[SecurityRatty] tag: ratty

A thin line between blog theft and promotion - another opinion

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:24:36 +0000

Rich Mogull has been writing a bit about his disagreement with a the SecurityRatty site posting his content (original posts here and here). These posts have set off a rash of comments and other articles on both sides of this issue. Finally Rich wrote his defining post on this topic here. Rich's position is that he owns his words. Ratty took them without his permission, ads nothing to the conversation or commentary at all and actually hosts the content rather than just linking to it. Now for those who don't know, SecurityRatty is a site allegedly owned and operated by some Russian CISSP dude. Basically, they claim they are an RSS aggregator and they just republish blog posts in their entirety. A couple of things to note though:

1. SecurityRatty does not usually add any content of their own or edit the posts in any way
2. They link back to the blogs or articles which are aggregated
3. They do appear to sell some advertising on the site
4. You can search their aggregated content on their site
5. At least recently they are removing content and feeds from their site if you request it.
6. They did not ask anyones permission that I know of before posting content

OK, now that the groundwork is laid, let me give my Shimel view on this. I disagree with Rich. Hey it is a big world and I think there is room for a dissenting opinion here. The reasons I disagree with Rich are:

1. Though Ratty plainly posts up others content, he does not hold it out as his own. He plainly gives credit to those who actually created the words and in fact links back to their sites.
2. Rich is publishing his data under a creative commons license, I am not sure if the meager ad on Ratty would qualify this as a commercial site.
3. Rich distinguishes what Ratty does from Google and other search engines (who clearly profit from Rich's content) by the fact that they just point to it. Not all together true. They also keep a cached copy of the content that you can go to as well.
4. The fact is that I have a tough time seeing any harm to Rich here. In fact if Ratty were not pointing back to Rich's site, if he did not make it as easy to see that it is just an aggregate feed or if Ratty were adding his own comments and not clearly delineating his from Rich's, I would feel differently. Some of this is directly in contrast to Rich who says that if Ratty did add his own views to Rich's, that would make it right by him.
5. Finally, I would go even further than Rich not being harmed by Ratty. I think Rich actually benefits from Ratty. It is yet another outlet for Rich's content and though not everyone reading it at Ratty may go back to Rich's site, they do know it is him and can go back easily. In fact if Rich did advertise at his site, I could understand him losing hits at his site. Otherwise if Ratty just pointed back, one could say the more hits Ratty generates, it could cost Rich more money. Much like people who link to graphics hosted elsewhere.

So, Rich I see that Ratty has stopped aggregating your content so that should be enough of a victory for you. In the long run though I think it is a Pyrrhic victory and you would have been better off with Ratty publicizing your words.

Content Scrapers And Security Blogs

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:48:19 +0000

I saw an interesting post over at Anti-Virus-Rants today, where Kurt Wismer linked to an article regarding content scraping. In essence, the site doing the scraping (Security Ratty) ended up with "Security Ratty is a slimy, content stealing thief" on the front page. I find this interesting, because not so long ago I'd considered doing something similar with one of those fake security spam blog things that lift the content and splatter a ton of adverts on their site, while removing correct attribution.

Instead, I decided to do a little digging and quickly traced it back to a guy running a whole network of various sites, blogs and other networks. However - something didn't seem quite right. For all intents and purposes, he seemed like a normal, legit guy. He had pictures of himself on various portals. He openly advertised his main line of business, which (I think) was something to do with accountancy. There was a personal blog about pet dogs.

Holding fire on the "Here's a post specifically for your scraper site poking fun at you, aren't I clever" post, we found out that the guy had purchased a bunch of ready-to-roll blogs in good faith and had no idea the sites were removing correct attribution (and replacing it with fake names), amongst various other things. Realistically, I didn't expect him to know the ins and outs of all the little details that turned reproduction in good faith into something that just about started to cross the line. A few helpful emails back and forth, and everything was fixed at their end and it didn't snowball into some big stupid argument over nothing.

Coming from an arts background, I'm realistic enough to know that if you put something out there, it's going to get copied and / or republished without your permission (or worse) down the line. That's the risk of publishing material online, and to a large degree, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. The way I see it, you spend the rest of your days on a futile hunt to shut down all the content scrapers, or accept that (at the very least) the information you hope may be of use to somebody will reach and help them in some way.

If it doesn't have my name attached to it, I can live with that - but I'd rather invest my energies in research and writing than a few hours brief "victory" via a slow procession down an RSS feed. I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of the particular case linked to, but for all I know, the scraper site in question is entirely automated and devoid of any real life person manning the controls. If that's the case, the "victory" is rendered almost entirely pointless save for a cool-for-a-while screenshot.

Is that really a good use of time and effort? Personally, I'm more pleased with our behind-the-scenes EMail resolution but different strokes, different folks and all that...

Security Ratty, Steals Content One Time Too Many

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:56:54 +0000

Blog is blacklisted: improper conduct by blog author

One of the more annoying aspects of writing for an internet audience is the presence of site skimmers. Sites that will re-post content from other sites making it appear as their own. ...