Airchecker has a blog and a Twitter account. The official Airchecker bio states they're based in Vancouver and "Canada's number one source for the Canadian Radio Industry. The first social networking news provider. Radio insiders, powered by YOU.".
When they say "powered by YOU", they really mean "stolen from YOU". Here's the sequence of events that ticked me off, in chronological order.
1. I Post An Exclusive Interview on My Blog
I conducted an interview with Rick Hodge, using questions I wrote, and with Rick's explicit permission, I posted this interview on my blog.
That's my content, licensed under a Creative Commons License that permits anyone to "copy, distribute and transmit the work" so long as it's noncommercial and I'm attributed as the source with a link back to my site.
2. Airchecker Posts My Content On Their Blog
Airchecker takes my entry, likely from my RSS feed, and reproduces it on their blog. They don't credit the source, they reproduce almost the entire Rick Hodge interview with "Posted by Airchecker" in the footer. Here's a screen cap of how my entry looks on their Blogger blog.
3. Airchecker Tweets About Their Interview With Rick Hodge, Linking to Their Blog
Now that Airchecker has my exclusive content on their site as if it's theirs, they may as well promote it via Twitter. Their tweet, of course, doesn't include @torontomike or a link back to my blog. Here's their tweet:
I'm aware there are thousands of scraper blogs out there, stealing content from RSS feeds for SEO fodder, but this is different. This Airchecker is an attempt to provide a Canadian radio news aggregation service, and that's why this practice of theirs has me peeved. It's just wrong. It's stealing.
Airchecker, I'm sentencing you to five minutes in the sin bin for unethical blogging and tweeting practices. If you need good content, write it yourself. If you want to borrow some of mine, at least mention that it's mine and link back to the appropriate permalink, or put me on the Airchecker payroll. Play by the rules or Colin Campbell will suspend you... or not.
