FeedWordPress: Content Theft with Consequences

Today, while search­ing for a dif­fer­ent WordPress plu­g­in, I ran across this trou­bling post from John TP from last week:


My blog posts have been reblogged a few times in Splogs in the past and that too direct­ly from my feeds. After switch­ing to par­tial feeds, I nev­er faced this prob­lem until recent­ly a few splogs like http://​weblog​-pla​.net have start­ed it again. This raised my curosi­ty as to how they do this and that too automated…I found two WordPress Plugins that these spam­mers use- Autoblog and FeedWordPress.…I high­ly rec­om­mend that you do not use these WordPress Plugins. Earning mon­ey through these meth­ods is not safe and can get you banned by the Adsense team.

John’s dis­cus­sion of these plu­g­ins is ambigu­ous at best. In fact, giv­en the space he devotes to their fea­tures and func­tions, one might even think his goal is to encour­age their use with­out being overt­ly encour­ag­ing. If John real­ly did­n’t want to encour­age their use, he should be stronger in his con­dem­na­tion of them.

In addi­tion to “I high­ly rec­om­mend that you do not use these WordPress Plugins. Earning mon­ey through these meth­ods is not safe and can get you banned by the Adsense team” John should note that los­ing out on Google Adsense adver­tis­ing rev­enue the least poten­tial consequence.

RSS feeds are pub­lished for indi­vid­ual, pri­vate con­sump­tion; they are not a blan­ket license to, or waiv­er of, reprint rights. Taking and repub­lsh­ing content–no mat­ter how much or how little–without the orig­i­nal author’s per­mis­sion is a vio­la­tion of U.S. and inter­na­tion­al Copyright laws. There are excep­tions, of course, detailed in the Fair Use doc­trine, but such excep­tions are very spe­cif­ic and do not apply to the vast major­i­ty of sites using FeedWordPress, Autoblog, and the like. In fact, Charles Johnson, the cre­ator of FeedWordPress is in con­stant and fre­quent vio­la­tion of copy­right law because the appar­ent major­i­ty of his blog’s con­tent is stolen with­out the orig­i­nal authors’ permission.

This entry, for exam­ple, does meet Fair Use cri­te­ria because I have quot­ed John TP’s con­tent as part of a crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion in which I respond to John’s work instead of repub­lish­ing it as if it were a native part of my blog. In over-simplified terms for those new­bie bloggers:
block­quote = has a chance of being okay
adding com­plete RSS/Atom feed items to your blog with­out per­mis­sion = def­i­nite­ly not okay.

Calling a site “an aggre­ga­tor” does not exempt it from the laws or pros­e­cu­tion to enforce the laws pro­tect­ing oth­er con­tent cre­ators and owners.

Anyone con­tem­plat­ing “splog­ging” or even just pulling oth­ers’ relat­ed con­tent into their blogs should know that, for each and every post or excerpt incor­po­rat­ed with­out the orig­i­nal author’s per­mis­sion, U.S. fed­er­al law allows for a fine of up to US$50,000 plus poten­tial dam­ages to be award­ed to the vic­tim of the theft. In addi­tion to the mon­e­tary cost, each post stolen could earn the thief a year in a fed­er­al penitary–and that’s if he can pay; if he can’t, the amount of poten­tial prison time increases.

Contrary to pop­u­lar Internet mis­in­for­ma­tion, copy­right infringe­ment is pros­e­cutable regard­less of any or all of: one’s igno­rance of the laws, one’s intents, or whether one actu­al­ly makes mon­ey from the theft. Stealing a blog post and reprint­ing it on a site with­out ads can net you a $50,000 fine and a year as Bubba’s wife as eas­i­ly as reprint­ing onto a site with ads.

Losing Adsense eli­gi­bil­i­ty will seem like a very insignif­i­cant con­se­quence while defend­ing against a $5 mil­lion law­suit in a far away state.

