Ja, you keep comming here and running your mouth off… What the heck are you doing? You should be typing this stuff on on your own site! Its blogging gold.

Hahaha, okay, my last post to this thread before you close it down since I missed your this comment somehow. I just find it so much easier personally to respond to others and address issues within the scope of THEIR topic, than to stay on topic with my own posts. I used to be a good writer (or so I was told), but I’m still recovering from an on again off again 13 year bout with Chronic Lyme Disease and I have some lingering neuropsychological issues that they say take around 5 years to recover from. Without going further into the details, I tend to be very verbose and have trouble determining what details are okay to leave out sometimes, heh.

I have sooo much to say but when I go to write any of it on my blog I see how it overlaps with other entries I’ve aleady started planning out, and then I think about all the other things I want to write about or work on, and I can’t decide on any of it so I tend to get frozen and write nothing.

*I think social networking sites will be the new content filters. Example, John302 posted his bastardized version of my free icons post to digg. It got him nothing. When someone types in ‘free icons’ to the digg search engine, they see where his post has been entered with a few diggs, and further down the list they see my original, with a couple thousand diggs. I think its obvious which link a user will visit.

I’m going to have to say that pertaining to this case, you’re right, but in the current state that these social tagging sites are in they’re just making it easy for the sheep to follow the leaders in tagging things and then displaying rankings without any relevance to personal taste. Really, how many places do I have to see the same hot topics listed for the day, 99% of which I’ve learned not to bother giving a shit about? It’s not solving the “longtail” problem at all, rather randomizing it a bit but overall still making it worse. BTW, “longtail” is actually a trademarked term because the asshat that wrote the article in Wired (which was in fact a craptacular read I thought) used the term in the context of the web and web content for the first time thus “coining the phrase”… so of course then he went out and personally trademarked it… like anyone’s gonna hear the term and think of that guy. He did manage to get a popular service to change their name through a cease and desist though, lol.

Okay, time to reign myself back in here, and get back to the problem. In my mind the real thing that’s lacking in these services, as I said, is the ability to provide results relavent to an individual’s tastes and interests. Sure you can go looking for stuff based on tag, keyword, category, whatever but you’ll still be flooded with a ton of things you aren’t particularly interested in or alternatively, too many to go through all of them… invariably most people click on the most popular one, then dig it themselves. So how do you track individual taste? You track what people like AND what they dislike. You find individuals with the closest likes and dislikes and cluster them so that each individual has a handful of other people with similar tastes to his/her own and then give suggestions based on average ratings from other individuals within given percentiles of statistical closeness to your own tastes, and perhaps leave room for forming weighted bonds with people you KNOW you have similar tastes to in some areas. It’s what most on the web seem to miss… adding community power to ai in most cases gives you infinitely more accurate results. Great basic examples are Audioscrobbler, Stumble Upon (to some degree), Okay Cupid (they go a slightly different way, but still very smart). With these types of things, the more you put in, the more accurate your results become. I have no idea why this hasn’t exploded on the web yet as it’s a very simple concept.

Anyway, this was going to be worked into another post I had planned for my blog already, lol. Maybe I’ll do my blogging here.

We should collaborate though if you’re up for it. I have a ton of ideas (more than I can keep track of so I have them written down all over the place). Some are small ideas, some are huge. I get these ideas constantly and then I don’t stop thinking about them until I’ve figured out in my head exactly how I’d implement each part… once I’m done figure it out the fun is over for me and I get distracted by a new one. I think some of ‘em you’d be really interested in. I’ve been mulling over the idea of attempting to get together a crack commando unit (doh, too much A-Team as a kid) a small group of somewhat likeminded folk for putting in a little time here and there working on some nifty things and toying with ideas we bounce off each other. This might be a good starting point. Plus it would give me an excuse to setup some sort of collaboration/versioning system, lol. I tried out Basecamp with local colleagues that I do freelance work with on the side occassionally and it was terrible… it was filled with ajax yet obviously missing really key features for anyone trying to manage/collaborate with even a small group of people. Anyway, drop me a line, even if you’re not interested, I still have a couple things I wanted to run by you.

Cheers,

Ja

Thanks for stopping by again. I want to thankyou for reminding me about how easy it is for some random person to plagiarise others’ work on the internet. You’ve really opened my eyes. I appreciate that. As to your other matters:

You contend I am responding in an “emotional” way. Well duh? I get emotional when people steal from me, who doesn’t? Anyway, I’m cool as a cucumber. I was mad, now I’m not. You know what they say…

You contend I have been stalking you. Do you know the song, ‘every breathe you take’ by the Police? I love that song, I listen to it for 8 hours a day while I stalk you. The other 16 hours of the day I listen to one big mashup of the following songs: “One Way or Another,” by Blondie, Men at Work’s “who can it be now,” “I Want You To Want Me” by Cheap Trick, “Stompin At The Savoy” by Benny Goodman, and “Can’t Stand Losing You” also by the Police. Its called sarcasm, look into it.

