Software Steals Original Web Content for Frankenstein Pages

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SOFTWARE STEALS ORIGINAL CONTENT FOR FRANKENSTEIN PAGES

"Frankenstein Pages" are an emerging "Original Content" abuse. Given that monstrous title by Barry Schwartz in a post to his SERoundtable blog where he points to a HighRankings Forum thread discussing this insidious new web content abuse.

www.seroundtable.com/archives/003465.html

That imaginative title is assigned to articles stitched together from pieces of multiple articles. The Frankenstein content thread is five pages long at Highrankings as of this writing, with SEO's, copywriters and article writers quite rightly upset about new software that pulls sentences from multiple online articles and reassembles them into a new so-called "Original Content" articles.

www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20859

A "mashup software" author (one of many software products making this offensive practice possible) chimes in defending the value of his article theft and sentence stitching software. He claims (wrongly) that all uses of less than 400 words fall under the "Fair Use Doctrine" of copyright law. He has promoted his software via unsolicited emails to SEO's as a way that they might avoid paying for "original content" for their clients. That software pulls content from free article sites, based on keyword phrases found in sentences within those articles, then randomly creates a new article using random keyword focused snippets.

Never mind that those articles are often nonsensical upon any attempt to read them, they are often posted only as fodder for Google Adsense or YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) contextual ads on sites that have no other purpose than to provide blocks of keyword focused text in which to place those ads - hoping to attract visitors who then click away via the Adsense or YPN ads, thus making the site owner hosting those "Frankenstein Pages" advertising income.

The software may also be used to add pages to a site simply to increase the number of pages on a particular topic so that site is seen as a resource with lots of valuable content on a particular topic. While that may work for search engine spiders, it would never work for human readers who spend the time to read those automated assemblages of stolen content. But many believe that the software may help increase ranking of a site in search engine algorithms in some instances.

CONTENT SPIDERS AND SCRAPERS AND BOTS, OH MY!

Copywriters and article marketers universally find use of that type of article "mashup software" offensive and argue that all "fair use" under U.S. Copyright law would require quoting and naming the author, and linking to their site as required in terms of use required by the vast majority of authors writing for free distribution. Imagine the number of links the resulting "mashup" articles would carry if that usage agreements were followed as required by authors. A standard four paragraph, 500 word article would end up with between five and ten citations of author sources and links to each.

www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

Further, those article distribution sites clearly post additional terms of use which prohibit "scraping" of those sites with automated software of any kind, and each employ methods of detection intended to stop "scraper bots" by denying them site access by automated means (IP address denial, access frequency "Captcha" image password forms). Each of those article sites also restrict numbers of articles which can be used by any one site and the types of uses to which the pieces can be put (no warez, offensive, hate, unsolicited commercial emails).

copyright.publish101.com www.ezinearticles.com/terms-of-service.html www.goarticles.com/publisher.html

But regardless of copyright laws, author usage restrictions or article site terms of use limitations, there continue even more abuses. A little digging uncovers worms selling article databases prepackaged with articles which were distributed to free article sites. These prepackaged article templated sites sell full databases of thousands of articles built-in to "ready to publish" sites pre-stocked with content openly scraped from article archives such as those mentioned above and many others. Those assembling those packages care not that both authors and article archive sites specifically forbid such commercial use.

PRIVATE LABEL RIGHTS TURN ILLITERATES INTO AUTHORS

At the bottom of the web content barrel are content crumbs floating in a slimy, drippy morass of words known as "PLR" articles. "Private label rights" are an attempt to make recycled hashes of bad writing and encourage content hungry site owners to purchase awful article collections and apply their own names and site links to the bubbling morass of steaming wretch. Several PLR sources then encourage further "customization" of those reheated web content leftovers for RESALE to others!

Some PLR sites simply encourage site members and users of that rewarmed slurp to distribute it to the free article sites with their own names on it, leading to identical articles submitted by dozens of named authors at article sites. This offensive practice has meant that legitimate article sites must then adopt both automated filtering methods for duplicate content and outright banning of some authors and/or pen names.

That "Original Content" is so highly valued by web sites means that illicit methods of content creation will proliferate, including "Mashup" software stealing sentences from authors without attribution and reassembling "Frankenstein pages" and "Private Label Rights" articles out of stolen content.

There are many thousands of freely available articles written by knowledgeable and experienced writers which could be drawn from established article archives and used legitimately, with full author approval. The only requirement to those using those articles being that they agree to terms of use plainly stated by authors. But those who resort to "Frankenstein Pages" and "Private Label Rights" articles made up of stolen, plagiarized or "writing sweatshop" produced work are perverting legitimate web content - and clogging the search engines with sp*mmy pages of gibberish.

The true solution to this very difficult problem is for both Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network to more thoroughly review the sites participating in their contextual advertising programs to verify they are not using stolen or PLR articles. If Adsense and YPN abuses are allowed to continue, further content abuses will flourish.

-- Mike Banks Valentine blogs on Search Engine developments from RealitySEO.com and can be contacted for ethical SEO work at: www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm He runs web content distribution site at: Publish101.com A longer version (2100 words) of this article is available at: ezinearticles.com/?id=161851