Content theft in the age of RSS and aggregation happens every day. I delete a dozen spam links every day which have scooped my content and used it to attract visitors to their site.
Something.ie has done this to Damien Mulley. Mulley, remember him, he’s an amiable loudmouth from Cork. It makes me shake my head to read on something.ie:
Brian takes a look at syndication and wonders why Maman Poulet and Damien Mulley accuse us of stealing content. Then we discover that Damien has been stealing our content.
Something.ie, as far as I can see, nicks an extract from web sites like mulley.net and siliconrepublic and republishes them with an attribution link.
As can be seen here and here there’s virtually no content added. This is the difference I see and why I can see no difference between the actions of something.ie (who are trying to get google hits by linking extract content to poipular blogs) to the spammers that I delete daily. Create the content, guys, don’t just regurgitate the headline and post a link. Dammit. Have something to say and don’t just point at what other people are saying (or, if you must link-whore, then please keep it within your own back yard – you own something.ie subscribers.
This is going to shape up into some sort of ugly blogfight. I’m selling popcorn.
Much more interesting is jazzbiscuit reporting that Burger King’s Profits are down 13%. That would be because the only thing worth buying in there are the onion rings. Ooooh, boy, that’s another artery clogged…