How like­ly is it that some­one will actu­al­ly sue if his arti­cle winds up reprint­ed on you blog? Well, it depends on whose work you steal. A pro­fes­sion­al con­tent site like the ones I pub­lish will sue to pro­tect its intel­lec­tu­al property–in fact, I have sued for that very rea­son and pre­vailed. Under the law, con­tent creators/owners are oblig­at­ed to aggres­sive­ly pro­tect their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, up to, and includ­ing, prosecution.

While the aver­age con­tent thief (a clas­si­fi­ca­tion that includes “splogs” but also any blog or Website using con­tent not of its own cre­ation with­out per­mis­sion) may steal from hun­dreds of oth­er con­tent cre­ators and see no suit or oth­er con­se­quences, the dif­fer­ence is not the thief–it’s the con­tent cre­ator. Every vic­tim of con­tent theft has the right and oblig­a­tion to go after the thief. More and more cre­ators are learn­ing this, which means the odds of con­tent thieves being sued–even by the aver­age Joe blogger–are increas­ing. One may steal one hun­dred RSS feeds with no reac­tion, but that one-hundred-and-first could put the thief into an orange jump­suit and with a lein against his wages for the next fifty years.

If you use FeedWordPress, Autoblog, or any oth­er auto­mat­ic con­tent repub­lish­er, employ it only with the per­mis­sion of those who own the con­tent you want to use. It’s a sim­ple process: Go to the blog you like, find a con­tact e‑mail address or form, and ask: “I have a blog at http://​your​site​.com, which cov­ers this, this, and this. I’ve been real­ly impressed with your con­tent and know my read­ers would like it, too. Could I get your per­mis­sion to reprint your RSS feed con­tent with­in my blog as indi­vid­ual posts–with links back to your blog, of course?”

As always, I am not a bar-certified lawyer, nor was I edu­cat­ed as an attor­ney. Do not believe me. Do not believe any claims about copy­right or oth­er intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law you find on the Internet–from any­one. Do your own research into the sub­ject. Google is not a research tool on copy­right law and do’s and don­t’s; there is so much con­fu­sion, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and, occas­sion­al­ly, dis­in­for­ma­tion that the truth is buried too far down in Google’s results. Go to the source for copy­right law infor­ma­tion, the United States Copyright Office. It’s free to get the infor­ma­tion you need to pro­tect your­self and remain legal.

If you have more spe­cif­ic ques­tions about copy­right, buy an hour of a intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty lawyer’s time; you’ll find them list­ed in your local Yellow Pages under the head­ing of “Patent & Trademark Attorneys” (copy­right, trade­mark, and patents are all intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law served by the same attorneys).

22 thoughts on “FeedWordPress: Content Theft with Consequences

  1. quirkyalone

    Hmm, at first you are threat­en­ing peo­ple with prison, and then men­tion that “Don’t believe me”. You are a strange man. ;-)

  2. Joe

    Intellectual prop­er­ty is a mas­sive gray area. Pepsi vs Coke – FedEx vs UPS seen any TV lately 

  3. Mr-Yellow

    Ok.… So you syn­di­cate your feeds.…. Then get upset when some­one uses your feed and syn­di­cates your con­tent??? That’s what RSS/Atom is for fools. They don’t call it Syndication for nothing.

    -Ben

  4. Mr-Yellow

    [quote]
    U.S. fed­er­al law allows for a fine of up to US$50,000 plus poten­tial dam­ages to be award­ed to the vic­tim of the theft.[/quote]

    The con­tent own­ers per­mis­sion is giv­en when they syn­di­cate their con­tent for use on oth­er sites. Don’t want to share your con­tent, don’t pub­lish a syn­di­ca­tion feed.

  5. Pariah S. Burke Post author

    Mr. Yellow said:

    The con­tent own­ers per­mis­sion is giv­en when they syn­di­cate their con­tent for use on oth­er sites. Don’t want to share your con­tent, don’t pub­lish a syn­di­ca­tion feed.

