Article Bot - Theft or just great content generation?

stealing is stealing...you don't copy content out of books, put it on the internet and call it your own do you? have respect for the time and intellectual effort people put in to their works. whether it be an article, a piece of poetry or whatever.

 

I did a review of Article Bot, "Which is Better, Article Bot Or Traffic Equalizer?"
http://www.seo-traffic-rank.com if you care to read it all.

Basically, ethics aside, I agree Article Bot is a very useful and powerful tool with many applications. My only problem with it is the costly recurring charges for it. I compared it to Traffic Equalizer because basically you can accomplish the same thing with TE, that is get more traffic, but in a totally different way. Unfortuneately, TE seems to be frowned at just as much as Article Bot.

If you like the basic idea behind Article Bot either hold off, there is a runor that Article Bot will be dropping their montly recurring fee to be more competitive. There are actually other services similar to AB with lower monthly rates.

I'm still put off by recurring monthly fee's regardless what the program or service may do. There are plenty of other alternatives out there where you simply buy the program, no recurring charges, and accomplish the same goal.

Article Bot does not break any laws, there is no copyright infringements, so this is a non-issue for me. I'm comparing price to results.

Regards!

 

Plagiarism:
Presenting someone else’s work as if it were your own, without proper acknowledgment of the original source.

Plagiarism can be in form of "direct & word-for-word copying" or "the theft of the substance or idea of the work".


Notes about plagiarism:
Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law.

Although there're grey areas in determining which is plagiarism, the main point is "honesty". If you truly think of an idea by yourself and present it in your article, but it happens to be similar to others, you are not guilty of plagiarism.

General ideas and common knowledge are not considered plagiarism even if I do not cite the original source. Just like when someone says "vegetable is good to our health"; "every human has a heart", and I say these knowledge/ideas in my aticle. It is perfectly fine, NOT plagiarism.

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After that, I can't see the abovenamed popular websites are primiarily plagiarism.

 

Some points show it's ok to use articlebot to rewrite people's articles. For some reasons like:

1. all other popular websites involve in plagiarism too
2. some others still post illegal things or do simialr illegal things
3. Article Bot broken no law, no copyright infringement
4. Article Bot are trying to rewrite people's articles into unique versions. So it is not stealing/copying, the article is yours.
5. some good webites are computer-generated content

--Part 1--

OK. Let's discuss each point separately.

1&2)
The argument simply use the reasoning that since others do so, it is ok to follow.The number of people doing the same act means little in proving/justifying the correctness of one's action.
Some examples may illustrate well.

In our daily lives, there are crimes all over the world. Then does it mean it is ok to have crimes?
Now since crimes are unavoidable, does it mean it is ok for the police let them go, not doing anything to stop it from spreading/growth?

We are not copycats.
If everyone follows others to decide which to do, which not. There will be no creativity nor reform, and the world will not improve.
If something goes wrong, everyone follows. The world will be in stagnancy.
Equalism, democracy etc. would have not existed.

Judge the correctness of one's act based on reasoning and rationality, NOT on how many number of people do so.

3)
Actually this kind of behaviour is copyright infringement.
What you only do is to rewrite people's articles. All the originality is from the author, NOT you. you don't need to copy word-by-word in order to infringe others work. Copying their "ideas" are too!

However you may try to mask your activity by different techniques.
So you can only say your actiivty is indeed copyright infringement, but it may be hard for others to find evidence and sue you for copyright infringement.

OK, even assuming it is legal, you may think whether it is moral automatically, or whether it is right/okay to do so?

In moral views, the answer is not positive.

** Law is not perfect
Law is supposed to be just, fair and moral. However it is just partially true.
Law is made by human. They may make mistakes.

Eg1:
History proves it is surely wrong.
Law is created by primarily one man (the king/queen) in the past.
Something can be legalised for many evil reasons (eg self-interest).

In the past, war was usual. Different countries war against each other.
All people have to obey the king/queen.
Freedom of speech was strictly prohbited.
There was slavery.

Eg2:
Nowadays, gamble is commonplace. If you are an anti-gambler, you can see it is quite common gamble is legalised in many counries. Thus people can feel free to gamble in authorised organization. To me, it is sometimes irrational. On one hand, government discourage gamble and make laws to illegalise it. On the other hand, government authorise related organization to engage in gamble business, and government tax the revenue from this business.

 

--Part 02--

4)
Apart form the fact that the nature of this activity is copyright infringement, the articles are not yours for many senses. One sense is:

You changes the "package" only, not the "substance/content"
What you do is to rewrite the sentences. The ideas of the authors remain the same. Some other simialr examples which can make this point clearer:
- you "take" an author's design of a toy. What you do is to change the color and replace the logo with yours. Your toy is not really yours. you just "copy others work"
- This time, you do not copy the author's design. Rather you are inspiried by its design; and so you can create your own design. That's yours since you have added all sorts of originality and your ideas into the design. However to be moral, it is a good idea to credit the author that its deisgn inspires you.

5)
It is the use of an analogy.
Yes, both article bot and some websites are generated mainly by computers.
Some computer-generated websites are excellent.
So it seems things generated by article bot is excellent in the same sense.
Both cases appear to share things in common.
However you miss out the main point/factor which make them different, or falsify your illustration by this analogy.

