As noted in Teresa’s somewhat snarky posts this week, zombie blogs are an increasing problem. She took those posts a bit over the top to illustrate just how sleazy blogging someone else’s blog can be. Aggregation blogs built entirely with great reblogging tools are meant to syndicate someone else’s content and give them as much credit as possible. Sites like Digg and new services like Newsvine offer linking, sharing, citing, and quoting other blogs and that’s essential to the blogosphere. Adding to the conversations is what it’s all about, but it’s also like sharing music online where it can be outright theft. Creating an evil zombie blog is like, well, being a sleazy brain dead, ad-spewing, zombie.
(ed note: updated the paragraph to not imply Digg or Newsvine were zombie like. They’re not.)
Been caught stealing
The Creative Commons was created to address copyright in the blogosphere, so “Other people can copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here.” Fair use absolutely applies to blogs. Just creating a blog out of someone else’s blog is appealing for someone wanting to make money on ads, but if you’re not fully attributing it with permission and sharing those profits, then no it’s not OK. That’s stealing.
I’ve seen even worse examples than what we found on inFlightHQ. For a while we tried reblogging, but found it diluted the original voices and editorial in the blog, was confusing, and eventually killed it. Reblogging like the good people at EyeBeam do is great and yes that’s what syndication is all about, distributing content, citing it, and everyone is happy. I can see how it’s easy to conclude one day that, “hey! I can automatically suck up all these feeds into my blog and make some BIG money (a blog zombie).” Sure zombie blogs are going to occur, there’s little we can do, but it doesn’t mean we’re not going to say something about it. I hope more bloggers speak up like these posts.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
steven streight aka vaspers the grate 01.20.06 at 10:22 am
Thank you for attacking Pseudo Bloggery and Detrimental/Sleazy Blogoid Objects on the web. I love going after all the different types of Blog Scum.
Reblogging, digital rights management, copyright, netiquette, plagiarism, content protection, all these issues need serious attention, and you do a wonderful service by addressing this topic.
We need a Blog Standards Central authority, like the W3C or RIAA or FDA. Not for licensing, or regulation, but for code enforcement, role modeling, best practices, blog ethics, cautions and warnings.
I defeat reblogging, to some degree, and plagiaristic blog cannibalism, by embedding a siglink in every post in every blog, and by embedding a bloglink in my signature to emails and comments at other blogs. My signature includes my aka (also known as) which is my flagship blog title.
I normally don’t promote posts, but I just did one on Amy Gahran’s post about blogs NOT being good conversation tools.
You might find the controversy interesting. I am on the side of Naked Conversations and blogs being, not perfect, but good, and easily modified and amplified, conversation marketing/online community building tools…in the right hands.
She even claims that blogs are difficult and loaded with “usability problems”.
I did a post on Zombie Blogging months ago, but can’t recall if I used the term the way you do. I like your definition or application of the term, and may change my Vaspers glossary to accommodate your better version, maybe. Probably.
Whadyasay, mate?
-b- 01.20.06 at 11:05 am
Change away, sounds good. I chose zombie blog in part to separate the Reblog apps from the term itself and the negative connotation. Aggregating is fantastic, stealing no so much. I should do a follow-up post on how to thwart the zombies, others have already done so. Also please note, the original post suggested reblogging apps were sleazy, they’re not and I clarified that, misuse is.
steven streight aka vaspers the grate 01.20.06 at 12:16 pm
There is a difference between aggregating, syndicating, paraphrasing, citing, quoting, or copy and pasting with proper credits and deep linking to source post…
…and illicit plagiaristic reblogging, where no credit, URLs/deep links to source post, just regurgitated “content” that is being cannibalized to make a site seem to have substance, when it is merely a link farm, dubious product vending machine, spyware attaching malsite, or other pseudo blog or webopathic object.
-b- 01.25.06 at 1:34 pm
on inFlightHQ, I added an explicit CC license to every post and we’ll see how that turns out.
-b- 01.31.06 at 6:51 am
And, here’s where these blogs come from
http://www.autobloggerpro.com/