I’ve been seeing references to this site NetRightNation for a while now. It’s supposed to be a central source for people to find conservative blogs. It seems above-board, but I got an email from one of my readers about how posts from other blogs show up on this website when you do a search on their site. You get a list of blog posts, all “written by Administrator,” that are actually just excerpts from the blog you searched for, none of them with any attributing links back to those blogs. (Here’s one of mine. It should link to this post.) I couldn’t find an email for NetRightNation, so I left the following comment in the latest post on their own blog:
This is off-topic, but I can’t find an email to contact you directly. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but when you do a search on your site for someone’s blog (like Ace of Spades, or mine — Twisted Spinster), you get a list of blog posts which are just excerpts from the blogs you searched for, but they aren’t linked to the actual blogger’s site or attributed in any way, and the posts on your site all say “written by Administrator.” I’ve already had emails from people complaining that their blog posts have been stolen, so you may want to see to fixing this. Here, by the way, is the list of search results for my blog. Since you do link to bloggers properly on your own front page, I am assuming this is just a glitch in your search template.
They really should have fixed this before putting up their site. They should know how concerned rightwing bloggers are about their intellectual property. This was the result, by the way, of just going to their “search” link on the top of the page and entering the name of the blog — say, “Twisted Spinter.” It isn’t some arcane hidden thing. I hope they fix this, or there are going to be a lot of pissed off conservative bloggers.
Update: nice reply — see the comments.
2 Responses to “How not to make friends and influence people”
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November 26th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Thank you for leaving your comments on NetRight Nation.
NetRight Nation is a very sophisticated search engine that directs traffic directly to blogs that we like. It is a free service provided by Americans for Limited Government, a not-for-profit organization. If you click on any article posted, it directs automatically to the blog of origin. You can see for yourself by navigating the website that our intention is to link traffic directly to the blogs, not to steal any content. We also only post excerpts of articles so that if a reader wants to read more, the blog is one click away, just like other search engines.
If a post was put up on the site that did not link directly back to your site, we apologize, but that is a flaw that has since been remedied. Please do let us know if there are links are not working or do not appear, however, because that would be a flaw that needs to be fixed. So far as I can tell, the links are working properly.
As for the lack of contact information on the website, allow me to personally apologize for this obvious oversight on our part. I am directing our New Media Director, Adam Bitely to get it up on the website immediately. If you have any other questions, please let myself or Adam know at robert@getliberty.org or adam@getliberty.org.
Sincerely,
Robert Romano
Editor of ALG News Bureau
http://www.getliberty.org
http://www.netrightnation.com
November 26th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Their remedy needs a remedy. The ‘link’ to your post still doesn’t work.