Edit: Franco Folini of Novedge has addressed this issue with a much more acceptable approach. Now the "read more" opens the article while maintaining a Novedge banner on top. Much like StumbleUpon and other aggregators, comparing the previous Pulse to Reader and other RSS readers (that require a single user to add their own feeds) still seems like a stretch. Just because an RSS is "Public" does not mean you can up and take it. I am satisfied with the resolution as it displays the content along with everything else (3dEngr blogroll, ads, sidebar etc) and makes it clear that the article was not written for Novedge. This post will remain here though my outlook on Novedge has brightened due to the prompt response and resolution.
I have known the Novedge "Pulse" to regularly print synopsis of articles I write for this blog www.3dEngr.com. In the past I thought the extent of their coverage was a small synopsis, and it didn't seem like they were getting much coverage as the incoming visitors from their site were minor blips on my analytics account. Low and behold their is probably a reason for that. Today I realized that entire articles were being reprinted. I found this out when I clicked on a Twitter link (offending Tweet http://twitter.com/_Pulse_/status/9984318337). Not only are they reposting entire articles, they are actively marketing and driving traffic to the reposted article.
I was hoping that this was a one time error. It's not. This seems to be a trend for Novedge. Pulling content and reprinting it. The articles appear next to a picture of me, the picture is ONLY used one place on the internet, that being a Solidworks Forum account. I recently signed up for another of their services, Space Claiming, a forum that centers around the Space Claim product and features Novedge's namely prominently. As soon as I signed up they had already filled in my profile picture with an image that again only appears one place on the web, this time a virtual copy of my personal resume.To their credit, two of the above sources include no form of copyright (the Solidworks Forums may somehow, but my resume has no specific mention).
NOT TO THEIR CREDIT, this blog does include a fun little Copyright tag at the bottom. It should seem both explicitly and implicitly than that reproducing articles is not allowed. They didn't do this just once either, there are 27 blog posts that are blatantly reposted with no omissions at all. Not quoted, just reposted. A complete list of them is under my own name, clicking more gets to the complete post.
My Alibre Review got reposted http://www.novedge.com/pulse.item/66690
The CSWP Weldment Gussets post also got reposted. http://www.novedge.com/pulse.item/66760
Even if it is not explicitly laid out, this seems like a terrible breach of ethics. I also recognize this is not the case for other authors that are picked up in the Pulse section. Some authors only get a synopsis so that a reader who is teased must click the slightly hidden link to get to the original site and read the rest of the article. Others it seems have been stolen from as well (or gave permission) and there is no noticeable pattern.
Deelip Menezes of Deelip.com. Your safe, only synopsis for Deelip. Readers actually have to head over to his site.
Jon Pickup of ArchonCad.com. Reprinted in entirety. http://www.novedge.com/Pulse.asp?IID=66647
Carlos Perez of blog.rhino3d.com/. Reprinted in entirety. http://www.novedge.com/pulse.item/66753
Robin Capper of rcd.typepad.com/rcd/. Reprinted in entirety. http://www.novedge.com/pulse.item/66187
Gregory Arkin of Revitclinic.typepad.com Reprinted in entirety. http://www.novedge.com/pulse.item/66462
Josh Mings of Solidsmack.com fame. Safe, again a reader must be redirected.
I'm not sure if this is some sort of shakedown or I am somehow required to "opt out" of novedge to keep them from stealing my content. Either way it is unsettling.
What makes this all so bad is that Noevedge is NOT a news aggregator. They are a storefront. Everyone of the stolen articles appears with an ad next to it. In addition to the add the page also has a few tabs across the top, one clearly being their "Store". Also on the page is a phone number for novedge, call the number and get an automated response "Thank you for calling Novedge, if you know your parties extension please dial it now for SALES PRESS 1". And what do they sell? Training materials, including for Solidworks and CAD Programs including Alibre (which appears often in my own adwords on 3dEngr) and a few others which I have drafts to review as part of the CAD Programs series of posts.
I do not make a living from this blog so I will not claim that they have somehow stolen my livelihood, but by doing this to a variety of content providers they have built a nice collection of useful information which no doubt helps there store. I am not one to stir things up but this sort of shady business practice really irks me. I have requested via the novedge "contact us" form that they correct this issue and only post synopsis of my articles but removing my stolen content is not enough. Novedge is still clearly profiting from stealing content of others and re-purposing it next to their products. There business plan does not appear to include any proprietary products, rather they are just a reseller. Hope business has been good novedge, I'll surely never be purchasing anything from you.
