Laughable Blog Aggregator and Linking to news sources

Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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Laughable Blog Aggregator and Linking to news sources

I'm not going to go on another rant blasting blog aggregators or websites that steal other people's content (aka sploggers). However, I came across one website that took my content, re-worded one sentence and tried to claim it as its own. The change is so laughable I busted out laughing!

First, my blog entry titled Court Bans VoIP App on iPhone was one of the first if not the first U.S.-based news outlet to talk about how a German court banned the sipgate VoIP application on the iPhone. In the article, I wrote:
Apparently, the court felt that sipgate would "lure" iPhone users into "jailbreaking" their iPhones. WTF? Banning software because it might entice customers to do something bad? Glad I live in the good ole' freedom-loving USA where we punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes, jailbreaking iPhones, violating terms of service contracts, etc.

Now compare that with the scammer over at Unwiredview.com which posted the story as though it were their own:
Apparently, the court felt that Sipgate would lure iPhone users into jailbreaking their iPhones. WTF? Banning software because it might entice customers to do something bad? Glad I live in the good ole' freedom-loving India where we punish people for committing crimes not for "intentions" of committing crimes.
It's virtually identical -- even copying my WTF outrage. However, simply change good ole' freedom-loving 'USA' to 'India' and presto-bango, you've got yourself a brand-spanking 'new' news article! I couldn't help but laugh at this.

Obviously, there are tons of automated blog and news site aggregators out there and I've learned to just ignore them. But in this case, someone actually took the time to HAND EDIT it and take out 'USA' and change it to 'India'. Either they're anti-USA or just very pro-India. Regardless, a pretty stupid edit job, but definitely made my day seeing such a half-ass edit job.

On a related note, a major news outlet, CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting Channel News) mentioned my story writing, "Sipgate's Thilo Salmon told the VoIP and Gadgets blog the company was not allowed to argue its case before the Hamburg court prior to the injunction being issued" but alas they didn't actually link to my story.

Very annoying. It's not that I need the Page Rank from the inbound link, it's just common courtesy to cite & link the source of the article.


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