I’ve beaten the content-mill drum pretty loudly. You’ve heard me suggest that someone getting paid ten bucks or less is not a writer. Thanks to Irreverent Freelancer Kathy Kehrli, I now have proof. She posted a link to an article that is, well, not an article, but a ridiculous string of nonsensical sentences.
An example:
“A duplicate editor digs in to a nitty dirty of creation sentences transparent as well as easy to understand.”
Oh, the irony of the juxtaposition between that string of garble and the words “easy to understand”…
What’s truly odd about the entire article is it’s apparently trying to sell readers on the importance of editing (unless the “author” mucked the title up, too). Maybe it’s a brilliant piece of marketing, but I doubt it. Similar articles by this particular poster (I’m sorry – I can’t link the word “writer” to this) are just as garbled, just as confusing, and just as obvious someone needs a new electronic translator.
It’s proof that ten-dollar articles deliver no more than $9.99 in content, if in fact someone was paid anything at all for this. A look at the “Privacy Policy”, which is an absolute joke for reasons I’ll outline in a minute, it’s clear the site owner is the culprit. Ah, the scent of theft and bad marketing schemes….
Here’s why the privacy policy is such a joke beyond the gawd-awful, senseless translation – these people are linking to legitimate business people without permission. I won’t mention the name of one of the linkees, but I contacted her to let her know. She said she’s since contacted the site owner and demanded removal, but since English isn’t the culprit’s first language, he’s probably not going to know what she’s saying.
And that irritates me. These people are operating beyond our reach and beyond comprehension. So what happens if you’re the next person they link to? How do you halt the damage to your reputation?
I told the woman a cease-and-desist letter was in order, but again, that’s assuming this person understands enough English and has enough morality to comply, neither of which would apply in this case, I’m betting. Maybe the best course of action is to contact the ISP and report the incident. From the Web extension, it appears this is someone operating out of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, somewhere between Australia and Sri Lanka. If I had the time, I’m up for a little visit to instill some whup-ass….
I know this may seem like a stretch, but there’s little difference between this type of theft and plenty of content mill articles (note that I did not say all). If you’re writing up to ten articles an hour, there’s no way you’re coming up with ten original articles. You’re paraphrasing or rewriting someone else’s work. In case you missed the memo, that’s theft, too.
Do you know of any other instances as ridiculous as this? What’s the worst case of bad writing/theft you’ve seen?
11 responses to “Irritation Amid Hilarity”
If the person I'm thinking of is the same person responsible for this site, then I'm thinking that they know English more than this site shows. They're also good at making trouble on forums. But, I could be wrong.
I haven't actually found anything that I knew to be stolen, but there have been times I've read articles on one site that I swore looked familiar, like I'd seen it somewhere else only with a few different words or phrases.
I also saw this article (and others "written" by the same person), and I was outraged.
If someone had appropriated my work in this manner, I'd be quite upset. If someone had paraphrased/translated and mangled my work this way in an attempt to pass it off as his own, I'd be livid.
The worst case of theft (plagiarism) I've seen lately was during a copyedit I was performing on a title for a well-respected university press (their law division). During the copyediting, I also was checking facts. In more instances than I can count, I found passages of exact wording lifted from — of all places — Wikipedia! And this, by a professor/attorney!
Has anyone encountered the term spinning articles for SEO. I guess this is one theft I can think of that the SEO world is attempting to legitimize. However, it is really disrespect to the original writer of an article.
As long as Google continues to treat mechanically spun content (and that's what this is–there was no human re-write of the misappropriated original article) as "unique" and of a value approximating legitimate material, there will be a motive for this kind of skeeziness.
I haven't dug into the this particular article in great detail, but I'm wiling to bet that its author originally distributed it to EzineArticles.com and/or other article directories.
Anyone who plans on using outlets like those as a means of promotion should be aware that those waters are the preferred fishing territory for steal-and-spin types.
In response to Cassie's comment… The problem really isn't that someone else is mangling the article and trying to claim authorship. They're actually spinning the article with the original author's name and link intact, thus making it appear as if the legitimate creator is a moron. The fact that the original writer is still getting a backlink probably isn't enough of a payoff to justify that, either.
That's one interesting thing about this instance, actually. In most cases, the spinning thieves will *strip* the resource box and any/all mention of the original creator. This one is sloppy and icky at the same time.
On the bright side, most of these efforts fail to ever capture a set of human eyeballs. The sites, the spins and everything else is created for the search engines with zero expectation of actual, human traffic.
Which brings this comment back to its start… As long as Google is the champ and as long as Google is unable to differentiate between quality and lunacy, this will continue to happen. All of the C&Ds and DMCA notices in the world won't counteract those motives–especially when only a fraction of the a-holes are noticed and when most who are operate anonymous, disposable, automated sites.
yeah I was going to say this is a mechanical spin, not sure it has much to do with content… Supposedly, content mills have editors who would probably claw their own eyes out if they saw this stuff.
In cases of international dispute, contact the embassy — the country's embassy here in the US, and the US embassy in that region. Include a copy of the cease and desist letter. That usually makes some noise and gets some results.
What you don't do is ignore it.
Doesn't matter if the person claims "not to understand" — it's still theft and needs to be squashed.
Carson, I hear you. In this case, however, the real crime is that other people's LEGITIMATE work is displayed alongside this swill. A link to someone's editing site – and she assures me she didn't know anything about it – and a video by another person. I can almost guarantee this isn't sanctioned by the other person, either.
If it were just the crap content, we could overlook it. It's not. It's the reputation damage to those who are unaware their names are associated with this garbage.
Great idea, Devon.
Wendy, pop me an email. I've been wanting to ask you something.
Agreed completely. Personally, if it were happening to me and I had the time or motivation to do something about it, I'd try an email to the site owner followed by a DMCA notice to the site's host (the one in question seems to be at HostGator).
I'm sure most of your readers know about it, but here's an excellent resource for those who find themselves duking it out with thieves: Plagiarism Today Jonathan Bailey has created a great site dedicated to this kind of crappola and how to make it go away.
Oh, one other thing… The contact for the domain in question claims to reside in beautiful Valley Cottage, NY. The WhoIs data includes a name, an email address and a phone number. They could all be fake, but it might be worth a phone call if she wanted to try to fix things in a hurry.
Lori, I zipped you an email.
Great suggestions on fighting this. The problem is the time to go after someone who basically could care less and more than likely will ignore communication. That's why the "hit them where it hurts" suggestions are great.
I agree this has nothing to do with being read-at least you hope that's the case with all the complete gibberish.
It certainly is an interesting world. 🙂
In addition to the embassy issue Devon mentioned, try contacting hosts if this happens to you. Even if they're not under DMCA rules, many hosts worldwide still have terms banning this, and they'll shut down the account for term violations. Not always, but it's worth a try.
In this particular case, there's an even better option. The real author should file a DMCA complaint with Google — specifically Adsense. They might be able to get the Adsense account banned, hitting the site financially (which also hits that site owner on any other site where they use Adsense if they're account is banned). That, and you can have their content de-indexed. Hit them in the wallet and traffic, and they tend to be incredibly responsive about stopping their sh*t.
I recently had to deal with a social media / Internet marketing splog that admitted right on the site that they did nothing but aggregate others' content in full. I outlined exactly what I'd do if they didn't get the material removed, including reporting them for de-indexing, Adsense account ban, and reporting them to their host. They not only removed it, but they've started providing their own original content instead of aggregating full content from others — completely overhauled their business model. Worth a try.