With a lot of people covering world events, tech news etc then what is found many times is some of the same exact content is carried over half a dozen portals. I do my best to get a good spread of topics and you can be guaranteed if I write about it then it was something that peaked my interest.
But I do look at my referral logs see references to our articles on other sites and many times it is the exact information this is fine if we are given credit and a link back to the original article. I actually quite happy that some sites feel what we have to say is important enough to carry it on their own sites.
But over these past 2 years I have from time to time seen my content used and someone posting it as their own. This I have a problem with and have usually had very good responses by sending a e-mail and asking them to stop.
The latest Wired article that has gotten some press in the blogsphere talks about a minority of blogs being ready by the majority of people with much of that content coming from other blogs without proper reference to the source. Honestly I cannot imagine that this is happening that much but it does raise some interesting questions. I personally really do not sweat things to much but I am just happy that we have continued to enjoy monthly increases in readership. [Wired]
Just an FYI – “peaked my interest” should be “piqued my interest”.
Brian
While I think that there are certainly occasions where bloggers offer value-added content to a story and should be credited, I’d say that 90% of blog content (including yours) is culled from other sources. It’s immaterial if you get it from newsfeeds or from another person’s weblog – if you don’t offer some additional insight that is reflected in the “leech” then you shouldn’t expect a linkback.
My opinion, get over it.