You could always have a pay-to-enter website if you wanted to make sure that your opinions were being properly valued. Doing so may kill your readership though.

Its interesting that companies are using websites and discussion groups for market research. Problem is marketing departments also employ people to comment favorably on their product on those very sites and forums. Given that, how valuable is the information trawled and how does the market researcher make a meaningfull predictions based on a pool of murky data?

Ethically I have no issue with someone using web-based information for research. It becomes an issue when people are taking you words(or drawings in therry’s case) directly and using them in am marketing campaign.

I guess those that are blogging for the purposes of makig money then they will need to explore how best to do that…

I notice some people have code embedded in their blog regarding copyright issues…

What A Tangled Web We Weave

I’m somewhat bemused, not to say pissed off, to discover that I’m one of those who’ve offered Worldwide Acclaim Success and Good Testimonials on Transjakarta Busway Projects. PT Pamintoro Cipta, ‘Engineering and Management Consultants’, based here in Jakarta, have linked to a whole host of my posts rather than the one which says I like the busway but ….

It is true that bloggers’ efforts are in the public domain and I don’t begrudge other bloggers or, as occasionally happens, journalists using my thoughts as pegs for their own perspectives. The blogosphere is essentially an exchange of news, ideas and opinions. Free speech is essential. What I do object to is the use of what I dribble forth for commercial use.

Given that I rarely offer endorsements to products and services and that I don’t have Google ads on Jakartass, then all that can be ’scraped’ from me are my opinions. I’m more than pleased if they’re collated and used to argue for a saner world than the shallow consumerism which is now touted as a quality lifestyle.

If you’re really worried, Anita, then perhaps you can organise a campaign your fellow bloggers can support.

i am updating my 300 entrecard daily drop list . If you want your Blog to be added in to my list Please post your link HERE

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And the reason it’s done is to make pages for search engine positioning and ranking purposes, nothing much to do with the value of your opinions or whatever, it’s automated and random (but keyword based), the people who scrape are not actually reading the stuff, they’re just using software to, well, scrape, make millions of pages, get them indexed by google, put ads on them, and make money. It’s random.

2. I’m not totally obsessed about money. Perhaps people have used some of the stuff I’ve written on the net for money and perhaps that’s their ways of providing food on the tables, but if someone stole my illustrations and resell them, I’d be very pissed off.

3. It’s ethical provided that they link us back so that we can get credits too. That’s the general ethic about using information on the net and that is how I was taught during high school – back up evidences and show where you got your evidences from, don’t just generalise things without any factual support, which was what some people do and can still get away from it.

does that make me a web scraper?

and now to answer your questions:
1. i do not know any web scraper companies
2. i do not know that someone out there will copy and paste my comment and sell it.
my question now: do they plainly copy and paste it with all my info as far as username, url, etc?
3. in the spirit of ‘research’, i do not find it disturbing as long as they just ’steal’ the comment and not my identity. but again as colson mentioned: it’s out there, it’s public property.
4. i do not think it’s unethical to ’steal’ comments, in my humble opinion. but it is unethical to steal an opinion from a [whole] posting.

Answers to your questions:
1. No. But on the other hand, yes. I knew that the marketeer mafia keeps our track records because we use credit cards for instance. So I should not be amazed if the big brother bastards check on our public information on www.
2. Yes, it’s disturbing. But what can be done about it – it’s our own free choice to present the information to the world, isn’t it?
3. Well, ethics… Of course decent people should ask permission. But then, decency is a babe lost in the woods when it comes to commercial purposes.

I guess we have no choice but being careful about what to publish and to be fatalistic about what happens with our information.