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Twitter itSome cockamamie site that calls itself Shyftr has launched recently, and they’re into stealing people’s content. If you look around at their site, they’re couching their actions in nice language and calling it a place where people can read their favorite feeds and discuss them. I call it outright theft and wonder why their site is still not shut down.
They’re also comparing themselves to feed readers like Google Reader, or to sites like FriendFeed, but what differentiates them VERY CLEARLY from the these other, legitimate sites, is that they scape someone’s entire feed content and post it on their site. They don’t post only the title with a link back to the full article on my site, like FriendFeed, they don’t excerpt (after asking permission) like a legitimate site. They just copy and paste!
By doing so, they ARE STEALING. They remove the copyright owner’s right to control how their content gets distributed and consumed. There’s nothing on their site at the current time that would allow feed owners to opt in or opt out. NOTHING. They simply steal someone’s content, put it up on their site, and allow people to comment on it. They’re building a social network around MY content, without my permission. I can’t call them anything else but thieves.
I don’t buy their “feed reader” argument, either. When someone uses a feed reader, they’re subscribed directly to my feed. They know me. They’re regular readers. They engage with my content, and when they comment or interact with my content, they do so on my site. When they email someone a link to one of my articles, that link leads back to my site. Even when they email one of my entire posts from Google Reader, the links in that email all lead back to my site. As the copyright owner and content creator, I get the full benefit of their readership, and they get my content for free, which is something not to be scoffed at.
When Shyftr steals my content, they decide what to do with it. They’ve effectively shifted my right to decide how my content gets consumed from me to them. That’s copyright infringement. People view my content there, branded by the Shyftr logo and site design, they comment on Shyftr, not on my site. I get no benefit whatsoever. I don’t even get to give them permission. They simply steal and don’t ask permission. They don’t even thank me. They STEAL and expect to get away with it!
I’m sure that at some point they’ll need to generate income. Just how will they do that? They’ll probably put ads around MY content, after they’ve taken out any ads I might have put in my feed. I’m currently putting ads in my feed through FeedBurner, but I don’t see any of them showing up on their site.
So it’s not enough that they’re stealing my content outright, but they’re going to make money from it — not now, but at some point in the future. In my mind, there is NOTHING that differentiates them from splogs. They’re a glorified splog, and what makes it truly infuriating is that they’re telling people they’re not a splog, that they’re legitimate. That is simply not true.
Shyftr is like a thief that will park his car next to your orchard, pull out baskets and a ladder, start climbing into your trees and filling his baskets with your fruits, then when you catch him, he’ll tell you that he’s not really stealing, that he’s allowing you to share your fruits with others. It makes me absolutely furious to see them steal content left and right without copyright owners’ say-so.
I’m truly amazed that sites like the New York Times and the Washington Post, whose feeds they’re stealing right now, haven’t instructed their legal departments to start hunting them down. I can’t imagine this’ll go on for long. I think the shifty thieves at Shyftr won’t be in business for long. I think the saving grace there is that the NYT is using abridged feeds, so Shyftr can’t take their entire content.
I use full feeds, because I want to make it easy for my feed subscribers to read my content. That has enabled Shyftr to effectively steal my entire feed. It’s up on their site right now. All of my posts are there, in their entirety, with my own ads taken out. It’s enough to make me livid. My whole weekend has been ruined after finding out about this. All my hard work has been stolen and posted there.
I’ve emailed them and demanded that it be taken down within 48 hours. If they don’t comply, I’ll send a DMCA take-down notice to them and to their web hosting provider as well. I will NOT allow my years of hard work to be stolen like this.
Just so you can understand why I’m furious, here’s a quick summary:
- They’re scraping (stealing) my entire feed content, not excerpting a paragraph and linking back to my original post.
- They’re not apologetic at all. No, they think they’re legal. What screwed up world are they living in?
- They’re taking control away from me, the copyright owner, and building a social network around MY content WITHOUT my permission. What frigging part of “All Rights Reserved” don’t they understand?
- They’re going to profit from my hard work after stealing it from me. They don’t currently have ads, but I assume they will at some point, because I doubt the people using their site now will want to pay a subscription feed to use Shyftr.
What I’d like to know is what moron VC funded them (if they’re funded at all)…
Incidentally, people who don’t think Shyftr is doing something illegal are very likely the same ones who think illegal music downloads are okay. If you’re one of those, then please don’t read my stuff. If you can’t respect my copyright, then you don’t respect me, and I don’t want you as a reader. Please, stay away from my site, you and Shyftr and all the splogs out there.
