If they rip copyrighted materials, yes. Some forms of copyright infringement are punishable by jail time in some jurisdictions.
Depends in my opinion. If you just straight rip off everything from blogs and post it as your own then yea, its copyright infringement. But 'aggregator' type blogs are fine since they get free traffic.
A good rule to follow is, unless it is published Under Creative Commons, or openly stated that you may re-use or republish, then it is not yours to use. Some Autoblogs use RSS feeds that make headlines, and excerpts available to all for syndication, but generally not the entire article, or post. Unless you have permission to use someone else's content on your blog, you are basically stealing, and infringing copyright. I have a few niche aggregator type blogs that show syndicated feeds like All Top, and Pop Urls, those tend to be generally accepted as what they are, and the feeds are linked to and labeled in the name of the source, but if I were just to display headlines, without clearly stating where it is from, then I would b completely wrong, and acting unethically,a nd in most cases illegally. IMO, Autoblogs are a waste of time, and an old tactic that was popular 3 years ago.
Press releases are meant to be distributed, you actually don't need PR web's permission, you can get them from just about any company site. They are the same as everyone else posts them, so it is content probably duplicated and posted many times. And you cannot change, or rewrite a press release. I have a blog that is primarily press releases, I just make sure that I post them first before anyone else in my niche...but to do that, you have to make sure that you get them first, or be available to post them as soon as they come in...most webmasters have a posting schedule and don't post on the fly.
Are 'autoblogs illegal'??? OK, ask yourself this - who are the internet police, and where do they make public the 'laws of the internet'??? That's right, there is no 'internet police'. Or 'internet laws' for that matter. Which means, of course, that they aren't illegal. An autoblog is just a blog that updates itself automatically. The comments about content are correct, but apply to ALL websites, not just autoblogs. If you indulge in copyright theft, expect trouble. That's why you must make everything unique before use. Either write it yourself, re-write it, get someone else to re-write it, or do it automatically. There's a good free into to autoblogging here - autoblogging ebook
Thanks, for the posts help me alot Conclusion: Autoblogs are illegal but they aren't any internet police that can look for them else than the owner
not true. Old stuff that's out of copyright, stuff that's in the public domain, PLR stuff you have rewritten, stuff YOU wrote from scratch, all of these can be used by YOU. As for the people still saying 'illegal'.. go look up what the word means in a dictionary fer chrissakes.
Which is what... 0.01% of the content available on the web? For all practical purposes, one should assume everything is copyrighted unless there is a specific disclaimer saying otherwise.
As i said, Aggregator autoblogs pulls posts from other sites but don't show the full article, instead they link to the original source where users can read the full story. So this way both parties benefit IMHO. I doubt you even read or understood what i wrote but was just looking to increase your post count.
This is the bane of this forum. In between a few interesting posts, you have so much non-sense from people who can barely write in english. They should drop the revenue sharing part.
autoblogs are not illegal, and the chances of anything ever happening to you for using one are slim to none. how often do you check to see if anyone's stole your content? Thought so. most people have lives and really don't care. If they do care, they're searching, then they'd have to find it Let's assume they find it, which wouldn't be an extremely hard task to find really, copyscape would probably find it. then they'd have to call the hosting provider of the website. the hosting company would have to give to you the ISP of the person running the autoblog, or call that ISP themselves (not sure if they just give up the info or make the call themselves. I'm sure they're not going to deal with an ISP, they're too busy to care if someone copied whatever. what they will do is drop the blog, then the content's gone, and there's not a damn thing that can be done anyway. Assuming they give up the information of your ISP, then they gotta make another loop, and call the ISP, and then they'd have to know how to deal the ISP, and the ISP may or may not then give up information on the user. Let's assume they have lawyers and are rich, with that said, I don't really know who has the money to try and sue someone across the planet now-a-days over something like this, but even if they do at this small chance, you take down the blog so your not causing anymore trouble, and I no court is gonna do shit about it, for all they know then since your site isn't around, that it wasn't copied word for word, they were just similar, how they gonna prove it wasn't? They can't Let's say they know what the print screen button does, which I think 2% of people know that, they take a picture of the desktop, awesome, and prove it wasn't photo shopped in defense. .098 percent of people will be willing to jump through all these hoops, if there's ever any harm, I'd be willing to bet you'd just get a threat to begin with, and once you remove the duplicate post, it's all good in da hood. never put on an autoblog that the content is yours use proxies with autoblogs, and they can't trace you....autoblog away folks.
Actually it's a lot easier than that, a DMCA complaint to the host and Google, you're banned from Adsense and/or Google search results, your host will ask you to remove the offending material or it will cancel it in a matter of a few days. TADA.
unless there was money to be made from chasing someone for stealing copyrighted content. So if you want to go down that road - what is the potential damage that could be awarded in whichever country you are amd/or the site is? Or google chooses to ID the publisher with adsense on the page. Or you get the detail from the domain registry. Or the host chooses to help you ID the copyright-infringer by telling you how they paid. Problem for companies giving you an ID will be data protection legislation. Would have thought that many hosts-ISPs-paypal-banks etc would choose to help with chasing someone stealing copyright if they are able to. Well proof is easy - walk into a notary office or other public office where time can be bought and ask them to make a screen print or save a page and cut it to CD. Then ask them to retain it and be prepared to swear it's a true copy on a given date if required. Do that before making first demand from the guy who stole the copyrighted material. Only question is how much $$ could be demanded from the guy who stole the material - ie what basis can damages be legally calculated. If it is enough I'm sure there are lawyers of the ambulance chasing variety who could-would do this.
I am guessing that not all RSS feeds are available for syndication? Which means you have to find those which explicitly say they are? Is that correct? Or would that be covered by "fair use" rules on copyright where quoting and linking to an article is OK if using only a small amount of the text? Why do you think they are a waste of time?