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Why do I get enraged by this sort of activity? I remember when one of my sites was voted against, and Google paid someone to steal it and wrap it in AdSense. The person who stole my content outranked me for my own content because a Google engineer thought that was reasonable and fair.
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from Harith 1293 Days ago #
Votes: -1

I’m Desphinning.Aaron Wall hasn’t been accurate in telling the whole story about: "I remember when one of my sites was voted against, and Google paid someone to steal it and wrap it in AdSense. The person who stole my content outranked me for my own content because a Google engineer thought that was reasonable and fair."Here is Matt Cutts reply to above:As far as "Google paid someone to steal it and wrap it in AdSense," if this is the incident I remember--that site was not only kicked out of Google’s index, but the publisher was also banned from AdSense after you mentioned it.

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from richiepear 1293 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Worth checking out Aaron’s replyMy personal opinion on the answer to that question is that Google knows they are using the work of theives to help commoditize information to force the original providers to be more open, increasing the quality of Google’s search results and giving Google more ad inventory. And the second piece of this gripe is that on Knol you show that you guys are fairly sophisticated at detecting duplicate content (or, at least the worst kinds of it). Why not scan new sites in the AdSense program to check for potential issues?

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from Harith 1293 Days ago #
Votes: -1

As to Aaron Wall’s reply:"My personal opinion on the answer to that question is that Google knows they are using the work of theives to help commoditize information to force the original providers to be more open, increasing the quality of Google’s search results and giving Google more ad inventory. "Aaron Wall has the right to have any personal opinion he wish. However, it would have been of great value if he mentioned few documentations to his claim.As to:"And the second piece of this gripe is that on Knol you show that you guys are fairly sophisticated at detecting duplicate content (or, at least the worst kinds of it). "Duplicate content isn’t always an indication of copyright infringement.

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from qeorge 1293 Days ago #
Votes: 0

That is completely absurd that Google is allowing content it knows is duplicated to outrank its original source. At what point does favoring in-house content become an anti-trust issue?

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from Halfdeck 1293 Days ago #
Votes: 2

"At what point does favoring in-house content become an anti-trust issue?"George, do you always believe everything you read, just because you want to?

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from Harith 1293 Days ago #
Votes: -1

And here is a happy ending :-)----------------------Matt Cutts: Aaron, ....I will ask someone from Blogger about the blog that you mentioned though and ask them to investigate it.Aaron Wall: Thnx Matt---------------------And I thought Aaron Wall’s current post was about Google Knol :-)

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from tamar 1293 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Harith, really, it’s your fault for bringing the discussion off topic. ;) :P

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from Harith 1292 Days ago #
Votes: -2

tamar,Good morning.I’m discussing specific exact quotes from the current article. How could that be off topic? ;-)

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from NickWilsdon 1292 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Getting back to the origional point for a moment - what is to stop people stripping content from Wikipedia to put into Google Knol? Especially considering that Wikipedia themselves have been accused of stealing content from sites (with or without a reference). I take it from Aaron’s article that Knol already seem quite comfortable with the issue.

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from Halfdeck 1292 Days ago #
Votes: 2

"I take it from Aaron’s article that Knol already seem quite comfortable with the issue."From my interactions with Googlers, I know there are people lower in Google’s chain of command who aren’t as devoted to the "do-no-evil" philosophy as Matt Cutts, so its not far-fetched to believe that Google knol’s long game is to become a Wikipedia killer. Where else could it be heading? Google was a replacement for Yahoo, Gmail a replacement for Outlook, Google Docs a replacement for Excel/Word/Writely, Google Video a failed attempt at replacing YouTube. Google is basically playing online Monopoly, intent on winning not by changing the rules of the game but by buying up Boardwalk, Park Place, and Pennsylvania Avenue. So I’d imagine Google has no problem with content migrating from Wikipedia to Knol as long as it doesn’t cause a PR issue.Off-topic, but Ann Patterson’s reason for leaving Google highlights stagnation of imagination at Google: ""Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now.""

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from NickWilsdon 1292 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Actually just seen this in Techcrunch----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Very soon we are going to see a lot of Wikipedia content moving wholesale to Knol. Wikipedia content is basically free to use, redistribute, copy, whatever, under the GNU license: All text in Wikipedia is covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work. Anyone writing for Knol is likely to at least peruse Wikipedia content before publishing. And if they see anything good, they are at liberty to simply lift and copy it over to Knol, and get a adsense check for their time. So, in a way, Google has found a way to monetize Wikipedia content after all.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I also note Slashdot writing about them moving to a CC license. If this stops redistribution for profit can I can see an issue but a lot of this licence stuff still goes flying over my head :)

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from Giovanna 1292 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Harith - Good job for taking what could be a very important topic off-track. The problem today is when people take the narrow details into context while dismissing the entire message. Most of our communication is non-verbal so citing examples, especially if it’s tied to the author’s experience, will help validate the point. In the very first paragraph, he linked to two websites that noticed the same trend.You said - "And I thought Aaron Wall’s current post was about Google Knol :-)"If it wasn’t Aaron’s deep, almost idealistic interest towards the Web, what would it be about? People stealing his ebook? People stole his book left and right, on ebay, forums, people emailing it to dozens of their friends, corporations buying one copy then freely distributing to large teams. He didn’t mention those details in his post because that wasn’t the message he was trying to convey. He cited Google SERPS and his concerns on copyright.

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from Harith 1291 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Giovanna,When an article being submitted to Sphinn (especially those articles which go Hot on the front page of Sphinn), we might expect that the whole article or part of it would be discussed. I can’t see anything wrong in that. Aaron Wall has chosen his current article to cover two subjects:-  Google Knol- Copyright infringement of his own book. Aaron Walls ended his article referring to the said Copyright infringement with the following lines:"Can a casual mention get it removed? Nope. Can flagging it as spam and highlighting that it is stolen copyright content get it removed? Nope. I need to file a DMCA request to get it removed. (Or maybe they will remove it out of embarrassment after I hit publish on this post...we shall see!)"As you see, Aaron Wall himself has paid much attention to the Copyright infringement part  of the article.Through the comments of the same article, Aaron Wall has also paid much attention to that Copyright infringement case. Matt Cutts has also posted comments on the same article regarding that case.I have chosen to discuss the above mentioned second part of Aaron Wall’s article. Shouldn’t I or any other Sphinn’s community member be allowed to do so without being accused of posting off-topic (by tamar) or being attacked and accused of "taking what could be a very important topic off-track" by you?Do you and tamar intend to mandate in future which parts of a submitted article Sphinn members are allowed to discuss? 

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from evilgreenmonkey 1291 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Although I do not personally agree with the reason that Harith gave for Desphinning this article, it was still a valid reason. Anything discussed in the submitted story is open for discussion, and Sphinn members are free to sway conversation in any direction that remains on-topic (which this does).The sarcasm doesn’t help much though Harith ;)

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from Harith 1291 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Thanks for chiming in, Rob. Much appreciated.

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from Harith 944 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Aaron Wall hasn’t been accurate in telling the whole story about: "I remember when one of my sites was voted against, and Google paid someone to steal it and wrap it in AdSense."

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