You must be famous when you’re being scraped

by Lee Hopkins on March 20, 2006 · 6 comments

in Uncategorized

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Whose content is it, anyway?

And in a follow-up to the Allan Jenkins scraping saga comes word that this humble author is himself being ’scraped’

http://spaces.msn.com/taghome319/blog/cns!468438732578142D!111.entry

It’s not blogger spam sites pinching my content anymore (although some still are), it’s now msn spaces pinching content. So do I sue BillG?

As Henriette Weber Anderson says:

“I mean - yeah the blogosphere is an OPEN place, but it should have ethics, especially evolving companies using every inch they can for commercial gain”

(Mind you, as an aside, Henriette, why doesn’t your projectleading and selling the “pinup calendar 2006 blog have any photos? )

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Allan Jenkins 03.24.06 at 10:02 am

You leave my friend Henriette alone, or I’ll open up a can of Whoop-Ass that’ll make you audible in Darwin. Everybody who’s anybody in Denmark knows that calendar is worth buying sight unseen.

Seriously, though, we need to find some sort of group or “class” mechanism to bring scrapers down… I give away my content for free, because I am uninterested in the whole “monetization”, to use an ugly word, thing — but I’m happy to stomp on anyone who thinks that means I’m giving it away to them to make money on.

2 Lee 03.24.06 at 10:42 am

ha ha ha!

hello, old fruit!

Some sort of ‘action’ would be good, but I don’t know what could be done. I read somewhere that someone had been testing the Creative Commons licence to see how much ‘teeth’ it had (Neville’s blog, perhaps?) but so far it seems that the licence is difficult to police — finding the buggers is half the problem. Although in your instance Monsieur Le Merc should be able to do something. Any word?

And when do I get my personally-signed copy of the calendar, then?

3 Lee 03.24.06 at 10:43 am

calendar: not for *me*, you understand… for my teenage son

4 Henriette Weber Andersen 03.30.06 at 6:27 pm

Ha ha.. Now lads, come down ! - the pinup calendar only has two pictures on the blog because we need to sell it, mind you if you give me your email you can have it as a .pdf, BUT it is in Danish - and it is much better in real life.

another question is .. can you really promote ethics without being cheesy and too preacher-ish ? I have just done a blogpost about it

5 Lee 03.31.06 at 8:17 am

Hey Henriette — lee@leehopkins.net [[ it's for my teenage son, you understand, not me :-) ]]

Ethis is a fine line to tread, and an even finer line to promote to others. What is one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. What is one person’s ‘acceptable behaviour’ is another person’s ‘disgraceful behaviour’. There are personal ethics and the moral, ethical code of the cultural milieu one finds oneself in == leading to the “when in Rome…” idea of changing one’s behaviour (and possibly values) because of the environment. Mistresses and concubines were acceptable at one time and in some locations, now they are not. Respecting one’s elders and giving up a seat on the bus for them was acceptable behaviour once, now it is not. Different times, different milieu, different cultural expectations of a person’s behaviour.

Having said all that, I’ll now wander off and read your post! :-)

6 Lee 03.31.06 at 8:32 am

Oh, and I *know* you meant that the pinup calendar is better on nice paper, than just a pdf version, but I suddenly read it as the women themselves are better in real life than on paper. Probably very true :-)

But the whole point of pornography, even soft porn, is to be ‘better than real life’, to present an unrealistic fantasy. As ‘in the flesh’ human beings we can often disappoint when compared to the air-brushed, well-lit, carefully posed, silent photos of beautiful men and women.

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