Today Jeff Moser pointed me to sagebrushstate.info, a website that’s building its content using the RSS feeds of others without linking back to the original articles. Under the Carson City category are a lot of my posts, along with news feeds from other places. They don’t seem to be making any money off the site, but it’s still slimy to use others’ stuff without a credit line or a link back. I add bylines to my RSS feed already, and now I’ve started adding a permalink back to the article as part of the article text, so in cases like this the link will be there whether they like it or not. Maybe this will shine a light on these guys and what they’re doing, and maybe this post will even turn up on their site!
It looks like it’s a guy out of Utah according to the site registration information: http://whois.domaintools.com/sagebrushstate.info
I guess a guy in Utah isn’t around to comment or offer critiques on things happening in Nevada. He just plagerizes other people’s comments, works and intellectual property to build his site.
It’s not like it would fall under “fair use.” He’s just copying all of it and posting it. He’s not taking a portion of other people’s work and then commenting on it or criticizing it. That would be okay. He’s taking it all for no purpose other than his own gain.
I wonder if he’s doing it with other states, too. When he gets those other sites up and running with more traffic being driven to his sites, that’s when you’ll see the ads.
He’s got a lot of your pictures on there, doesn’t he. Isn’t that copyrighted material, by default?
My photos are Creative Commons by default, which means you can use them as long as you link back to me. He doesn’t strip out the links, so it’s not technically a violation. Just, again, slimy.