    That’s an erro­neous assump­tion, Mr. Yellow. According to U.S. and inter­na­tion­al copy­right law, the cre­ator (or con­tent own­er) retains all rights until and unless one or more rights is explic­i­ty giv­en away. Unless a the RSS/Atom feed specif­i­cal­ly states that per­mis­sion is grant­ed for repub­li­ca­tion by oth­er enti­ties, then any such repub­li­ca­tion is a vio­la­tion of copy­right law.

    Content own­ers pro­vide RSS/Atom/whatever feeds for the con­ve­nience of human read­ers so that they may read the con­tent in anoth­er medi­um or on a device oth­er than a com­put­er screen and Web brows­er. Regardless of how oth­ers choose to use the technology–indeed, regard­less of even the orig­i­nal pur­pose of the technology–the intent of the creator/owner/publisher is the over­rid­ing legal con­cept in deter­min­ing whether the con­tent may be repub­lished or if repub­li­ca­tion is unlaw­ful. If the own­er does­n’t give explic­it per­mis­sion either in a pri­vate agree­ment or via a notice accom­pa­ny­ing the con­tent in ques­tion, repub­lish­ing the con­tent is a vio­la­tion of the creator’s/owner’s rights of copy. Ergo, up to US$50k plus dam­ages per incident.

  6. Vincent Macaluso

    Well, the argu­ment could be made that I, as the oper­a­tor of some ‘aggre­ga­tor blog’ sim­ply aggre­gates the feed for my own use on my own blog. The fact that oth­ers might read it is not under my con­trol. (Devils advocate.)

  7. colbert

    I think it will be tough to sue a splog­ger if he/she is hid­ing behind some cor­po­ra­tion in some for­eign coun­try that does not have sim­i­lar laws.

  8. rojo

    I dont know to much about this whole “feed” thing but I will say this: Its not right feed­ing off oth­ers hard work. I was shock to see this hap­pen on a site I vis­it fre­quent­ly, the guy had the nerve to praise the Author’s web­site but used her con­tent as his own. Go to mydebt​free​goal​.com and press on the most recent post and just read the comments.

  9. sanguine

    boy, you real­ly live in a fan­ta­sy land – “RSS feeds are pub­lished for indi­vid­ual, pri­vate consumption” 

    Says who? You? RSS feeds are to dis­trib­ute and syn­di­cate con­tent. Any site aggre­gat­ing that con­tent has links back in the feed to the orig­i­nal site. Assuming some­one just uses the first para­graph and does not repub­lish the entire thing and leaves the links up you are nut­ty. Doesnt mean some fag like you wont still try to sue but just goes to show why the US is going down the shit­ter, you are all lawsuit-happy. If you dont want some­one draw­ing from your feed, dont pub­lish one.

  10. sanguine

    p.s.- by your log­ic every web­site in the world has the right to sue google and all the oth­er search engines because they are “repub­lish­ing” your con­tent eg the first few sen­tences of your site with­out your explic­it permission.

  11. andy

    As a law stu­dent who has done quite a bit of research on copy­right issues, I can tell you that the per­son who wrote this has a bug up his ass and should seri­ous­ly do some research before he tries to pet­ri­fy any­one who may be repub­lish­ing RSS feeds. It is tru­ly irresponsible.

    While it’s true that RSS feeds ARE copy­right­ed and can­not be repub­lished with­out per­mis­sion, there is a very strong legal argu­ment (that has been made by dozens of top schol­ars in the field) that says by pub­lish­ing an RSS feed, one is grant­i­ng an implic­it license to syn­di­cate that content…as long as there as a link back and the whole feed isn’t used (essen­tial­ly, com­mon sense applies.)
    Of course, if there is a copy­right notice say­ing don’t repub­lish the feed or lim­its the use to personal/non-commercial use, that would be a violation.

    But if there is no notice say­ing oth­er­wise, it makes total sense. It’s digust­ing to see how this guy refers to “steal­ing” and “thieves.” Get that bug out of your ass, if authors don’t have a notice lim­it­ing their RSS feeds, they are prob­a­bly fair game.