You contend I have lied to my readers. I have not. I have nothing to loose (because you have already stolen it). You have your reputation to loose which is why I think you come here and try sway people with your delusions about lying.

I like this bit: “It wasn’t plagarism, no matter how many times you say it.” Ok buddy. I have the evidence in graphical form up above and you say things like that. Sure thing. I suggest you review the definition of the word plagiarism again.

“What did you expect? A thank you?” No. I would like an apology. But I don’t expect one. You can’t seem to agree with the legal definition of plagiarism and how it applies to you and what you did (plagiarise). The best defense to your actions you provide is the “It wasn’t plagiarism…” quote above. My first piece of evidence I provided was the screenshots showing the word for word copy and paste of my work on your blog.

So I will tell you what I really expect: you will be convicted by a jury of your peers, other bloggers.

I sentence you to the following earworm: who can it be now…. who can it be now…

oh did I say sweden? I meant Denmark. Do you Think I’m going to tell you where my friend is actually located? Especially after all the online stalking you have been doing for the last couple of weeks?

You have basically described 90% of blogs out there. I feel you are writing this in direct response to your “free icon” “content” being “copied”. Once again, a direct emotional response to something that should have been dealt with in a different way.

It wasn’t plagarism, no matter how many times you say it. I saw the original story as it was posted and you lied to your readers, end of story. There was first a direct link back to your site and then it was changed around and your link was taken down. What did you expect? A thank you?

I know this article is being used as bait for our friend, so I will email him tonight and let him know he has another fan.

Some history: about 6 months ago I decided that I was going to be the type of blogger that doesn’t post much. Instead of link blogging and just regurgitating what others write, I would try to create new content with new ideas.

You and I think along the same wavelengths. Your questions are very valid and I think I have some of the answers. I’ve been working on a new post that I hope you and others will enjoy. I think its time this post / thread died and a more intelligent discussion of this type of phenomena began.

*I think social networking sites will be the new content filters. Example, John302 posted his bastardized version of my free icons post to digg. It got him nothing. When someone types in ‘free icons’ to the digg search engine, they see where his post has been entered with a few diggs, and further down the list they see my original, with a couple thousand diggs. I think its obvious which link a user will visit.

Anyhow, definite cut-n-paste job on the table. I’d be not too happy if someone had my source on their site including direct links to images without even bothering to remove things like class names and script hooks from my original post (at that point it’s just plain insulting) without even asking permission.

This is even over the line of what I consider web-pollution. There’s splogs which just copy other content like press releases put them in quotes with a source and have ads plastered all over them. Then there’s the next level down which are basically linkblogs or do the same thing as sploggers but put like a one line comment after it (in just about every post). After that comes the more innocent people that propogate the web-pollution in the same way that forwards and chain letters used to plague our inboxes… they have legitimate blogs but feel the need to post links to hot blog entries or sites that they’ve likely found through others like they’re announcing it to the world as an ambassador to all that is good for their readers, many times seeming like they feel the responsibility to do so or play this role. Sometimes there’s useful commentary which makes it not unthinkable (especially if it’s something that pertains to a major thing you’re discussing or the source site itself makes it impossible to post commentary there) but sometimes it’s just a link or snippet/link with a line “check this out, it’s cool.” I’m sorry, but yes, posting in a blog a link to a hot topic source (or a link to a link to the source eventually, maybe) with nothing more than a short opinion with no useful content of your own is in essence the forwards/chain letter effect and web-pollution in my book.

In the end web-pollution makes it impossible to find stuff with all this crazy linking and content regurgitating clogging up any effort to find what you’re actually looking for not to mention that it seemingly causes multiple locations of the same goddamned stuff. This case is even worse though… even if he had attributed you and your post in the first place, it’s not like he was just putting the link in a link blog or aside or even having any comment of his own… it was in the main body completely just cut and paste and then went around elsewhere linking to his post instead of yours. Despite the fact that you are happy he changed things around a bit, removal of the attribution officially makes it plagiarism now since you have to include attributation not only on direct quotes but also to the people/works that you derived your ideas from (especially as direct as this). Changing a few things doesn’t change where he got it from originally. These days it’s even more complicated when you consider the fact that it’s not just stealing content, it’s also stealing traffic (which has unfortunately become a measure of a site’s value to many) and with that possible new contacts/connections.

The question in my mind is why? What was the motivation in the first place? Innocent ignorance? Trying to gain more traffic and possibly a larger audience to boost his own ego? Attempting desperately to escape from some sort of curse that could only be broken by posting a good list (okay, table, haha) of icons that he hadn’t put together himself? This is what intrigues me.

Jā

According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law(1):
“Plagiarism: The act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one’s own creation.”

