Contributor, my ass!
Hey kids. Look up at the address bar on your browser. Where are you reading this entry from?
If it's kpallist.blogspot.com, great.
But if you are reading this from www.casualgamedev.com, then you are reading a site/blog that is snarfing RSS feeds from other folks blogs, mine included, and listing them as contributors. (Greg Costikyan, Sean Ryan, and Phil Steinmeyer, are also listed - I am in good company, it appears)
I have no problem with people referencing entries I've made or quoting me. However, aggregating entries directly and listing me as a "contributor" to the site? That's a no-no. For one thing, it's false. For another, it could get people in trouble with their employers (not an issue for me, but imagine they were snatching the RSS feed from a press person and their employer then said "hey, you are contributing to a competing site"!).
Guess I'll have to put up a disclaimer, putting my blog entries up under creative commons or something. My bad for not doing so to start with. Oh well.
Gee, I had no idea my ramblings were of value to others ;-)
A quick WhoIs on the above domain tells me it's owned by Duncan Gough, same guy that created www.millionsofgames.com (which looks to be a cool site) and www.chickstop.com (a girl-gaming site that has the look and feel of one that wasn't created by women :-). Though who knows who's really behind this nefarious internet activity!
In the meantime, I continue to be a humble contributor to a single URL.
6 comments:
LOL !
this is a real Hutzpa !
It's like i'd make a illeagal copy of warcraft under some other title and say "Contributed by: Blizzard Entertainment".
The comments are also linked in that odd site, will the list me as a contributor as well ?
visited the site and had a laugh as your post is the top post on casual game dev. hah! when people hot link to images, i like when sites go back and change the stolen image to porn. maybe you can just rant until a solution presents itself.
Souris: There was a little evil intent for such in my site. However, I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt that he/they will end up doing the right thing.
Yeah. Usually I'd say boil 'm in oil, but this does not look intentionally evil. Just a bit misguided. The site has no advertising and just may of been a way for the owner to personally keep up with things. I'm bet your.. tisk tisk naughty naughty is enough for it to be fixed.
Yes, very much a personal project and very much misguided. You know how sometimes you have what you think is a good idea but it turns out to be quite the opposite?
All gone now, please accept my apologies Kim. Hopefully I've not upset everyone too much.
Suttree:
No harm done. In general, just use common sense and (a) attribute sources, and (b) get their OK before listing them as "contributors".
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