That Looks Familiar!

This seems to be happening more and more lately – one of our readers finds Guitar Noise material, word for word, posted on another website. If we’re lucky, Paul and I will get a note like this one:

Hello David and Paul,

I have found this site right now:

(and here they’ll post a URL – you should obviously understand why I’m not going to do that!)

I don’t know if you already know about it. It seems somebody is plagiarizing the GN articles. It seems there are also articles from other guitar websites.

Curiously, they are publishing your articles under a Creative Commons license…

Unfortunately there are a lot of websites out there now that simply “grab” articles from other websites to post as their own. They usually have some credit to the original site (although not always the author) and occasionally a link to the original article.

Usually, though, these sites have de-activated their comment and contact applications. This particular one, however, has not and so I’ve sent the website the following note, which I’m afraid that I’ve had to send more times than I’d like to admit:

Hi

My name is David Hodge and I’m the managing editor of Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com) as well as the author of a great many articles at the Guitar Noise website.

Apparently, I’m also the author and editor of a great many articles on your webiste / blog although you’ve never contacted either myself or the owner of the Guitar Noise website for permission to do so.

I totally understand that more and more (and more and more) websites are simply copying content from other sources these days, but I’d like to think that common courtesy and consideration are still considered important. Besides my own writing, you have also posted writing from other authors who have given Guitar Noise permission to run their material (most of it, in fact was written exclusively for the Guitar Noise website) and you have not given those writers any credit, either. That seems totally in opposition with the ways most musicians work with each other.

Looking around your website, it is certainly possible that other people “contributed” these articles by posting them on your site. If that is the case, then there has to be a better way of verifying the source of your material.

Please contact me at your earliest possible convenience so that we may discuss how to make this situation better for all involved.

Looking forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

David

David Hodge
Managing Editor
Guitar Noise
www.guitarnoise.com

It will, as always, be interesting to see how they respond. Sometimes we end up having very good and civil discussions with the owners of the websites, even occasionally helping each other out. Sometimes places become “archived” or “suspended” by their hosts. It may seem strange to say, but that’s not what we’re hoping for. The Internet’s a big place and there’s room for lots of guitar sites. The last thing anyone wants is for all the guitar sites to have the exact same content!

In this particular case I got the following note back, almost immediately:

Thank you for contacting us! What you see on my blog are submissions from other blogs using the “Add Your Article” form, and a collection of syndications of my favorite blogs like yours. All syndications contain “credit” to each author as a link to the original blog at the bottom of the post which is free advertising for you. I noticed that you did not ask me to remove your posts from my blog. I understand completely if you do not want to be apart The Gravity Blog and respect your decision.

Would you like me to remove all posts from your blog?

To which I responded:

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Since our dealings with other writers is done one on one, and because part of our arrangement with our contributors is to not have their writing posted everywhere, we certainly would be appreciative if you would remove any article or post that is from Guitar Noise. I am sorry if that will cause you any inconvenience, but it will restore harmony with our writers and for most writers having control over how and where their material is used is a primary concern. That’s why copyright laws exist.

You should realize, though, that if you would ever like to run a specific article or series of articles from Guitar Noise, all you have to do is ask. Write to me with the specifics (article and length of time you’d like it to be posted) and if I can clear that with the original writer (the person who would get the “credit” as opposed to the website) I will be happy to help.

Thank you again for your response and, again, I appreciate you taking care of this matter.

Looking forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

David

True to his word, all articles, blog posts and even the newsletters from Guitar Noise has come down. And while this sort of outcome doesn’t happen all the time, it certainly could. I think if more people politely pointed the obvious misuse of material on the Internet, or simply stopped visiting these sites, then perhaps there would be no reason for them to exist. But unfortunately, content (not to mention the source of the content) is not as important to the owners of the sites as the potential money generated by traffic is. And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon, but I’m still essentially an optimist when it comes to things.

None of this, by the way, is even taking into account just what kind of mentality posts up a complete copy of an article from another writer and website to a different website, simply to make a contribution? In case you’ve ever wondered, that’s why we don’t allow posts of entire articles up on the Guitar Noise Forum pages. If our readers would like to contribute in that way, we have them post links to the original articles so that both the original author and website can be credited. And the fact that our readers do respond positively to this helps me remain optimistic!

Aside from all this, there’s another potentially huge problem in the works as Paul is close to signing some publishing deals to get our song lessons back on the Guitar Noise website. To say these deals are costing him some money is quite an understatement. And having other websites, such as “How to Play Guitar” or simply copying them and posting them as their own, without contributing either to the time or expense involved in creating them, seems not only truly unfair but incredibly self-serving of the owners of these websites.

And that itself poses an interesting question – all along we at Guitar Noise have agreed with and tried to follow both the law and the spirit of the law when it comes to copyright issues. We understand and appreciate that many of our readers have not agreed with our stand to come up with a solution that benefits everyone involved – readers, songwriters and publishers. Will the people who have clamoured loudest that all these song lessons should be allowed totally free of charge also say that it’s totally okay for any website to simply copy content from Guitar Noise and post it whenever and however they like?

I guess we’ll see about that, too!

Peace