Last week, Deebo posted an article suggesting that SodaStream was mulling closing down its factory in Ma’ale Adumim, a move that might result in the loss of jobs for the 900+ palestinians employed there. He sarcastically called such an occurrence a “BDS victory” – since the BDSHoles have opposed SodaStream – even though such a move, if it went ahead, would be due to purely operational reasons. Deebo’s post was based on his knowledge within the industry, and not any news report.
Deebo’s post was soon spread via social media, as suggesting BDS had caused the loss of the palestinian jobs, even though the post made clear 1) the closure had not happened, although was being contemplated and 2) such closure would be due to operational reasons, not BDS.
A number of websites ripped the story.
Shalom Life took the story almost immediately, and although they did not acknowledge they had taken it from us, did include a link to Deebo’s post. They initially had reported the closure as having already been decided, and issued a clarification after Deebo posted his. They then reworked their post once Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum commented on the issue.
A site called YourJewishNews soon followed with the story, but with a misleading headline and no attribution to Israellycool at all. This version of the story was then ripped by serial plagiarists Jews News. The same version was plagiarized by at least one other site.
Legitimate news sites such as Ha’aretz and i24 News also covered the story following Deebo’s scoop, but also without attribution.
This French site did attribute us, but used the photo RealJStreets took after cropping out her watermark.
What we see here is a stark example of how someone’s work is shameless ripped.
We are a blog without any sponsorship (except for some donations which barely cover the costs of running the site, for which I am nonetheless very grateful). For whatever reason, other sites feel they can take our original work and either plagiarize it, or, reword the scoops without giving credit to the original source (being us!)
Some of the offending sites are “click bait” – empty aggregation type sites that steal content to drive traffic to their own sites and ultimately make money off their ads. They are not news sites nor blogs that generate their own content or interesting analysis and discussion.
Others are larger news sites that do their own reporting, but on many occasions take scoops from blogs, repackage them without attribution, and pass the story off as their own. I mentioned two such examples of this above, but there are other offenders (you know who you are).
I am not sure if we have legal recourse, or, if so, whether it would be worth pursuing. What I do know is we have terrific Google juice, so the best revenge is that served in a blog post such as this.
I put all of you plagiarizing or “story-stealing” sites on notice that we will continue to call you out on this.
