2

Per this question on ELU meta, some a***hole is scraping ELU content and passing it off without attribution in a Google Blog.

I'll admit that partly I ask this question in hopes that some of you good folk will be public-spirited enough to follow the link and report this abuse, so Google will take it down.

But I am genuinely interested to know whether there's a standard term for such a person (or for a website containing primarily "stolen" content like this). The words plagiarist and pirate come to mind, but neither really seems quite right to me (and I'm sure *a*****hole* isn't exactly it either).

If you don't have the time/inclination to go and rattle Google's cage about this, perhaps you might consider upvoting the question so it gets called to the attention of others who might actually do it.

Community
  • 1
FumbleFingers
  • 140,184
  • 45
  • 294
  • 517
  • I have tried to report this abuse, but it seems the complaint needs to be made by someone who is familiar with the copyright position. I assume, incidentally, that we are free to recycle our own postings elsewhere if we wish to. – Barrie England Nov 15 '11 at 08:20
  • A further thought on that. If we own the copyright to our own postings, I suppose we could each report abuse on our own behalf. (Perhaps this should be pursued in meta.) – Barrie England Nov 15 '11 at 09:19
  • I hope it isn't too controversial a move, but I've removed the link to the offending site. IMHO, the last thing we need to do is provide the offender with even more traffic. This mod can be rolled back if the majority object. – CJM Nov 15 '11 at 09:43
  • @Barrie England: The problem is ELU itself can't complain, because we the users are the copyright holders. We have to each report abuse on our own behalf. I asked here partly so those who don't often visit meta would follow the first link above, read waiwai933's summary of that legal position and PLL's template complaint text, and report the abuse. If people don't react, it'll just carry on. – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '11 at 12:18
  • @CJM: I assume from the fact all my links are intact that any change you made was reverted by someone else. Don't worry about giving the site brief traffic from people here checking it out - they obviously won't become regular followers of the blog, but they need to be able to see what I'm asking them to complain about. – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '11 at 12:22
  • The bottom of every page has: user contributions licensed under cc-wiki with attribution required – GEdgar Nov 15 '11 at 16:35
  • @GEdgar: Well, IANAL, so unless I'm forced to I'm not going to wade through that cc.wiki stuff. But the implication of "attribution required" is that this a***hole is not entitled to repost my text without my explicit say-so, which I have no intention of giving. But why exactly have you called our attention to that caveat on ELU? I don't understand. – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '11 at 19:21
  • 2
    I guess "attribution required" does not mean your permission is required, but only a link to the source... Isn't that what "attribution" means? Let's ask in an English Language site somewhere ... ??? – GEdgar Nov 15 '11 at 19:48
  • Maybe I will read the verbiage. I certainly couldn't find any attribution on the blog, so I'd have thought that makes it non-compliant anyway. But I'd be irritated if including an unauthorised attribution was enough to be permissible under cc wiki, if the copyright holder (me, in this case) didn't want to allow it. – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '11 at 21:40
  • Since we are all basically lazy (and by "we" I mean "pretty much all humans"), including a link here by which to report such shenanigans would probably increase the volume of complaints. – MickeyfAgain_BeforeExitOfSO Nov 16 '11 at 00:27
  • @mickeyf: I used to think I was lazy, but at least I reacted here. I'm gobsmacked to discover that blog has been going since August without being taken down. Maybe not many ELU users knew about it before, but of 81 people who've viewed this "question" so far, only one could be bothered to even upvote it. Either I'm not even a contender in the uber-sloth stakes, or other people just don't see this kind of activity as undesirable. – FumbleFingers Nov 16 '11 at 03:15
  • @FumbleFingers: Anyone can redistribute your CC-licensed content as long as it is properly attributed to you, without having to ask and get your permission. That is the whole point. (This blog doesn't have attribution so it's non-compliant -- I have filled out the Blogger complaint form against it -- but in general, I'm not sure what you think you're doing by licensing your content under a free license and wanting to be asked for permission before every distribution!) – ShreevatsaR Nov 16 '11 at 09:25
  • The CC license makes it clear that any copy must clearly indicate that it was obtained under CC license, and it must attribute the original author if that information is available. – FumbleFingers Nov 16 '11 at 11:34
  • @FumbleFingers: Yes, as I said, this blog is clearly a violation (and I have submitted a copyright complaint, under penalty of perjury and all that), but I was reacting to your earlier comment that "I'd be irritated if including an unauthorised attribution was enough to be permissible under cc wiki". It is. – ShreevatsaR Nov 17 '11 at 08:16

4 Answers4

6

Well, since Scumbag, Lowlife and Parasite are too general, how about "Scrapist"?

MickeyfAgain_BeforeExitOfSO
  • 4,537
5

I don't know if it's an accepted term, but I'd have thought that one who scrapes is a scraper.

Barrie England
  • 140,205
5

So far as I can tell, bloggers often refer to this as content theft. By that logic, the perpetrator would be a content thief, I imagine.

It seems that website scraper refers to the program and scraper site refers to the website itself.

5

Actually, plagiarist sounds like exactly the right word to me. The mechanics of the plagiarism are somewhat incidental... they could just as well be reading off a printout and typing it word-for-word onto to their own blog, the end result would be just the same.

calum_b
  • 1,003