Updated 4/14/08: Shyftr changed their policy over the weekend. They now say, and I quote:
“We will only display the title, author, and date of an item where discussions occur outside of the reader. We deeply respect content publishers, and it is not our intention to cause unease.”
I consider this a smoke-and-mirrors policy change. Why? Because my own feed is still displayed IN FULL on Shyftr’s website. This is in spite of my requests to them over the weekend to remove it from the site (they have yet to reply to my emails). So their supposed policy change didn’t affect their theft of my copyrighted content one bit. They still intend to go on stealing it.
This means that they’re getting a DMCA take-down notice. I’ll try to send it through tonight, and if I can’t finish it up by then, I’ll send it through tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for more on this as it develops. I am NOT going to stand for the theft of my hard work. My weekend was ruined because of Shyftr. I found out on Saturday morning that they were stealing my feed, and since then, I’ve been physically sick at the thought of it. I am not going to let a bunch of Web 2.0 crooks get away with wholesale content theft. They’re not going to build a business on the back of people’s hard work and expect to get that hard work for free.
Updated 4/15/08: Shyftr has received my DMCA take-down notice and acted on it, removing my feed content from their site. I am satisfied with their response, and unless my feed content reappears on their site, I will take no further action against them.
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On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 1 person and commented on 0 times 
According to Louis Gray’s coverage, shyftr has benevolent intentions, but all told I agree with you.
It’s going to be very interesting to see where this RSS reader-meets-social networking thing goes.
Comment — April 12, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Raoul,
They do appear to be giving you a link back and copyright example article:
http://www.shyftr.com/item/?id=4471919&title=theodora-goes-wild-1936
Title of:
Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
Linked to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Raoul/~3/267026106/
Also at the bottom of the page is a:
Copyright (c) Raoul Pop
Linked to:
http://www.raoulpop.com/
I do not know what is contained in your distribution agreement of your RSS via Feedburner…
Maybe the solution is that you do not post complete articles vis RSS and only summary text?
Though doing this you might alienate certain people from reading your site, using Google Reader and other RSS clients do enable people like myself to read allot more content that I wouldn’t have time to read…
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 4:05 am
Nick, the credit at the bottom of the page is there because I’m using an RSS footer plugin, not because they do it. If I weren’t using the plugin, it wouldn’t be there, so you can’t credit them for that.
As for the link back in the title, that’s the least the damned thieves could do, but it still doesn’t matter, because they’re lifting all my content and profiting from it.
I gotta ask you this as well. What part of All Rights Reserved don’t you understand? They didn’t ask for my permission to do this, they’re not paying me for the right of using my content on their site, therefore it’s ILLEGAL.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 4:09 am
Raoul,
From your blog/statement you said scraping, so I presumed they were altering your content in some way not just embedding the content as-is.
I understand what “all rights reserved” means but I would also say that unless they do remove your content on request you would have to then take up a civil case against them.
If they had asked for permission would you have granted it?
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 4:48 am
No, I wouldn’t have. Who in their right mind would allow some company to use their content in its entirety, for free, and to profit from it? Not a chance. My content is my content, I worked hard and spent countless hours creating it, and I’m the only one who can control it, distribute it, and profit from it.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 8:33 am
hello raoul,
i will let you know from the front that i am a happy user of shyftr. i did in fact, find your site via shyftr.
ok, thats out of the way.
from day one with my experience on the shyftr service, on every story, blog entry, news report,movie review….there is always a source attributed to that article. also a link to the page of origin; as discussed in your comment section here.
i have seen both full content, partial content and just headline snippets… all of which are determined by the rightful owner of the content in question. in your case, that would be either you or your agent in charge of setting up how your feed is delivered to the web and your audience.
as to ads and supplementary content, sometimes i see it and sometimes not; i would again see this as a decision of how the feed is established. after viewing a lot of feeds on shyftr and not just giving it a cursory viewing, i would dare tell you that the ads and other content are not ’stripped’ by shyftr. as a personal note, i have used said ads (yes, the ones in articles on shyftr as delivered to me the reader from you the provider: my case in point is a book purchase). what should be noted here, is that the book and it’s author were brought to my attention by a discussion taking place over an article of interest to several of ‘us’ on shyftr.
as to how i interact or react to content on my rrs reader of choice, varies. as to content providers that i have a vested interest in, i will make comment on their page and possibly on shyftr. sometimes, i may only make comment on shyftr with other people who share an interest together. sometimes, i may come only to the original page to make a comment as in this case. that is my decision isn’t it?
