News Source: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com
Story Found By: mvandemar 1312 Days ago
Category: SEO
27 Comments
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News Source: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com
Story Found By: mvandemar 1312 Days ago
Category: SEO
27 Comments
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Comments
I honestly hope it doesn’t get to this.
OK, this is a post you should pull because anyone following your bad advice that gets in trouble will own your ass.Using a DMCA in this manner will blow up in your face because lists of URIs and anchor text don’t really constitute copyright infringment.http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/faq.cgi#QID459"Question: Does copyright protect words or short phrases? Answer: No. Names, titles, and short phrases are not subject to copyright protection. These are not deemed to be "original works of authorship" under the Copyright Act. Names may be protected by trademark, in some instances. See the Trademark FAQ for more information."SEOMoz’s counterclaim can collect damages for your frivolous DMCA claimhttp://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-notice-targeting-your-content"Note, however, that this provision also works against a person or company sending a wrongful takedown notice. If someone claims in a takedown notice that you are infringing their copyrighted material while knowing this to be false, then you can win damages from them in a lawsuit."So I’d bury that article and this Sphinn and pray nobody tries that DMCA trick.
I’m amazed that Rand lets things fester like this... for a guy involved with "Social Media", hosting community events at search conferences, and betting his farm on selling tools into that same community, something just doesn’t add up.That he’s spending VC money along the way makes it even stranger. If no one on his board will say what needs to be said, I will : Reach out, Rand. Fix the problems that are festering, because they obviously come back to bite you and you can’t afford to be bitten too many more times.
What still amazes me are Rand’s repeated assertions that we can opt out using the META SEOMOZ tag -- when in reality that tag doesn’t do shit. Linkscape will still display backlinks to your site and your site will still be scraped. So why wasn’t he honest and just say there is no way in hell you can completely opt out of linkscape?<div></div><div></div><div>What irks me isn’t the bandwith I’m going to lose to Linkscape or competitive data its dishonesty.<div><div></div><div> </div></div></div>
Likewise, none of the meta tags in any search engine do anything until those pages are crawled a second time so you can’t fault Linkscape for being any better or worse than the rest.However, a robots.txt entry would be preferred as I’m not cluttering up any pages with their meta tag.
"Likewise, none of the meta tags in any search engine do anything until those pages are crawled a second time so you can’t fault Linkscape for being any better or worse than the rest."<div></div><div></div><div>Bill, no matter how many times Linkscape crawls a META tagged page it doesn’t block backlink data from showing in Linkscape. </div><div></div><div></div><div>Rand: "even with any form of blocking, we’ll still be showing all the links that point to a given site or page. Blocking really just means that you won’t show up as a link source when someone you link to is queried."</div><div></div><div></div><div>Rand Fishkin’s initial response:</div><div></div><div></div><div>"If SEOmoz is listing pages based on its own and third party data, can you choose to opt-out from being listed?</div><div></div>Yes you can - no matter where we get data from, you can use the meta seomoz noindex tag to say "don’t show my URL in your results" and we will respect that."<div></div><div></div><div>In that comment there are several things he decided not to mention - including the tidbit in the first quote.</div>
Why would it ever block backlink data?You can ban Yahoo from crawling your site too but they’ll still show all your backlink data.Everyone has to ban a crawler before all backlink tracking goes away.
Bill, you really need to not quote stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion. And please, stop spreading fear where none need exist. If you attempt to abuse the DMCA process in order to take down sites that are not stealing content that is yours, then yes, of course there can be repercussions. Those measures are not meant to keep people from protecting what is rightfully theirs, however. Rand banks enough on ignorance without fueling it further, ok?
"You can ban Yahoo from crawling your site too but they’ll still show all your backlink data."Obviously, but you’re missing the point. Linkscape is not a search engine. It’s a backlink analysis tool. People were asking for a way to block Linkscape from displaying competitve intelligence data (like who’s linking to them). No one cares about linkscape showing a site’s pages in results. Rand led people believe that kind of blocking was possible using the META SEOMOZ tag - and it is possible if Rand agreed not have Linkscape display a site’s backlinks. Reality is the tag basically does nothing and neither will robots.txt since its in Rand’s best interest to prevent people from opting out. All that’s fine if he just came out and said "screw you we’re gonna scrape the web whether you like it or not, make money, and in exchange here’s this kick ass tool come check it out." But instead I’ve been getting smoke and mirrors. All I’m asking for is just a little honesty.
Jill and Halfdeck, excuse me, but how is using the DMCA exactly the way it was intended pusing things? If you’re saying that, then you are in essense saying that you agree with Rand, we don’t even have the right to ask him not to spider or display our data... it’ simply not ours, he does not need our permission, he can do whatever the hell he wants, and that’s all there is to it.You two really think that’s the case?