1. I post a list of free iconsets. For some reason, it is wildly popular. Perhaps because this list has never before existed. Perhaps its because free icons are hard to find. I’m just throwing out ideas here — it was a surprise to me. Anyway;
2. Some weeks later, you copy the sourcecode of the table out of my website and paste it into your own;
3. While reviewing my referer logs I notice a HUGE spike in hits with only a tiny amount of visits from your website. I visit your website. I see you have copied my work. I ask you to link to my content, not simply copy it. I also ask you to not hotlink as, in many respects, this constitutes theft;
4. I make this posting at maxpower.ca, asking for advice. Good advice is given;
5. You change your copy of my work by removing the column containing the ‘view’ links (it was made defunct via some simple htaccess tricks). Sometime later, you remove the table code and anchor links altogether leaving just the raw url. You also rejig the order and remove some items.

I’d like to think you changed your post because you feared I would act on the advice I was getting here. Really I don’t care why you did it — I’m happy you did it.

All this changes nothing my friend. You are a plagiarist. You stole my words and idea. After I called you out, you changed the words into your own. You have still stolen my idea. That is my point.

You claim I lied about the lack of a ‘reference.’ I’m sorry, I wasn’t crystal clear. Currently, there is no reference on your page suggesting that the content on it is not your own. This makes you a plagiarst. At one point there was a reference. But as you yourself admitted:

“…he removed the direct image links (and all reference to maxpower.ca), but kept the other links”

Any way you slice it, John”I know the owner personally, he lives in Sweden“302 you, sorry, your friend was violating my copyright and is now simply a plagiarst. BTW here is an example of how to reference someone else’s idea:

1. Plagiarism. (n.d.). West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. Retrieved April 26, 2006, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/plagiarism

your screenshot is after the part was changed where he had a large, direct link back to your site. Also, it is changed now, so there isn’t much you can do about it.

I am refering to the fact that you lied about how there was no reference. He did, but removed it. If you look at your article in whole, about 20% of it is table, the rest is text. The text was not copied. think of it like a news article putting up a summary of your article with a link to the original.

Cheers.

You indeed cannot silence the truth. Nope you sure can’t. Please review the additions I have made to this post and weigh your reply.

But this isn’t the end of the story… More developments forthcoming.

I know what you mean, all I really do is experiment most of the time… I loathe Digg and yet I have the little buttons on my posts to Digg them because I was tinkering with it to get the layout correct as an example of how to do it for someone that asked me… and now I’ve just been too lazy to take them down, heh.

You may actually want to stick with the adsense… I joked to my brother that his site took a hit on google because he doesn’t use their ads and a couple days later he tells me some people were blogging about just such a possible scenario since discovering that the different google-bots have been sharing info with each other (which they’re not supposed to). I could have it completely wrong, but interesting to note.

As for recouping expenses, that’s one of the things that’s hard to find an answer for in the short run. It’s right up there with, “how does my small business/shop compete unless I move it online since I can’t really afford rent now that everyone shops online?” The only advice I can currently provide is that maybe you should figure out how much it means to you and how much you can realistically afford (which may entail forgoing other things). We have to spend time/money to pursue our passions, but we have to make ends meet as well so if you get a rough estimate of the difference you need to make up, start brainstorming ideas for leveraging your traffic in other ways… it may come down to making your own ads (or offering consultation/services) and cutting the deals with people you know, people in your community, people/places you feel good about promoting while being comfortable taking a certain fee. The point is to cut out the middle-man since they end up earning more and controlling more than the real providers on both ends. Also, while in the long run I still think the completely advertising driven model has to go, but in the mean time perhaps we’ll see smaller niche advertising/affiliate networks become more stable/preferable and level the playing field a bit. There have been discussions of such along with better feasibility these days for all types of niche services. We shall see. Whatever the case may be, I’ve always believed that anything truely worth doing (from which others may benefit) will lead to good things and good opportunities.

Not much else to say on the copyright matter itself… there’s just far too much gray area in cyberspace and IP, which is an abstract concept in and of itself. One guy did an interesting proof of concept about binary data and copyright… my brain is too fried to think of exactly what it was or what it was called, but I believe the developer of the MUTE filesharing protocol wrote it if you want to go looking.

Cheers guys…

I am not condoning copyright infringement, I just see you as being wrong in this matter. A list of words? no. A list of links? yes. If I put the following

http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.google.com
http://www.mamma.com
http://www.lycos.com

Do I have the right to stop you from printing it in this exact order? No. Just like you do not have the right to stop someone else from printing a list of URLS from your website. If it was your article, then yes, you should take some sort of action.

There was a references to your site before you sent him the blog post, but it has since been removed. You are talking out of your ass once again. How’s that for dialogue.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying your google searching skills are better than mine, but who knows. There is an exact copy of an article, but the guy never claimed to write it. It has the true author’s name on it, so unless the actual author has an issue with it, it is a moot point. How do you know he doesn’t already have permission to have it on the blog?

I suggest a nasty message because he forwarded it to me before he deleted it.