  12. andy

    You know, I’m just going to take you to town on this whole thing.

    In fact, Charles Johnson, the cre­ator of FeedWordPress is in con­stant and fre­quent vio­la­tion of copy­right law because the appar­ent major­i­ty of his blog’s con­tent is stolen with­out the orig­i­nal authors’ permission.”

    Absolutely incor­rect. He can only be in vio­la­tion if the author has denied him per­mis­sion. In fact, the fact that he’s been repub­lish­ing (not steal­ing) this infor­ma­tion for so long with­out a prob­lem ACTUALLY means that there is an implic­it license to use them. You can’t steal some­thing that is giv­en away with per­mis­sion, Pariah. The only per­son break­ing laws here is YOU. What you are doing is called Libel and it is writ­ten defamation.

    RSS feeds are pub­lished for indi­vid­ual, pri­vate consumption”

    The igno­rance here is pal­pa­ble. RSS feeds are pub­lished for what­ev­er rea­son the copy­right own­er wants to pub­lish them for. If its indi­vid­ual, pri­vate con­sump­tion. That’s fine, but who are you to say what pur­pose RSS feeds are repub­lished for??? You aren’t the copy­right own­er of every sin­gle RSS feed are you? That’s what I thought…

    and have you sim­ply for­got­ten how easy it is too put a dis­claimer enxt to your RSS feeds stat­ing that the feed is only for per­son­al and non-commercial use? Well, if you don’t, its your fault. When the law final­ly comes down on this, you’re going to see that there is prob­a­bly going to be an implied license unless the hold­er of the field gives it away. Thats why its called SYNDICATION.

    Taking and repub­lsh­ing content—no mat­ter how much or how little—without the orig­i­nal author’s per­mis­sion is a vio­la­tion of U.S. and inter­na­tion­al Copyright laws.

    Copyright law, when it comes to RSS, is a very very gray area and for you to say any­thing else is, again, high­ly irre­spon­si­ble. It’s just as rea­son­able to believe that (as many schol­ars believe) an implic­it license is grant­ed to repub­lish feed con­tent along the bounds of com­mon sense and fair­ness. You are not a lawyer, so stop talk­ing like one.

    Please cut your hair. It looks ridiculous.

  13. Niravmd Post author

    andy, thanks for set­ting that straight. I was wor­ried for a sec­ond that I’d actu­al­ly have to man­u­al­ly write all the code for my “pay­day loans suck” site. Now I can rest assured that I can just steal it! 

    Ok, I’m being face­tious here, but I feel wronged when­ev­er some­one grabs my con­tent and sticks ads around it. good to know I can put a notice around it telling them that its not con­sumer­cial syndication.

  14. plookey

    Yea this pariah guy is true to his name­sake. He touts about “suing suc­cess­ful­ly” those who have infringed on his copy­rights yet you see a big fat “GET MY CONTENT” and a vari­ety of ways to syn­di­cate. Sounds like a clas­sic ” throw water on the floor in mcdonald’s…slip and fall…and then sue.

  15. zBoostNet

    Well at least he does start his posts with a header…What fol­lows is entire­ly my per­son­al opin­ion, and the per­son­al opin­ions of respon­dants. We could all be wrong.

  16. Danny

    Under the law, con­tent creators/owners are *oblig­at­ed* to aggres­sive­ly pro­tect their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, up to, and includ­ing, prosecution.”

    Hi. Where did you get this idea from?
    Also, could you point me to any suc­cess­ful law­suits that you have pur­sued? Thanks!

  17. ecitsretni

    I’ve had a lot of con­tent from my var­i­ous sites used by splog sites in the past. What I’ve done is to cre­ate an explic­it copy­right notice explain­ing that for any part of my arti­cles to be used on anoth­er site, there must be a link to my orig­i­nal arti­cle (show­ing the source URL in the link text) that clear­ly notes it is the true source of said arti­cle, and this link must be at the top of the syn­di­cat­ed article.

