Do you know how I discovered (and still read) Techcrunch? Through a site called Planet Web 2.0:

http://planetweb20.com/

These guys reprint Techcrunch (and plenty of other sites) in full – the only difference between this and splogging is that they provide a link back. In fact, a site called Planet Ajaxian reprints my feed in full AND puts Google ads next to it AND sells Ajaxian consulting services right beside it. They’re making money from my feed and they didn’t even ask for permission. But I don’t care because they provide more traffic to my site – they get money and I get attention.

So my point is: why not just put a link back to your site (or the original post) within the feed itself, then you won’t need to worry about attribution. How about inserting a “by Mike Arrington” in the feed? Better still, include plenty of links back to previous articles so no-one is in any doubt who the content belongs to. And if your users are comfortable with it, try out ads or unobtrusive affilate links within the feed itself – once you’ve monetized the microchunk, it doesn’t matter how it gets disseminated.

I’m not saying that sploggers aren’t worthless pieces of sh*t that clog up Technorati and make it hard to navigate the blogosphere, but why waste your valuable time trying to chase these scumbags? Are they worth it? Most of these splog sites will disappear pretty quickly anyway, but since you can’t stop every single splogger, you might as well figure out ways to minimise your losses. If these people are too disrespectful to provide attribution, you should just force them to provide links back by making this an intrinsic part of your feed.

If sploggers start becoming a drain on your bandwidth or – worse still – start redirecting all the attribution links back to their own sites – it’s time to contact their host.

While I appreciate that copying content wholesale is wrong, I can’t help feeling that its completely inevitable. The moment you put out content as an RSS feed, you’re asking for it to be syndicated. So while you might be morally right here, to single out one splogger won’t change the nature of RSS. If we start asking for the right to restrict the distribution of our content, we’ll quickly head towards DRM for blogs. As previous commenters pointed out, Technorati and Google are already profiting from your blog content, but you accept that because they provide links back (ie. they create value for you). Why not structure your blog in such a way that sploggers create more value for you than you create for them? It’s certainly less effort to go with the flow than to go after every single splogger out there.

I realize you’re justifiably angry at the splogger here, so I held off posting for a while, but most of your recent posts have been about how music should be free and un-DRMed, and that musicians should profit in other ways. I can’t help feeling that blog content should also be free and monetized within the feed itself (although not necessarily with ads). More here:

http://mashable.com/2005/12/31/why-online-media-should-be-free-and-why-we-should-embrace-the-splogophere/

However even though its Mike’s personal trouble, I wanted to have a broader discussion about what is and what isnt acceptable fair use.

I have a lot of respect for how you have handled this. All of these arguments about what proper use is misses the point: Someone lited (and changed) your content and claimed it was his own.

Seems black and white to me.

I underand your point, but this isn’t my battle. Not gonna fight it.

I just want to point out that your techcrunch Creative Commons license says no commercial use. That means I would expect you to object loudly to your RSS being aggregated by the likes of Technorati and also your pages being listed in Google. Both of these companies splatter their pages with commercial ads so they’re making a buck off of your content.

OK, so where’s the line? The question in my mind still remains why is it OK for technorati to make a buck from your content but not some splog?

“If you are doing the CC with just attribution, I can reuse everything you do and put the attribution in mouse-type text with no link. What’s yours is now mine.”

Arguments like this make judges and trial lawyers sniggle at defendents that assume they know the law. It also make it easier for the jury to award huge punitive damages.

No one in this country is ever entitled to copy someone else work, not attributed the original author and pass it off as their own without the copyright owner permission.

I have yet to see any of the file-sharing defendents provide a valid argument or successfully defended a suit from the RIAA with the lame “CDs cost too much” or “file sharing is cool” argument…

This whole situation–which began the very moment Josh decided to take work other than his own and post it without attribution–has put Mike (and others) in a very awkward position–but at least it has led to a good dicussion about plagiarism, ownership and usage under creative commons. However, it continues to be at Mike’s expense, thus the “victim” has to defend his actions.

I agree with Mike’s actions 100% — a lot of work goes into blogging, building a community and putting yourself in public view. When someone steals from you, there is a sense of violation and frustration.

I believe Josh’s actions (especially his recent posts which are self-serving) have shown a lack of maturity or scope of understanding at how serious this is. I know Jonathon was simply asking questions as a journalist–but misses the point entirely. Mike wasn’t out to publicly humilate Josh, he was simply reclaiming what was his in the first place and shedding light on someone who, if Mike had done otherwise, would have continue to steal content from many sources first and apologize later.

The currency of Web 2.0 is the ability to freely share information with proper attribution–it provides a level playing field for conversations and exchange of ideas.

Josh is upset that he was caught & is now trying to steal the spotlight that exposed his wrongdoing in the first place. Josh, I’d take a break from blogging, take a class on plagiarism and put in some community service time.