A post with [very] limited appeal

I apologize in advance for today's bout of navel-gazing.  I'll be the first to admit that the only thing more painful than a Broadway musical about some behind-the-scenes aspect of putting on a Broadway musical is a writer continually droning on about various pitfalls of the writing process. 

This tendency of some writers to go on about stuff that really doesn't effect or interest the reader is probably the single biggest reason I rarely read the Daily Bleat anymore. 

Don't get me wrong... I Looooove the way James Lileks writes and consider him to be one of the sharpest, most talented people writing on-line today.  But he spends so much of each 'Bleat' providing a litany of childcare and professional responsibilities that regularly conspire to keep him from his blog that I honestly feel guilty for taking up so much of his precious time.   

So with that said, I am now going to introduce a topic that will be of absolutely no interest to anyone who isn't...

a) ... living with me (and therefore somewhat invested in my ongoing happiness).

or

b) ... the proprietor of a blog/journal of their own.

Yesterday a treppenwitz reader was kind enough to forwarded an article to me about blog plagiarism.  While this isn't something with which I've had a huge problem in the past, every month or two I avail myself of a service called Copyscape to do a quick scan of the web to make sure my 'stuff' isn't out there under someone else's by-line.

On three or four occasions I've found most or all of a treppenwitz post on someone else's site without proper attribution.  In most cases the offending party simply liked what I had written and wanted to share it with his/her readers.  They weren't trying to pass my stuff off as their own... they simply didn't have a clue about the need to provide internal documentation and/or attribution when one 'borrows' material created by someone else.

However, on the last couple of Copyscape searches I've conducted I've noticed a new phenomenon with 'aggregators', and I'm honestly not sure whether I should be bothered by it or not.

Simply put, aggregators are sites that collect feeds from various blogs.  This can be something like 'Bloglines' which allows an individual to read the RSS feed of all his/her favorite blogs in one place (this is not what I'm talking about)... or it can be an organized website such as JRants that automatically assembles a list of the most recent posts in the Jblogosphere for people whose interest is mainly in that arena.

Now if we're just talking about a running list of the latest post titles within a particular genre, I honestly can't see the harm.  Such lists are a very helpful tool that routinely drives new readers to sites based solely on the merits of an interesting site name or blogpost title.  Who could have a problem with that?

But what about when these sights start aggregating entire posts?

My most recent Copyscape search turned up an entire post of mine on the Jrants site.  Leaving aside for the moment that troubling fact that the Google ad above my post on the JRant site was for a Messianic Temple targeting Russian Jews in Brooklyn, I honestly didn't realize they were doing this... and in fact I haven't been able to locate any link on their site that allows such a 'full post view'.  But it raises the issue of what control a blogger/journaler can reasonably expect to have over his/her work.

Like many of my fellow bloggers/journalers, I have a Creative Commons license in place to make it clear how my content can and cannot be used.  One of the stipulations is that it can't be used for any commercial purpose.

So if an aggregator blog relies exclusively on other sites for content and makes money off of advertising based solely on the traffic generated by this content... wouldn't that be considered commercial use?

After reading a recent comment from Allison (one of the matriarchs of the Jblogoshpere despite still being young and hip), on the wisdom/ethics involved in allowing commercial sites to use ones writing for free, I've starting rethinking my decision to allow the Jerusalem Post and other media outlets access to treppenwitz posts for free.

Which brings me back to the point of this post (yes... there was a point in here somewhere) of whether to be flattered that others want to have my content on their site... with or without permission... or whether I wouldn't be better served to do what I can to have people come here to read my content.

Certainly if I decide to try my hand at generating advertising revenue it would make sense to have as many unique visitors as possible (as opposed to having people reading my content on various other sites or via RSS aggregators), no?

OK... of one thing I'm 100% certain.  If I post too many more posts like this one I won't have to worry about silly things like traffic or plagiarists coveting my content.