Computer-generated alone has no direct relationship between quality work and poor work.
Eg: A robot translation (computer-generated) is worse than human translation.
Rename the files systematically by computer (computer-genarated) is better than it is done by humans. No mistakes/typos. No boredom. computer is the best at duplicate work.

Both cases are examples of computer-generated work, but with different results.

Now talk about your case:
As the former, what you do is to rewrite people's articles and make it as if your own work. This is a bad idea in terms of contribution:
- if you wish to spread the good ideas of the author's article, why not simply paste its content and credit its work? It's advantageous in several senses:
- you save your time to rewrite the work
- you keep the ideas intact, so it reduces the chances of distorting its meaning
- if you create dynamic linking of its article, you don't need to spend efforts to update the article when the original author modify it.
- you will not criticised as "content/credit" theft
- if someone has read the original author elsewhere, it is a waste of time for them to realise that it is just a rewritten article. If it is the "original version, the reader can spot it out very quickly.

As to the latter, it involves some duplicate work (eg they need to update the data and charts etc.) All of them are just plain boring and duplicate with no variation or human analysis skills invovled. This is best done by computer. As I always says, computer are the world's greatest guy for duplicate and boring work/tasks.

After all, I'm pretty sure many will agree that the act of rewriting is dishonest. I think users who use article bots are not going to credit the authors' work nor informing the authors of your acts (and ask for permissions). Readers who don't recongize/realise the authors' work will almost always tihnk it is your work.

 

After all, it is up to individuals to decide.
The government authority cannot really stop you form doing this.
So it is all left to your own's moral standards and conscience.

Anyway, what I wish to say is please be considerate! They may have spent hours or days of work to present the articles. Is it really so hard to credit their work? I think it is a perfectly fair deal. You are free to quote their work. What you need to do is to type a sentence to thank them and credit their work. Is it so hard to do so?

Be considerate! What do you feel when your long-time contributions are simply taken from others, and they claim it is theirs, without even giving you any credits? Even worse, people thought they are the original authors, and you are the copycat! Not a good feeling, right?

 

you can also chat with articlebot in a forum near you..

http://www.google.com/search?q=arti...ient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

 

It sounds a great tool

 

I couldn't agree more... well put!

 

On the subject of manipulating articles written by youself, lifted from free-to-use article directories or PLR packages, using bots to create "new" articles- anyone used deskpile shuffler? It is a kind of article "wrapper", and I would like to clarify a few things about how it is used by someone who has already figured it out.

(Before we get into the "ethics" of this, let me clarify this - I write my own aticles for directories, even though it takes quite a while, and I submit them with a long interval between them. Right now I have published just three articles, although I have another five ready. Most of you in Adsense would have seen my article "Is Adsense Corrupting the Internet?" on many blogs and web pages.)

 

Stealing content and reprinting it with a few words changed so it looks unique is not really new, and some people are all about the mass-production of content, not quality. I think the best individual sites are going to remain those with custom-personalized content written by the users themselves.

 

For those who haven't seen them, there are 2 sites out there now using similar software and charging membership fees of those willing to pay. They are both using the same program but seem to be owned by 2 different people. Since they are identicle except for name and owner, who's to know that they weren't done in conjunction with one another?

They are simple programs which insert 3 new paragraphs into a chosen article, supposedly making the content %30-40 unique. They do not rewrite the original content, which is fine because they are touted for use with PLR articles. The problem will come in when 5000 people create only slighty different articles and sites. At some point the content will have to called duplicate, and make most of it useless.

One unfortunate truth that will always remain with us is that the masses follow fad and fashion. Another is that most people don't have the personal knowledge that would allow them to write totally unique articles with truly quality content. They spend their time learning about their subject matter by reading what was written by someone else. How then can they write something totally unique?

Most ideas have been put forth already in some form or another until something totally unique and brand new gets invented. Invent a new piece of software and people start writing reviews. Come up with something new and people start trying to write ad copy to sell it.

I would much rather see people use AB and at least rearrange the content and possibly add something from themselves.

The last and most unfortunate truth is that there will always be some shortcut to doing all of the work yourself. Not because people are lazy and/or untalented, but because by the time you grow up, only the most personal of situations will be able to bring about totally unique thoughts. The reason, our brains will always access some of the information that has been inserted throughout our lives, whenever we choose to deal with any given subject that isn't totally personal.

 

Article Bot was good when it came out, but far too slow IMO. I designed the software I use because I needed automation. I get great results with far less effort.

 

Sorry to reopen this thread but it needs to be said. I read on another site that it contained spyware, which opens ports on your computer and either gives direct access to the author or uploads info from your pc to his. I wasnt able to verify which of the two was going on. Instantly my spyware detector went off and immediately I received an email from my ISP's security team advising me my computer was attacking other pcs.

I know this wasnt my own pc becuase I purposely installed it on my test machine which had a fresh install of XP on it.

BEWARE of installing this software.

 

Wow. Amazing. The perils of downloading stuff off of the Web.

Re the original debate, of course it's stealing. Scraping other people's content and republishing it in contravention of the terms under which they provided it is the very definition of copyright theft.

Spinning it to try and make it unique compounds the crime by trying to hide the fact you're using stolen content.

The good news for copywriters now is that Google just implemented their spun text tests, and now not only is duplicate content worthless, but content spinning is dead.

RIP content spinning!