Those of you who follow this in an RSS reader like Feedly or Flipboard may have recently noticed a change in the way that the articles are displayed. Likewise, those who subscribe to the daily emails may have noticed a change in the content display this morning. The change is that from beginning yesterday afternoon my RSS feed will only display the first 150 characters in an article before you will be directed to click a link to read the full article or watch the full video here on FreeTech4Teachers.com.
The change is a direct result of rampant plagiarism!
The plagiarism and unauthorized republication of my work has gotten out of hand in the last couple of months. While I know how to DMCA notices it is a time-consuming process that takes away from writing new content on this blog and takes time away from helping my clients. When I was only dealing with one or two cases of plagiarism per month, I could handle it even though it was terribly annoying. In the last two months I’ve hand to file more than twenty DMCA takedown notices including twelve this weekend!
Scraping or republishing full RSS feeds is the easiest way to load up a website with lots of content and very little work. Despite knowing that, I’ve always published my full RSS feed for readers to consume in their RSS readers of choice. Doing that makes it easier to read your favorite blog without having to open multiple tabs. Unfortunately, too many people have taken advantage of me publishing my full RSS feed. From here on, you will only be able to see 150 characters of an article in RSS or email before being directed to click through to FreeTech4Teachers.com. I didn’t want to make this change, but it’s the only choice I have left. I can’t continue to spend the time and energy to fight all the copyright infringements. (BTW, I can’t wait to see this blog post pop-up on some spammy blog).
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