[Matt Q]

I'm just sent out some poems to a magazine that has just announced a stricter policy on poems that can be found on the web. I thought I'd try googling my poems. I was rather surprised to find two of them. They show up on a site called rssing.com. This site takes regular shapshots of Eratosphere and stores them. The snapshots are visible to Google.

It doesn't appear to store the whole poem, just the start of the thread, but enough that it'll show up if you search on the title or the opening lines, which is what I imagine an editor would do. It does also store a link to the poem on the Sphere, so I'll guess I'll be gutting those threads. It's not taking a snapshot of everything, but it does visit several times a day. Click here to get an example of what's been recently added.

I guess this isn't a massive deal since the poems will usually have been culled by the time the editor gets round to reading them, but not always I guess, and even so, it doesn't seem ideal. Who knows if an editor will investigate further once the poem has shown up in Google? (I personally have no idea).

According to rssing.com someone has signed the Sphere up to this service at some point (they have data going back at least three years) and there is a procedure to complain / sign off. Anyone know anything about this? Are there any advantages to this service?

-Matt

[Ann Drysdale]

Well, even if it's a post on the second page that's captured, one can just click on page 1 and there's the poem. Ooer. Will it still be there when it's trimmed off the actual forum?

[W.F. Lantry]

This is a variation on screen-scraping, and it happens to just about every site. This particular one may be ethical, but there are many others out there with no ethics at all.

Plug your name into google, and explore the lower depths of the results. Here's a good example: http://stafaband.info/mp3/download/t...ntry_read.html

That poem was published, with a sound file of Kate reading it, in Now Culture. Clearly, stafaband.info scraped it, and put it up on their site (in violation of just about every worldwide copyright law), to increase their hit rating. There are hundreds, thousands, of these sites. It's happened to everyone who's ever put words up on the web, whether they know it or not.

To be perfectly honest, it's no big deal. I've never had an editor deny a poem or a story because it got screen-scraped. They'd have to look through thousands and thousands of links, and who has time for that? No editors I know.

I've just pruned everything on metrical and the deep end to 30 days ago. Will the scrapers still have the data up on their sites? Yes, they will... for a while, until they refresh their databases, or the sites expire. But it's nothing to get worked up about... and even if we did, there'd be nothing to do, because most of these sites would be unresponsive. It would be like writing the Nigerian prince with a cease and desist order...

Best,

Bill

[Matt Q]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for pruning.

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

To be perfectly honest, it's no big deal. I've never had an editor deny a poem or a story because it got screen-scraped. They'd have to look through thousands and thousands of links, and who has time for that?

That's not the case here. All I had to do to find my poem was to put the title and and a few words from the first line into Google. It was the top link. It was the only link. It would take an editor a few seconds to find. If I were an editor and I wanted to see if the poem existed online that's what I'd do. I'd stick title and the first line or two into Google.

I can't find any of my other Sphere poems anywhere else on the web except on this site. O.k. granted I haven't searched exhaustively. I searched on a handful. Two came on this site. The rest came up nowhere.

I've just pruned everything on metrical and the deep end to 30 days ago. Will the scrapers still have the data up on their sites? Yes, they will... for a while, until they refresh their databases, or the sites expire.

They have data for the past three years. Of course the pruning means that the link to my poem now leads nowhere, which is good news.

Best,

Matt

[Janice D. Soderling]

Yes, but Bill, you have thousands and thousands of poems to offer. Of course no editor has the stamina to check all those.

and even if we did, there'd be nothing to do, because most of these sites would be unresponsive. It would be like writing the Nigerian prince with a cease and desist order...

Well, that is because your senators and congressmen get paid for goofing off. When I self-google, I get this message posted below the page numbers.

VIssa resultat kan ha tagits bort i enlighet med dataskyddslagstiftningen i Europa.

Läs mer

Some results have been removed to comply with European legislation on data protection. Read more

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/

I do self-google now and then since the plagiarism of recent memory and this which Matt found has never come up in my list. But when I clicked the link Matt provided, it did. (BTW, thanks Matt.) So apparently that protection law isn't working as it should. I can't find all hits on my name (only about 24,000 and I used to get many, many more), but others can.

I don't mind so much if it is just workshopped stuff, I'm always up front about that anyway and don't workshop every text I write, but I don't like libelous and false things being there for all eternity. And if it is available, that increases the possibility of text theft. (I know, some people don't mind text theft and will probably post to say so again.)

The point of the EU law was to make it possible for citizens to ask for removal. I recently saw a nasty that I thought was gone forever that has now risen from the dead.

It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World

PS. Personal integrity isn't the only fight the EU is waging with the big boys.

http://time.com/3822956/google-eu-an...case-shopping/

You guys need to elect politicians that don't just punch in, then take a long lunch and punch out. Like whatsisname, Philly "Buster" Alnite.

Matt, don't be too sure that a search won't lead anywhere. When something is cached, it is still findable.

[John Whitworth]

One thing to do is to change the title. I always change my titles. Often you can come up with a better one that way.

The people who take my poems don't seem to care if it has been somewhere else. Les Murray reckons that a different continent doesn't count.

What on earth would the EU know about integrity? All they care about is money, their own money.

[Marcia Karp]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

I've never had an editor deny a poem or a story because it got screen-scraped.

It must be quite an education to get rejection slips that say why your work hasn't been taken.

[Gail White]

I have only once had a poem accepted by a print journal later turned down because it was found on-line (on a site that could only be read with a password). So bear in mind, folks, "First Things" has a demon fact checker.

[Alex Pepple]

Check the thread here for more on the issue of search engine indexing and on escaping it.

About the Rssing outfit that you pointed to, that's an unsanctioned archiving (if we're to call it that), or trawling of Eratosphere from some unknown group or company. It comes across to me more as a spam/scam outfit. But if it's Rss as their site name seem to indicate, then it should be essentially a rolling feed from their web bots of the latest material from Eratosphere, and the several other sites they're scraping, through, which it doesn't always appear to be. Anyhow, I've bothered doing anything about this in the past since it seems to be of minimal impact to the Sphere, and taking action might actually produce more grief than reward.

Rssing--and there may others like it--is, for want of a better word, an Internet-leech website that sucks out the contents of other legitimate websites and republishes it on their scam website for the purpose of slapping ads on the content and generating revenue, which the originating websites don't get a sniff of. I've seen multiple reports from some of the websites they've been victimizing expressing their frustration in achieving little to no success in their attempts to get them to cease and desist. And there also seem to be an extensive list of copyright violation reports filed against them with Google. And, alas, Google doesn't seem to be doing enough to deter them!

Cheers,
...Alex

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Alex Pepple

taking action might actually produce more grief than reward.

Truer words were never spoken. Alex is exactly right about this.

And Janice, the E.U. and Canada are way ahead of the U.S. as far as data privacy and copyright protection go. American laws in this realm are scandalous. We still refer to the DMCA as the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act.'

Lots of people are trying to change things, but we'll get nowhere with this Congress. Best we can hope for is simply to hold our ground. We're so busy with the net neutrality fight we can't even think of all the other battles... which might be exactly why they're trying to take that away.

Thanks,

Bill