    When I find my con­tent has been syn­di­cat­ed with­out fol­low­ing these require­ments I con­tact the site own­er and ask them to adhere to my rules for using my con­tent. I give them a few weeks and resend my email a few times.

    If no action is tak­en I then con­tact the web com­pa­ny who is host­ing the splog site. True, not all hosts will be help­ful, but I’ve had great suc­cess with this approach and rec­om­mend it. 

    In short, send the host a list of the arti­cles and match­ing source URLs from your site and explain that the splog­ger is infring­ing on your copy­right. In every case where I’ve tak­en this action, the host­ing com­pa­ny inves­ti­gates, ver­i­fies copy­right infringe­ment and shuts down their site until they either remove my con­tent or use my con­tent as laid out in my copy­right and syn­di­ca­tion page.

  18. David

    I am sur­prised by the snip­ing com­ments that your well rea­soned arti­cle has received. I have just added the feed­word­press plu­g­in to one of my blogs – plan­ning to use it to feed news info to the site (not oth­er peo­ple’s blog con­tent – so I am now recon­sid­er­ing my deci­sion hav­ing read your very rea­son­able remarks.

    Are these oth­ers just con­tent theives that don’t want their actions to be lim­it­ed? I just don’t get their comments! 

    Anyway, much thanks from me I appre­ci­ate the info

  19. Charles Johnson

    FeedWordPress is a tool for copy­ing hyper­text from one place to anoth­er. (Specifically, hyper­text stored in a hand­ful of com­mon machine-readable for­mats.) Like many oth­er tools that can be used to copy infor­ma­tion – such as xerox machines, opti­cal scan­ners, OCR soft­ware, HTTP servers, or Bic™ ball­point pens – FeedWordPress can be put to both legit­i­mate and ille­git­i­mate uses. Like any oth­er tool, it has no way of know­ing whether or not the infor­ma­tion being copied is being copied with or with­out the per­mis­sion of the per­son who orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed it; the respon­si­bil­i­ty for using it appro­pri­ate­ly (as many peo­ple do – for exam­ple, to cre­ate “plan­et” web­sites that con­trib­u­tors sign up to join, or to auto­mate cross-posting, or to cre­ate “lifestreams” that aggre­gate all of their own online activ­i­ty) lies with the user, not with the tool.

    And, speak­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty, in your arti­cle you write: “Charles John­son, the cre­ator of Feed­Word­Press is in con­stant and fre­quent vi­o­la­tion of copy­right law be­cause the ap­par­ent ma­jority of his blog’s con­tent is stolen with­out the orig­i­nal au­thors’ permission.”

    You then link to Feminist Blogs – a top­i­cal aggre­ga­tor that I’ve run since November 2004 – as “my blog” (it’s not; my blog is at radgeek​.com).

    This is a seri­ous accu­sa­tion. Do you have absolute­ly any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that any of the feeds syn­di­cat­ed on Feminist Blogs are syn­di­cat­ed with­out the express per­mis­sion of the author or authors? If so, what evi­dence do you have?

  20. abcd

    Ahhh f**k. Now I am going to take his feeds and ya i can fetch all ur con­tent even if u pro­vide par­tial feeds and post it on my web­site with lots of ads around it. Come and sue me.

  21. Connerson

    I think the real ques­tion here is more about what claims you make regard­ing the con­tent your aggre­gate from whichev­er source. I for exam­ple import fail pics from dif­fer­ent sources and share it with every­one else, but do not express­ed­ly claim to own it as most of the con­tent was­n’t pro­duced by me.

    I for one won’t mind peo­ple shar­ing my con­tent with any­one else as long as they atleast men­tion that it came from one of my blogs or gives me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tact them so they can remove it. What is wrong is some­one shar­ing your con­tent and then claim­ing it as their own. 

    So my opin­ion is this. It’s right to share some­ones con­tent, as a way of adding to your user expe­ri­ence. It is how­ev­er wrong if you use their con­tent and claim it as your own to pro­mote any enti­ty, such as your­self or your blog, as the cre­ator of such content.

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