates with the new author “Jesse” installed.
Fishing through the site a little, there are more, but this is the biggest example. Is it a big deal really? Nah. I just think its weak. I hope the authors of other bike blogs go check it out and look for their articles too. I noticed that I’m not on the blogroll, so if you are, you’re probably not duped.
Anyway, I thought I would pass this along. I think I will spend the week leaving some choice comments, but it looks like the moderation is in full-swing…go figure. Don’t buy stuff from these guys. Its the principle of the matter.
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You’re absolutely right, AngryBob! This is a cheap trick, and an insult to the rest of the motorcycle bloggers.
I do mirror posts, but in every single instance I credit the author and add my own color commentary. I also link directly to the source article/blog to which I’m attributing. That’s just good manners. In fact, I’ve even quoted and linked to MotorcycleBloggers a time or two!
The easies way to address this is to just encourage motorcyclists to speak with their pocketbooks. If a blogger has been plagarized by LeatherUp.com, they should encourage their friends to never shop there. That’s what I’ll do until they can practice proper blogging etiquette.