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Solution proposed on content theft problem

Solution proposed on content theft problem

Paul Short has come up with a simple yet brilliant idea on combating content theft through full text RSS feeds: a copyright notice on each post.

By placing the notice on each post, the text will then appear on the pages of the people stealing your content. He also has a RSS2 script for WordPress available at Blog Logic.

I really like the idea, but I’m wondering what you, the readers of the Blog Herald, think about it. For my liking its great lateral thinking, but if I’m going to put a copyright notice at the end of every full post on the RSS feed, I’ll may as well put ads there. And would this then placate Scoble jihad?

View Comments (5)
  • Duncan: When wearing my user hat, I’d probably prefer the ads. Downloading redundant copyright info seems silly… if there’s gonna be wasted bytes, why not let you have a chance to make some money off of them?

    However, unlike a customized copyright notice, an ad will be easy for downstream aggregators to strip. There’s really no reason for them to strip anything (your ads don’t hurt them), but it’s still something to consider.

  • But while ads / copyright notices CAN be stripped, I’d guess that blogs with those things in ’em would be skipped in favor of “more easily swiped” content. The scumsters who steal content are sometimes more lazy than unethical.

    I just hope no spamjerk steals my content with ads in it and then gets ME in trouble with AdSense due to having the banners surrounded by inappropriate content .

  • Adam raises a good point, will it get you in trouble if you have Google Ads appearing on another site?

    As a user, text ads are not irritating and I wouldn’t mind seeing the ads.

    But aside from that how about a link promoting your other blogs ala “See more at Weblog Empire”. This would be good for cross promotion.

  • Vix
    I particularly like the text advertising option, mainly because I feel its lower impact than what Google is offering, got to say up front I find Google Adsense RSS ads annoying, but I cant say I’ve stopped reading a feed because of them, and with my marketing hat on, I know annoying ads can be good ads because at least they are being noticed.

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