AboutUs.org Continues Their Annoyance
October 2, 2006
at 10:24 am
in aboutus.org, copyright, legalI say annoyance in the subject line. It’s always been more than an annoyance. When someone violates my legally copyrighted content, I don’t consider it anything less than just that: a violation of copyright.
I ended up emailing Ray at his email address ray@aboutus.org over this. The email is below.
While at this point I haven’t felt the need to file a lawsuit against AboutUs.org, I’m going to speak out about it as much as I can. Recently, I discovered that www.pylonhosting.com, a hosting company I at one point maintained (and still own) had made it on to Aboutus.org. When AdamReyher.com made it on there, there was a good amount of content scraped from the front page and copied onto the AboutUs.org page. I was less than happy with this, so I manually removed it. They continued to remove the history and put the site in an “Opt-Out” category, but still encouraged users to continue to update content. What???
But this time, when I discovered PylonHosting.com, not only had they scraped front page info, they copied the entire body of content on the front page. This is way more than “fair use” in my viewpoint. I have no problem with fair use–quoting someone else’s website. But when you deliberately copy that content in large quantities, it’s getting out of hand.
In light of this, I proceeded to, of course, edit out the page with my less-than-satisfied remarks, and then continued on to writing to “Ray” at his email address: ray@aboutus.org (oh noes! he’ll get spammed since I didn’t mask it!) requesting, and yes, demanding that the history for several of my sites be removed. And not only just the history…I wanted any copy of my content removed from existance, including any sitewide backups which had been made.
Hello Ray,
I have expressed deep dissatisfaction with the manner in which AboutUs.org gathers information which, indeed, is legally copyrighted by site owners and how said information is scraped from their sites.
I have removed several of my sites personally. However, that history still remains, containing my copyrighted content on, as far as I’m aware, one of the listed domains in this email’s subject line: PylonHosting.com. In regards to (http://www.aboutus.org/How_can_I_OptOut_of_AboutUs%3F), I am composing this email in order to have this history manually removed.
However, I ask more than that. AboutUs.org certainly maintains backups, quite possibly before said information was removed. In order to fully eliminate duplicates of my copyrighted content, I respectfully request that any and all backups containing information relating to the sites here-in this email be either removed from existence or modified to remove my content. I don’t care if said content is not publicly available. It’s still the COPY part of copyright.
Of course, using all senses of logic, there’s no plausible way for me to verify that said (private) backups no longer contain my content. But out of professional courtesy (which you appear to be operating out of ) I’m asking that you fully comply with my wishes, and yes, demands regarding content which legally belongs to me in any and all forms.
Sincerely,
- Adam Reyher
An extreme request? Definately. Any way for me to prove he’s done it? Absolutely not. A reasonable request? I think so. After all, it’s copyright violation. Raising the stakes? Heck yes.
And that’s what I want; I want to raise the stakes and put so much pressure on AboutUs.org that hopefully lawsuits will be filed in the near future and they will either be shut down, or be forced out of “business” for the sheer inconvenience it has caused them. Period.
You should do the same. Remove your site from AboutUs.org yourself … put on a comment of copyright violation and your dissatisfaction, and write a similar email to Ray (once again, his email address is ray@aboutus.org).
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7 Responses to “AboutUs.org Continues Their Annoyance”
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Why shut down a site?
Hi Adam,
That you don’t like this site does not mean all other people don’t like it either.
Have you ever thought that many sites may prefer have articles on AboutUs.org?
This is my case - I like my sites be mentioned on aboutUs.org.
Moreover, I personally edited the pages and updated their content.
I discovered AboutUs.org through a whois service that showed my domains and there were links to my domain pages on AboutUs.org
I went to these pages and they clearly stated this is a copy from the original site (my site). You are free to either delete or update your domain page. That’s so useful.
This is kind of yellow pages - some like to be there, others dislike.
Best regards,
Stefan
Stefan,
I understand that
Stefan,
I understand that some people may like the idea of this site. However, copyright violation is copyright violation. End of story.
Also, even though I as the original author have the ability to go in there and make corrections, it ALSO allows for Average Joe to come in there and spin off things that “I have said” that I, in fact, did not say at all.
Also, it allows just one more resource for those who want to once again break my copyright. Pretty soon they’ll be quoting AboutUs.org as the source and NOT me.
I don’t have the time to babysit. But the main issue is copyright violation. Period. I won’t stand for it.
- Adam
What about Google, Yahoo, MSN Search etc.?
I think the three major SE’s have your entire site cached partner. I just saw the cache of your homepage at Google. They spider here fairly often, and this article is right there in plain view.
I can see your point of view. Eventually this will all come to a head, and of course, they will be going after the giant first.
Even so, it is easy enough to tell the search engines not to cache the pages with a NOARCHIVE instruction in the head of the page. I think this works with the InternetArchive as well, not sure about that.
I am sure AboutUs will work the kinks out of the system. Ideally, the area on the page that is in question is supposed to be a Description of the website. It appears they are trying to garner that information in automated form — there are bound to be some bumps along the way.
Re: What about Google, Yahoo, MSN Search etc.?
Ron:
This point was brought up by Mr. King himself when I emailed him expressing my concern and dissatisfaction with the service he runs. I replied (to which he never got back to me on), that search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc) cache my site in its original form factor. If it was cached properly, it will be indistinguishable (with the exception of the engines cache header on the top) from my site. This allows for absolutely no confusion as to the author and copyright holder of any and all text on my page.
Regardless, I have on many occasions emailed Google/MSN/Yahoo asking for pages to be removed from cache because they contain (or rather, contained, since I removed them from public view) due to sensitive copyright concerns.
What SE’s are doing with sites in the first place isn’t a problem. What AboutUs.org is doing with sites IS significantly a problem. A very large portion of my site was copied on AboutUs.com in the first place.
- Adam
Reply:aboutus.org
I have read some of the posts on aboutus.org and I agree with all that I read but, the one comment I hoped to read I did not see, and that is: apparently their bot extracts all or many of the pages from your site and places them in link pages with 1,000 + other links making it near impossible to find the link, but that link page is picked up by google (maybe others but haven’t found them) so that when you do a search on google by site name it brings up all the link pages on aboutus.org with a link to your site, what this means is it can double the number of listings in search for your site with half of the links going to aboutus link pages and nowere near your site unless people take the time to read the address after the linking. Example: I have a page on one of my sites named Animals and there is a link listed for Animals-about us going to their site link page(s) for those having 100 pages on their site in time they will have 200 pages and one half of them going to aboutus.org I have contacted google and waiting for a response as I consider this whole thing a fraud and a damage to every website listed in search’s. I would hope google has enough money that they do not stoop to that level to turn people away from the legitamite sites on the web, if not my intent is to contact the prosecuters in their home states as I consider this fraud and we will see if I am right.
Thanks for allowing me to add my 2 cents worth, also check you searchs in google to see if you have been victimized by this
Trabob
A good link to complain about us
Found this blog of people fedup with about us
http://www.stopaboutus.org/discuss/
I cannot understand the whining about aboutus.org. Have you never had any real problems in your life.
Talk about working really hard to find a problem to complain about!