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Taiwan: The blog pirates

Categories: Law, Technology

turtle_fight_pirate [1]

(Photo courtesy of Mrs. Turtle [2]. The words on the photo are: All right preserved. No co-authors. Toy turtle claims: I only go out with Mrs. Turtle.)

When more and more people share their thoughts, knowledge, and experience on their blogs, more and more blog pirates appear. These pirates not only take the original photos (some even with the authors’ mark on them) or copy paste the original articles to their blogs but also submit some pieces for other publications or even blog awards. Here are some victims:

2007/3/18, cottom_vitas [3]:

今天開網誌發現,有好心人告知我的文章被盜用了,連我的圖都被偷了,看了真是傻眼 …整篇文章連改都沒有改…只有把我的名字改成她的名字,而且還可以回應別人問她的問題…她不只偷我的文,很多人的文章也都被偷了,我不懂用別人的文章當成自己的生活經驗,不是很沒有意義嗎?

This morning, a nice person left a message on my blog and told me that my article was pirated, together with my photos. I was shocked…That pirate did not change a word…She only changed my name to her name, and responded to the questions and comments on that article…She not only pirated my article but also others’. I do not understand. What's the point of taking other people's articles as their own life experience?

2007/3/19,cindyfeng [4]:

看到內容,不知是要哭還是要笑,連我和Larry的對話也改成她和朋友的msn的對話了…我那篇文章是1/18登上的,她1/19就掛在自己的網站裡,手腳還真是快。

When I read the content, I do not know if I should cry or laugh at it. The conversation between Larry and I became the msn conversation between her friend and she…My article was posted on 1/18, and she posted it on her blog on 1/9. She is really fast.

2007/6/15,Mr.&Ms. Days [5]:

我們真的很不喜歡做這種糾察隊的事情。我們都已經這麼慷慨了,讓大家可以全文轉載了,而您所需要做的事情就是加記出處以及連結,我相信這種隨手的事情對大家不會是一種負擔吧。

We indeed do not like to do the monitoring stuff. We are already so generous and allow everyone re-publish the whole article from our website with attribution and link. I believe this action (referring the author) is a piece of cake and should not be a burden to anyone.

2007/7/25,beats [6]:

難道因為網上文字被抄襲時有所聞,並不罕見,所以我們就要啞忍,就要息事寧人嗎?
難道因為有人以為網上文章純屬嬉戲之作,我們就應該容許別人隨便抄襲,當作自己的文字來發表,甚至把你的文字,用別人的名字印在書上嗎?
我要強調的是:這並不是一件普通的網上抄襲事件,而是蓄意瞞騙。

Should we keep silent because the articles on internet are often plagiarized?
Could it be said that bloggers are blogging for fun so we should tolerate this kind of plagiarism that publish our words under their name on internet or even on a book?
I want to emphasize: this is not only blog plagiarism. This is intentional hiding the truth and lying.

2007/7/31,Patrick [7]:

當你的生活全部變成了別人的生活…那是什麼感覺?
當你辛辛苦苦拍攝的照片,所寫下的文字,全部變成了別人的版權所有,還拿去出版賣錢,招搖撞騙,那又是什麼感覺?
當你明明不認識某個人,卻又要被那個人說跟她很熟,還三個人一起出去旅行(幾乎是每一次),那又是什麼感覺?
以前被剽竊的經驗真的不算什麼了,這一次我可以說,我真的真正見識到對岸的網路文化與盜版文化了。一個美好的夏日午后就這樣被搞砸了,也真正開始思考網站的去留,還是把好東西都留給真正的出版吧!

When your life becomes others’ life…what is your feeling?
When your hard-earned photos and words become someone else's intellectual property and were sold to the publishers, what is your feeling?
When you do not know that person, but you were referred to as her friend who traveled with you (almost every time), what is your feeling?
My previous experience about being plagiarized is nothing compared to this one. This time I can say that it really opens my eye to the internet and pirating culture in China. A beautiful summer afternoon was ruined by this issue. I start to think about the future of my website. Maybe I should leave good things to real publishers.

How can bloggers deal with blog pirates?

Mr. Wednesday [8] tried to develop a tool that can find similar documents on internet:

由於前一陣子MMDAYS發生了文章被抄襲的事件,因此Mr. Wednesday開發了一個工具來幫助了解這類情況,取名為《Parrot》,用於尋找網路上高相似度的文件。

Because MMDAYs found their articles were plagiarized recently, Mr. Wednesday develop a tool named ‘Parrot’ to solve this kind of problems. It can be used to find the documents that are highly similar to your documents.

YC [9]:

昨晚到今天早上,已經寄出了三封電子郵件,分別是三個網站網管及法律顧問,以及我所委託的律師朋友,累死人了。
目前止看到兩個比較嚴重的網站裡,星空網已經關閉這個BLOG,Blogbus還是出現著網站更新中的圖案。
效果如何?還不確定,就等看看吧。
把這件事情放到中國相關網站的討論區?這也是個辦法,不過如果要讓網站管理人員針對這種事情進行道歉,這倒是不可能,也不切實際的作法。畢竟在各個網站的使用授權上,都有免責的條款,也就是並沒有對這些使用侵權的文章、圖片有負責任的行為。

From last night till this morning, I have sent three e-mails to three website administrators, their legal consultants and my lawyer friend. I am so tired now.
Up till now, among the two most serious websites, Qianlong.com has already closed the pirated blog, but Blogbus still keeps updating the blog's contents.
What would be the result of the e-mails? I am not sure. Let's wait and see.
Should we put this to the BBS of related websites in China? This is another way. But I do not think it is possible and practical to ask the website administrators to apologize for this because they are not responsible for these pirated articles and photos based on their liability claims for the intellectual property right problems on their website.

cindyfeng [4]:

看來我以後的照片都要寫上我的網站和名字好了。

I think in the future it would be better to put my website and my name on my photos.

If there is no way to prevent these persistent pirates from keeping pirating on different websites, what will the future blogs look like?