Open The Dialogue

Now, as I scroll into the archives of this site, it appears that this sort of thing has been going on since April of 2004, when this post went live with an item, copied straight from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was published to the blog. There isn't even a link to the original source or article.

There are plenty of people online discussing "fair use" and how it can be applied to republishing of articles on blogs and elsewhere, along with images, and other copyrighted content. As far as I know, you still have to secure rights from most organizations, even if you're a nonprofit group. Typically, the only ways I've ever seen anyone legitimately use content rights in order to "republish" most or all of an article's text is when they're fisking it, or are an educational institution, and that's about it

This firm is doing exactly zero as far as effort goes when it comes to maintaining a blog. They're repurposing someone else's content, providing no additional value, and not sourcing (read:linking) anything. It doesn't matter that they list the full headline and the article's author and date. This goes well beyond what any blogger should be doing on an individual blog, even once, and I would have expected that a professional organization that prides itself on using the legal system properly would have at least made sure that they could handle using a blog properly.

Making it even more frustrating is when you see news like this article in a recent Puget Sound Business Journal, where one of the firm's named partners, William Marler, discussed how Marler Clark is using the Web to market itself. I'm blockquoting one quote here, which I don't think the journal nor its author, Clay Holtzman, would be upset about, given that I am citing them directly and linking their way.

On the effectiveness of using blogs, Web sites and media interviews to market his firm: We know more about this stuff (food-borne illness) than anyone in the world, frankly, certainly any lawyers in the world. We took this data out there (on the firm's Web site) and originally it was for informational purposes. Now, when you type in "E. coli lawyer" or "salmonella lawyer" or whatever, or you type in "salmonella," it's likely that relatively quickly on Google you will find my site, or one of our sites. ... Our competition (in search-engine rankings) isn't other lawyers on the Web. Our competition is the Centers for Disease Control or Food and Drug Administration.

That very well may be that you do " know more about this stuff" than anyone else in the world, especially in a law firm. Unfortunately, of course typing in "E. coli lawyer" into Google will drive people, for the most part, to your "blog," because you used that name as the "writer" for each of the entries on that particular blog, and that exact text is dynamically published over and over again across your blog. Anyone with a little bit of search engine optimization knowledge could tell you that that would have happened. Unfortunately, your knowledge doesn't at all come through on your "blog," merely your ability repeatedly source a significant amount of the articles that come out on any given day about this particular topic.

When first coming across this, I was quite a bit peeved. After doing a little more research this week, I was more than just disappointed in how this "blog" was run. Why? Because there are 10 more where that came from, plus the "blog" run by Bill Marler himself. Marler's site, thankfully, has a bit more commentary from him here and there than the others do, such as this item from Thursday, but the other sites are merely search engine plays, what I'd consider exactly zero percent better than the spam blogs - or splogs, as most call them - that are clogging up the blogosphere, these days. Type in just about anything gadget related, for instance, into Technorati and I'd be surprised if you didn't see them. Typically, they take RSS feeds from other blogs on those topics, along with content from major publications with the same keywords, and publish them on pages filled with Google AdSense links or other advertisements, hoping to draw clickthroughs that way. Frankly, that's an epidemic.

Effectively, Marler Clark is doing a disservice to companies looking to use blogs to promote their businesses, and position themselves as thought leaders within any space. While I won't talk about the egregiousness of hundreds (I don't even want to count) of articles that are fully reprinted on this blog, sans links and commentary, for the most part, I will say that going forward, if this firm wants to "do the right thing" in this situation, all they need to do is actually commit to being a part of the blogosphere, not using it as an SEO scam. Sure, a lot of companies use blogs as a way to optimize their overall searches, and that's not a terrible thing, but it shouldn't be the only thing. If Marler Clark were attracting people to these blogs because they were saying something of importance, rather than capitalizing on the work of others and their ability to use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V keys on their keyboards, then maybe this would be a good idea. Until that point comes, though, they shouldn't be cited anywhere as knowing what they are doing in the blogosphere, because it's a huge insult to those of us who try and work every day to provide interesting words, pictures, and other content for others to read, look at, enjoy, learn from, and forward along to others.

Earlier this week, I was in touch with various representatives at one of the wire services whose articles have been republished, and another of the city papers that was included. On Thursday, I sent an e-mail to the media contact listed on Marler Clark's Website about this, to see if they were a) aware of what they were doing and b) what the overall strategy behind these "blogs" was supposed to be. I have yet to receive a response. I've included one of the grafs from my email below.

Hundreds – if not more – of bloggers and others writing online have been called out by publications and their attorneys for publishing partial articles, and full articles is an absolute no-no. My concern here is that it is setting an example of how an organization can blog, and attract traffic from search engines, without providing much of the content on its own. This blog, along with the other ones referenced on your Marler Blog are primarily using the works of major publications in order to drive traffic to your site(s). Typically, this wouldn’t be an issue to reference that much news content – it’s what blogs do every day - because there would be content of your own posted on those sites, with LINKS to the articles being referenced, and a point of view or commentary. That’s how 99% of the blogs out there operate, but not the ones that your firm is operating.

Now, I can see the company purchasing reprint rights for a lot of the articles that they are featured in, like the ones on the sidebar of their Marler Clark Website, but it isn't a cheap option to go about doing. Most companies take the tack of summarizing what was said and linking to the original source, because it allows them to have a little bit of editorial control over what they are trying to point out with regard to the article in question - plus, it's much cheaper. To that end, if Marler Clark comes out and says that they have purchased indefinite reprint rights for their "blogs" and what they are doing, or can flat out prove, via either caselaw or something else, that this is perfectly legitimate for people to do on blogs with no repurcussions, not only will I apologize to them right here in this space, but we can commend them for singlehandedly overturning copyright law when it comes to someone looking to capitalize on the work of all of our publications and media outlets, not to mention making a lot of bloggers pleased that they don't have to put any extra effort into writing their own content on blogs. But seriously, if we find that this is in some way "legitimate" I will gladly apologize in this space, but honestly, I don't see that happening, based on my knowledge, past experience, and understanding of how copyright law works.

I welcome any comments or thoughts you all have on this topic, as copyright law is a big issue for bloggers in a lot of cases, with photos being the primary culprit, but text is significantly in play, obviously. Additionally, it would be great to hear how other people feel about a company utilizing blogs in this fashion to further their own efforts, so much so that it wouldn't surprise me to see their entries actually come up *above* the original articles that are being reprinted.