@mvandemar"Bill, you really need to not quote stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion."Excuse me? Did you really spout that line with a straight face?What I quoted was dead on the money as Linkscape only uses URIs, titles and anchor text which the legal beagles say are NOT COPYRIGHTABLE!I use DMCA all the time and I wouldn’t have the balls to file such complaint because I don’t like being in the wrong.
a) "titles" in what you quoted refers to "Doctor", "Mister", etc., not the titles as they pertain to webpages.b) We are not talking about copyrighting an individual URL. In the same way that each or the individual words within a paragraph is not copyrightable in and of themselves, you are correct, an individual url by itself is not either. We are not talking about an individual URL tho, are we Bill? Instead what we are talking about is the entire set of links contained within each site. For starters, each link is more that simply a url... it is the url, anchor text, and attributes (including nofollow) combined together. The set of links that are contained within a site go even beyond that, to describe a structure of pathways that help to define that site.
@Halfdeck, I’m not missing the point whatsoever, so pay close attention.You can only request someone to remove content crawled from YOUR site, you can’t request content removed from other sites even it if links to yours since the content, including those backlinks, aren’t on your site therefore doesn’t belong to you in the first place.The only way you can get all of the backlinks out of Linkscape is to request each and everyone one of the sites that backlinks to yours to also request being removed from Linkscape.
@mvander I think we’re having a disconnect on the term titles. What part of "short phrases" are you not understanding? The page titles are "short phrases", I was not referring to the other type of titles although the quote contained that term which created some confusion obviously.Besides, if you want to make a case you’ll have a better chance using "trespass to chattels" and AUP violations than copyright "by depriving the owners of the full use of their machines" which eBay used with success against Bidder’s Edge, however technical means are considered more appropriate than legal means.FWIW, Linkscape has *NEVER* spidered one of my sites, it was blocked from the beginning so technically it can be stopped. However, all of the inbound links were recorded but those aren’t on my site and beyond my ability to block.<h3 class="r"></h3>
"You can only request someone to remove content crawled from YOUR site"<div></div><div></div><div>Bill, you pay attention. We’re talking about SEOMoz and Linkscape, not Google, Yahoo, or MSN. There’s nothing stopping Rand from honoring a webmaster’s request to hide backlinks to sites he owns from public view (though not sure it would do much good since Site Explorer already displays most of that data).</div><div></div><div></div><div>Is SEOMoz legally bound to honor that request? No Rand can do whatever he wants. The fact of the matter is Rand created the the impression that he will honor that request. That impression was misleading. Did he lie? No. But that for me isn’t good enough.</div><div></div><div></div><div>"The only way you can get all of the backlinks out of Linkscape is to request each and everyone one of the sites that backlinks to yours to also request being removed from Linkscape."</div><div></div><div></div><div>Again, you’re confusing Linkscape with a search engine. It would be trivial for a code monkey to reprogram the back end so that if a competitor requests to see backlinks to your site and that site is on a "block list" those links won’t be displayed. It could be coded probably in under 5 minutes.</div>
There is nothing different from one crawler to the next, Google, Yahoo or Linkscape, so let’s not go confusing this as there are a ton of crawlers and all crawlers can be blocked from your site.However, you do not control nor have any legal grounds over whether or not others block the same crawlers from their site.You can request Linkscape not to disclose YOUR site’s data but you have ZERO authority to request Linkscape not to disclose the content on someone else’s site, even if it links to you, it doesn’t not belong to you.I am not confusing Linkscape with a SE whatsoever, a crawler is a crawler and freely publicly available data is just that, freely publickly available. Unless you block access to that data, it’s there for the taking. I blocked access, mine was not there for the taking, but all of the people that linked to me allowed theirs to be taken.Of course they could code up a block list, but as it stands with most case law, the most they are required to do is block access to your site only which doesn’t include your backlinks.Sorry, nothing currently supports your case and I’m not arguing whether it should or shouldn’t, it just currently doesn’t and Linkscape is well within their rights based on everything else out there.MajesticSEO does the same thing as Linkscape with the minor exception they give the site owner a free taste of their own data as a reward for letting them crawl.
Actually Bill, if you request that Google remove you from their index I do believe that they remove all references, including results that would otherwise show with the link: operator. I think Yahoo is the same. An un- or deindexed domain does not return any results. It may not be a nobrainer, but there is no reason why all references to a site could not be removed.MajesticSEO does the same thing as Linkscape with the minor exception they give the site owner a free taste of their own data as a reward for letting them crawl.And the major exceptions that they will honor your wishes not to spider your site with the inclusion of a single ua in your robots.txt, and don’t pretend to be someone they are not.