For those skeptics I took a quick screen capture video showing what is happening. Here you can see the list of post they've taken along with the picture. Also visible are there ads. Near the end of the video it shows a post by Deelip and just a summary rather than the whole post.
7 hours ago
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5 comments:
Make sure Franco Folini sees this. He's the guy from Novedge. I don't think he would do that intentionally. Usually if the Novedge banner shows over your content, it gives the option to close the Novedge banner and just see the site. On the link you showed it completely removed your header.
Anyway, Franco is a good guy, and I think he will fix the situation if you just contact him. I think Novedge serves a purpose for CAD bloggers and is a worthwhile aggregator even if in general I don't think too much of aggregators.
LOL irony, this article is posted in full on the Novedge site!
Like Matt, I think Pulse is worthwhile, and that Franco is a good guy who will sort this out.
Franco, if you're reading this, I would much prefer it (and it would be better for your reputation) if only a summary were posted, with a link to the original article under the Read button. In some cases, the links above the summaries are missing or broken, and in the best case that link is to the main blog rather than the article in question. That's something that should be fixed.
Franco as stated above will fix this. Steal is a strong word implying malign intent and I doubt that could be applied to Franco. I am certain direct communication with him would have solved your problem.
I would say though that if you want to drive traffic to your blog that there is no better way than here. I know other cad users that read Novedge every day. And when they do they look at far more varied content than they would if they had to click to many different sites. I read you today only because your content was on Novedge. And if I see you often enough here and like what you write I then start going direct to your blog. But Novedge happens first.
To Anonymous, I'm glad you came to the blog directly and I would truly be happy for any traffic Novedge provides, since they started posting my articles I've seen 10 hits. Synopsis would have been fine but if I wanted to give content away to drive traffic I would do so. The fact readers can read things entirely from one site is exactly the problem. Other sites, like CadDigest, do similar things and provide a nice bit of traffic here, over 1k in same time. They however just post a synopsis. When I saw a spike from CadDigest I sought out their creator and thanked him. I have never seen significant traffic from novedge and for the number of people who claim to read/like it the
I don't doubt that Franco is a good guy and that people are coming to his defense is admirable. I too think Pulse serves a purpose. The fact that this article itself was reprinted shows that it is an automated system (or terrible judgment but I'll grant the benefit of the doubt here).
I have reached out to Franco as best as I know how (Twitter, Spaceclaiming message, Novedge site) if others can contact him that would be fantastic. The fact of the matter is going back a month and a half everything that I have posted on this blog has blatantly been taken, and worse, Novedge was trying to drive traffic to the material. I understand that some may feel it is on a published to protect their content but when a company that markets products as Novedge does creates a system that plagiarizes with no oversight I think it should be called out.
Cris,
I’m sorry to read that Pulse default policy is not compatible with your approach to blog publishing, I’m sure we can change the default to meet your requirements.
Let me explain the situation from my point of view. Pulse behavior is not different from Google Reader, Yahoo!, and all other RSS feeds aggregators. They all publish the content you provide with your RSS feed. In fact when I subscribe to your blog via Google Reader I get the entire text of each of your blog posts, as in Novedge Pulse, no difference!
When you setup a RSS feed for your blog you have the option to publish 100% of each blog post or only a summary (usually the first few sentences). Some blogger prefer to publish only the summary, other are OK with the complete unfiltered content. If you choose to publish the entire content, you must be aware that your entire post will appear on new aggregators such as Google Reader, Novedge Pulse, etc. This is the generally accepted rule in Internet. If you are not OK with this you can change the default of your RSS feeds or you had the option to contact me (phone number and e-mail are displayed on all Pulse pages). I’m always available to fix problems, bugs, and listen to Pulse users.
The goal of Novedge Pulse is to provide a service to the CAD community while getting some additional visibility within the community. We have the Novedge banner on top of each page in the same way Google logo sits on top of my gMail account and Google Reader. In order to answer your remarks and requests I changed the default in the compact version of Pulse (the summaries only version), to link to the original blog post. I hope those changes will make you more comfortable in having your content listed on Novedge Pulse.
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