Why bother?

[yendi]

I do occasionally Google myself*, although as often as not, I find references to one of the other folks with my name on the net (there are at least two of them). But occasionally I find something like this, in which someone took one of my old Bookslut columns and reprinted it entirely, linking back to the original article and crediting me as the author.

Granted, it's not as bad or annoying as when a guy named John Kahane plagiarized me a few years ago, but I'm also not sure why someone would bother. I'm not seeing any active ads (just some banner ink exchanges at the bottom), and I'm not sure what they get out of it. I could yell at them -- technically, I own reprint rights -- but there's little (probably no) harm being done, especially since they do credit me. But it's just a little strange.

For the record, I'm generally pretty cool with reprints (especially of content that was created for free, and is still fully available online), but if you're in doubt, ask me. And also the publisher.

Incidentally, I often find blog sites that pull my posts (although not my articles) to get keyword hits and milk some Google adwords money (the idea being, they'll link and partially quote every post that mentions Buffy, then hope to get searches for Buffy info sent to their site and get a few clicks), but these creatures seem to vanish quickly enough to make them more fascinating than irritating. They skirt copyright laws by only quoting a sentence or two, and since they link to the original post, there's no issue there. Also, Google tends to hate these sites and shut them down as soon as they see them crop up.

*Which does not make you go blind or grow hair on your palms.

Comments

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

I do occasionally Google myself

AKA "egosurfing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egosurfing)". I do it occasionally. For a long time, pretty much all of the thousands of hits which came up from googling my name were related to me; but as time went by, a few other usurpers have started showing up on the web with my name, casting ripples of their own. I just did a search now, and see a few new ones.

[yendi]

That's when it's time to chop off their heads and shout, "there can be only one!"

[asim.livejournal.com]

The last time I had this happen, the excuse given was that they got it off my RSS feed, and thought it was the same deal as an AP wire. Somehow, they missed that papers pay the AP for the rights to those articles...

Googling Oneself....

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

I've googled myself.... but these days I'm pretty far down the results if I do... it used to be there was only 3 people who would come up besides me in the world when you put in my name that weren't me.

One was a famous stage magician (who changed his name), one was his father, and one was a ceramic artist out in the western states.

Nowadays though this is no longer true and instead the first page fills up with review links to a first time author from NYC (and former Lawyer) who writes 'Romantic Detective' stuff.

Me, the ceramic artist and the magician's father are all relegated to later pages now.

Me, my stuff and page are slowly becoming invisible under my name.

I do slightly better if you put in my LJ screen name or my email address name (but I do have to compete with a Jazz band, Beethoven and Charlotte Bronte related posts).

[lootsfoz.livejournal.com]

I actually have a Google alert on my name because I like to know when my newspaper stories are posted and where they sometimes end up. Also, it seems I share my name with one other in the USA, and she's under 10 and plays soccer. I also have a Google alert on my son's name, as he is allowed to have a Facebook account and I like to monitor his on-line presence.