I decided to try an experiment, to Google a title of one of my old posts to see how many times it appeared.  It was hundreds.  Being a dedicated follower of scientific method, I tried another.  This time more than a thousand.  How is that possible?

Clicking through some of the choices, it became immediately clear that there is a vast undergrowth of websites whose business model is merely to aggregate the content of others and sell its value.  I’ve got no complaints about other bloggers linking to my posts; in fact, I appreciate their interest and the synergies that develop from cross-fertilization.  But I’m not talking about other blawgers.  I’m talking about for-profit businesses that sell advertising on their websites, their only draw being the content created by people like me.

Unlike scrapers such as US Law.com, who would steal entire posts, superimpose their logo on other people’s blogs and link to them as if they created the content, most of these for-profit businesses handle their aggregation in a more open, acceptable fashion.  They attribute the content to its creator.  They link directly to the blog from which it came.  They do nothing to conceal the source of their fodder.

The problem, however, is that these are businesses.  They are making money off the efforts of others.  They don’t seek or obtain the permission of content creators to use their content, even with proper attribution and links, And there are hundreds of them, more every day.  Want to read a Simple Justice post?  There are hundreds of places to do so, aside from here.

I’ve questioned the people running some of these websites.  They are of the view that they are doing me a favor, helping to “spread” my posts around the internet, all of which inures to my benefit by increasing my reach and spreading my popularity.  They are also of the view that it’s their right to feed off my content.  They don’t need my blessing.  Content is free, theirs for the taking.

While I receive tons of emails from these various websites urging me to promote them by placing badges and buttons here, I have never received an email informing me that they would like to share the wealth.  I don’t know how much they earn from their websites, or how much of it is attributable to my contribution, and I don’t imagine it’s much.  Though there are some that have grown quite big from this business model.  comes immediately to mind.  It wouldn’t exist without the ability to feed off the content of others.  It creates nothing.  They appear higher on the Google page with my post than I do.  How ironic that people may go first to them to read what I’ve written.

It’s not that I blawg for profit.  I don’t.  It bothers me that others are profiting from the efforts of people like me without either our approval.  I have no plans to go after them, as lawyers who aren’t too astute and haven’t thought the problem through often suggest.  Dedicating every waking moment to chasing down ghosts and children is a terrible waste of time and effort.  Even if I could stop ten of them, there would be a hundred more in their place before the sun set.

Most of my brethren in the blawgosphere just shrug their shoulders these days.  It’s just the way things are.  We create and others will take it and profit from it.  At least they attribute it to us, rather than scrape it for themselves as do the truly scummy ones.  Is this the best we can hope for?  Maybe the secret to fixing their wagon is just stop creating.  What will they do then?