i have been exposed to content, and that exposure in no real substantial way has be altered. i refuse to address it being stolen, sir.
as a non professional original content provider myself (read as musician) i certainly have a somewhat limited but real interest in this subject and i do not take the argument herein lightly.that said, i for one, would be really excited to know someone has listened to or is listening to my bands music, anywhere! as long as that audience knows who the band is.
my point is, i got to this page and i have left comment on your original content and i found you on shyftr.
as to their making money. please, how can you say that? how do you know? i will not address that at all as i have not the slightest clue to any financial dealings at/with/because of shyftr. do i hope they make a buck off (a legal, to my knowledge) their service? yes, sure. just like i hope you can make a living off what you provide. assuming what you provide is legal.
it was nice visiting your site and i wish you well. please fell assured that i will not include your feed in my selections at shyftr as per your wishes and as stated by you. please inform your sidebar advertisers of my decision. yes, amazon and B&H cameras to mention just two. btw, i am an avid armature photographer and i read a hell of a lot of books.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Steve, I get where you’re coming from, but as the content owner, I really don’t care how the Shyftr users view their service. I care that Shyftr has lifted my content in its entirety, without my permission, and has put it on their site. The copy and paste approach is unwanted and as far as I’m concerned, ILLEGAL. It’s a copyright infringement.
I don’t care about the band argument, either. Music is different from text and images.
It’s okay to quote/excerpt. It is NOT okay to lift entire posts. If you don’t get that argument, that means you don’t respect my content and you don’t respect me, and I don’t want you as a reader. Period.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
I’ve got to say,Raoul that I’m in your corner on this issue. Whatever you post on yous site belongs to YOU!! It really irritates me to think that there are people out there that believe that anything online is thiers for the taking. As a writer of,as yet,unpublished poetry,this is exactly,in part,why I am a little leery of making the rounds. I don’t want to lose the rights to my work. I hope this doesn’t keep you from posting as usual,as I look forward to it when I get the chance. PEACE
to you and Ligia.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Though it will likely come as a surprise to no one given the topic of my site, I agree with you as well. I think what Shyftr is doing is going way too far and one thing I’ve noticed in reading about it is that bloggers seem to be unified against it while it is commenters that are standing up for it.
It makes sense that the people who write the content being scraped are the ones most upset.
Comment — April 13, 2008 @ 8:48 pm
Interesting situation Raoul. Shyftr is definitely showing poor form by taking an entire post and displaying it through their service… particularly if you’ve not consented to this level or content reproduction. Thanks for raising awareness to this abuse. I’ll have to look into their service more closely and monitor my logs to see if they begin pilfering my blog.
On a side note thanks for mentioning the RSS footer plugin… with a little research I found it and have added it to my blog.
Comment — April 14, 2008 @ 2:10 am
Another blog post on the same subject can be found here:
http://www.teknobites.com/2008/04/12/what-shyftr-does-is-content-theft/
Comment — April 14, 2008 @ 4:54 am
[...] Scoble and Louis Gray came down in favor of the service while others, including Tony Hung and Raoul Pop were firmly against [...]
Pingback — April 14, 2008 @ 10:57 am
See my latest updates to the post. They reflect my decision to follow up with a DMCA take-down request, even after Shyftr’s supposed policy change.
Comment — April 14, 2008 @ 11:57 am
[...] Shyftr, here’s your DMCA take-down notice Written on April 14, 2008 at 7:52 pm by Raoul. Filed under Articles. Tagged with: business, companies, copyright, customer service, illegal, theft. Save it Stumble it Digg it Twitter it No one from Shyftr has contacted me in response to my emailed requests to remove my feed from their site. It seems they care as little about customer service as they care about copyright. I emailed them on Saturday afternoon and asked them to remove my feed within 48 hours. That deadline is now up, and the full posts from my feed are still up on their website. Since I have no other course of action, a DMCA take down notice is due, as promised. [...]
Pingback — April 15, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
[...] them (well, that was one aspect of it). I didn’t think it was such a hot idea, and others didn’t as well. In fact, there may be legal ramifications for republishing RSS feeds that two professionals (one [...]
Pingback — April 15, 2008 @ 9:51 pm
[...] them (well, that was one aspect of it). I didn’t think it was such a hot idea, and others didn’t as well. In fact, there may be legal ramifications for republishing RSS feeds that two professionals [...]
Pingback — April 15, 2008 @ 10:24 pm