We are continuing our coverage of the BlogBurst service, by the pernicious Pluck Corporation.
First, the good news. After a full frontal attack by Medgadget, Pluck has finally come up with a proxy image storing service. Now we can declare that the nation’s leading newspapers are no longer stealing bandwidth from bloggers and off unsuspected third parties. And they did, indeed.
Second, some good, some bad news. According to a critical analysis by Mark Glaser over at the PBS, a new service from UK-based Scoopt promises to deliver to bloggers what BlogBurst would not: exposure and fair royalties.
From MediaShift, Mark Glaser’s PBS site:
ScooptWords is part of the U.K.-based citizen journalism agency Scoopt, which has been selling citizen-snapped photos to mainstream news outlets. Scoopt allows any blogger to sign up for the service, and is working in concert with Creative Commons to let bloggers choose various commercial and non-commercial licenses for their content. Bloggers display a special “Buy This Content” button on their blog. Publishers click that button to go through the process of buying that particular blog post through ScooptWords. Scoopt pays bloggers 50% of the sale price on the first sale of material, and 75% of all sales thereafter.
The bad news is that Pluck’s BlogBurst continues to offer a predatory service agreement to bloggers. In essence: you give them your rights and they posses all the derivative works of your content forever. Derivative meaning full content, of course.
Third. The real bad news. Blogburst continues to lie, as they still do not offer anything in return to bloggers. Last time–almost a month ago!–we reported that Vagablogging.net, a flagship BlogBurst blog, had 38 visits from the San Francisco Chronicle, as most readers of SFGate would not have any incentive to follow up on content that is already republished in full. Where do Vagablogging.net stats stand now? A whopping 20 visits since May 15th, for a total 58 visits! This compared with the thousands that came across the article at SFGate. What a sham this BlogBurst service really is!
Mark Glaser’s must-read investigation…
Flashbacks:
They Own the Aggregator, Now (They Think) They Own the Content
Beware BlogBurst: A “Derivative Work” Decoy; Nation’s Main Newspapers Continue to Steal Bloggers’ Bandwidth (part 2)
BlogBurst Outrage: Broken Promises; Nation’s Newspapers Continue Stealing Bandwidth (part 3)
Major Newspapers Hotlink Images from Unsuspecting Companies; Drain Bandwidth and Server Resources Without Permission
Beware BlogBurst: The Liars Return (part 5.)
Blogburst Backlash
The list of web sites across the blogosphere that raised a concern about BlogBurst is here…
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