M’s blogosphere gets ripped
Update: they’ve pulled the content and site before we got lawyered up, so that’s good. Read the comments for more.
Seasons greetings from Instamariners! We’re jacking all of the content on your site and re-branding it as our own! With lots of ads!
(handy mirror of the page source if they change it is here)
Yup, and that link there for the title of the post? Goes to us, Instamariners, not you. Where we have our own comment section. Like it’s our content. With more ads. Isn’t that awesome? And we know, you’ve got that thing on the front page that says
All article text is written by the authors, all pictures are taken by the authors, who retain copyright to their works. No copying or reproduction of any content here, photographic or otherwise, is authorized. Please email us if you wish to reproduce our work.
We decided to not do that, and reproduce it anyway. We’re sure your request doesn’t apply to us.
Oooh yeah. But don’t worry! You’re in good company! Your friends Deanna, and Paul, and, well, we’re kidnapping others as fast as we can!
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70 Responses to “M’s blogosphere gets ripped”
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Please don’t do anything. They’ve apologized, the site’s down, I consider the problem resolved.
The site’s still up, actually; but the content’s removed, which is the important thing. I’m still pretty skeptical about their defense, however.
Yes. And yes, but I’m happy we didn’t have to send out DMCA notices or anything, and we don’t really know, and it’s the holidays, so…I’ll take what I can get.
interesting that their design looks a little like a blue-hued Cliffs Notes….
Well, it looks like this guy is rolling out one of these for every team in sports — try instaX where X is the name of a team. “Instamets” has the same template but no content; various other domain names like “instagiants”, “instarangers”, and “instabulls” (just a few I tried) are parked at GoDaddy (which is also administering the domain for instamariners). Hard to believe it will actually generate enough adrevenue to matter, but I guess if you throw the net wide enough… nah, I still can’t see it. Then again somebody is still spending to get botnets to send spam, so what do I know.
#50 – I’m not even sure Elliot Back is the guy who is running these Insta sites. I know he’s written a bunch of scripts and programs for blogging and if you look at the screen shots above, it simply says “script by” instead of “content blatantly stolen by.” It’s on the same line as the “written by” line as well, as if they folks over at Insta were trying to cover their butts by saying “Hey, DMZ wrote this! And Elliot Back made this cool script! But it was WE who combined two free, legit, great things together and created the beauty of InstaRipoff!”
But like everybody has said, the situation is resolved. It doesn’t matter, but I thought I’d point that out anyways.
Elliot Back, to the best of my knowledge, is not the individual running the site.
Well, it looks like my website, http://www.ipostnothingofmyownherebutinsteadripstuffofffromderekzumstegbutnotdavecameronbecause heisnotclutch.com, is going to have to be taken down as well. 🙁
To Anyone ‘n’ Everyone:
First and foremost, I’d like to send my condolences for the fact that USSMariner had its content totally ripped off by some doltish, yet somewhat creative jackass (i.e., Elliott Back).
Anyway, that notwithstanding, I’d also like to apologize for my use of vulgarity — which, unshockingly, made it so that my previous handle was banned by y’all — thus, I’d appreciate it if I was given a clean slate.
In any event, though, I wish Dave, Derek, Jason, and Jeff — along with the rest of y’all, too — a Happy New Year and all of that jazz.
Good Times,
Anthony Thomas King
P.S.: Irrespective of my arrogance, there’s no way that y’all can deny my impecable grammar, spelling, and sytanx.
P.P.S: I’m not as annoying as David Cocoran—there’s no denyin’ it!
ok, this note about the RJ-trade discussions contained an image I really didn’t need to begin the new year…
“Things could be held up because he’s currently vacactioning in Hawaii.”
From best of July 2006:
Ah, the wheel does turn. An interesting exercise in fair use on both counts.
The site’s back, by the way. I don’t see any USSM content anymore but they’re still happily stealing the IP of several other M’s blogs.
The last Instaplagarism post:
Somebody call the Waaaaaaaaahmbulance.
A question for the authors of USSMariner:
You talked about getting lawyered up. Is there any legal ramifications for what they did?
I’m a college journalist and have had several stories ripped off by other Web sites. I wrote them all for school (which equals for free), so I’m wondering if I have any right to tell them to stop or demand payment. They all credit me and my news organization. Some even link back to the news organization’s Web site.
Do I have any legal rights?
Yes. Not knowing your situation, I can’t really comment, but it sounds like an issue for the paper’s lawyer to pursue. The paper likely owns the copyright to those pieces.
I guess I don’t see someone sharing a 20s clip of Ichiro’s wall-climbing catch as being in the same neighborhood as ripping off all of our content and re-badging it as their own for profit.
Neither would a court…I don’t possibly see how the latter would come anywhere close to fair use (a term that’s been terrribly abused by most people on the internet).
Now the first might not be fair use either, but then again…it could be…there’s some legal arguments either way…but the latter is pretty clear cut…
Hmmm, instamariners.com is down.
Now that Instamariners.com is down, where will we go to find good baseball writing?!?
I think I’m just going to stop following baseball until the site comes back up.
I’m not related to the guys ripping off sites in any way. If you can think of a way to make the plugin I wrote more useful and less useful spammers call me (you found my # already ;)) or drop a note to elliott@elliottback.com. And remember, if someone steals your content just DMCA their ass.