No, Google doesn’t remove all references from sites no longer in their index, you can still search for all references to those sites, I do it all the time. The link operator is only valid for a domain in the index, this is more of a database organization thing that anything else.For instance search example.com which isn’t in their index:"Sorry, no information is available for the URL example.com * If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link: example.com * Find web pages from the site example.com * Find web pages that contain the term "example.com""So they still show you every site that contains the term example.com, so you can find backlinks whether the site exists in Google or not. Go to Yahoo and "link:example.com" shows all the backlinks for a non-existant domain! http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com&bwm=i&bwmf=u&bwms=p&fr=my-myy&fr2=seo-rd-se I agree there is no reason they can’t remove all references but there is no precedence for doing it."And the major exceptions that they will honor your wishes not to spider your site with the inclusion of a single ua in your robots.txt, and don’t pretend to be someone they are not."OK, the spider that came to my site appeared to honor robots.txt so let’s not run off making accusations that have yet to be proven. Nobody ever said there was a spider called "Linkscape" and that’s certainly not what I blocked.Heck, if you want to get into serious bot blocking I can rattle off a bunch of bots that crawl daily and sell your stuff and you don’t even know they exist but they are there, they are on your blog, they are much worse than anything Linkscape has done. People would be better off worrying about stopping the spybots that sell reports to large corporations and the government than this little fiasco.
http://www.example.com/ actually does exist, and people do link to it. It just blocks everything via robots.txt. This serach, for instance, shows a url only listing of it in Google:http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2F&btnG=SearchI was talking more about domains that had been requested to be removed.
I know some domains delisted by request or kicked out, you think I’m going to out sites just to make a point?Removal by robots.txt is sufficient, that’s a request to be removed.Did I say "doesn’t exist" ? I said non-existant in their index "example.com which isn’t in their index".Sheesh.Welcome to Quibbleville.
Bill, I’ve never argued against SEOMoz’ right not to block linkdata or the limitation on my right to demand backlink data to my site to be blocked. If you ask is SEOMoz required by law to remove backlink data to my site if I request that data to be blocked, the answer obviously is no. But that issue never concerned me.If SEOMOz said right off the bat "we’re going to crawl you whether you like it or not and show your backlinks to the public" I would have said "go right ahead." I myself wrote a bunch of scrapers that crawl all over the web I don’t bother asking anyone for permission.What I’m concerned with is how Linkscape was marketed. Arguing that SEOMoz has the right not to block link data doesn’t void the fact that marketing of Linkscape was misleading: that they gave the impression that they would block link data upon request and the reality that no one, with or without the SEOMOZ META or robots.txt disallow, can opt out completely from Linkscape.Put another way, I may have the right to have sex with my college econ teacher but if I slept with her and said I didn’t, I’m being dishonest. You can argue all you want that there’s nothing wrong with me sleeping with my college prof but that argument is irrelevant to the question of whether or not I lied about sleeping with her. If you don’t care about the fact that I lied or the marketing aspect of Linkscape, there’s nothing to argue about.
So the issue here is those over linkscape saying "Oh yeah, you can exclude us from crawling you, providing data on your backlinks and everything", but in reality just chugging along as planned, right? Isn’t there many avenues you can take to build backlink data rather than crawling it yourself? I guess this still falls under the issue of "I told you not to!"I’m still torn about the half-hacked opting out option of branding your site with SEOMOZ metatags, but if it were renamed to something else than the blatant SEOMOZ tag, i think it would be better since you can control what content is crawled. However, it should also have the catch-all ROBOTS.TXT, meaning you don’t want anything (quote: Nothing, Nada, NAFT) crawled on your website. I don’t consider SEOMOZ to be an evil group of black hat profiteers, I think this is just blown way out of proportion thanks to communication problems. People think Rand is lying because he isn’t disclosing everything about this tool, but how could anyone ask that anyways? Would you lay out your projects details for everyone to see just because of a few stumped toes?
Nothing personal - but this whole discussion has really gone on far enough. I’m sick of coming to Sphinn and having to wade through the umpteenth article about this.
This post is telling people to do shit that will get them on the wrong end of a nasty lawsuit, it needs to stop here
Unfortunately, this sort of post really undermines mvandemar’s credibility. I was with him on earlier posts, but enough is enough.
While I don’t agree with Rands decision to make it impossible to opt out, this one is pushing it.
The advice to DMCA is not well thought out by the blogger. Could lead to negative results by any who actually took that advice.