I have periodically complained about plagiarism, the last time being when my Stephen Hawking poster was ripped by a number of sites.
One of the main culprits has been the website Jews News, which has a Facebook page with over a million ‘likes’!
Jews News has been ripping our stuff for quite a while. The last time I posted about it was here, where they blatantly copied another of my posters and passed it off as their own. As I mentioned at the time, when I confronted the site’s owner, he denied ripping it off and claims he found the photo elsewhere.
Now Jews News has ripped my Alicia Keys post word-for-word (at least what I had written before I had to remove it). Not only that, but they – like me – were asked to take down the post and photo and have done nothing about it.
While I believe plagiarism is wrong, I know some of you may be thinking “Dave, you are being petty! After all, Jews News does good work. You are on the same side, so let it slide!”
I disagree. The end does not justify the means. In any event, it seems that Jews News is not altruistically motivated by just “spreading the word,” but seems to be very much motivated by making money.
Case in point: When you click on a link to one of their posts via the FB page, this is what you are confronted with.
The parts I marked in red are either adverts or lead to information about advertising on their site.
Clicking on the Advertise With Us tab at the top leads to a page with the following blurb.
Jews News is THE ideal place to advertise if you are trying to reach a Jewish and/or pro-Israel clientele. We are the world’s largest facebook page that caters to the Jewish people, and we use our reach to promote this site in the best way possible. Each advertising package also includes perks that take advantage of the reach that Jews News can offer, such as featured posts on our Facebook page, banner ads on our website, or featured articles that will be uploaded to both. Our goal is to build lasting partners with our perspective clients, and we will work with you to make sure that you are getting the most for your money. We urge you to please contact our ad department if you are interested in advertising with us at [email protected] (or email us in the contact section) so we can discuss our options with you. We sincerely look forward to working with you to promote your passion !!!
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not against having adverts on one’s site (I have ads on here after all). What I am against is plagiarizing the work of others. And clearly, Jews News are doing it to generate more content, which in turn generates more ‘Likes’, more traffic to their site and thus more advertising dollars (either by clients paying to advertise on their site or by clicking on the Google ads).
And they are doing it at the expense of sites like Israellycool which produce original content and believe in honesty and integrity.
If you – like me – are troubled by this behavior, please consider doing the following:
- Spread the word on Facebook, Twitter and email about Jews News’ practices
- Leave comments on the Jews News Facebook page to express your disdain for their plagiarism
- If you have ‘Liked’ the Jews News Facebook page, ‘un-Like’ it
Update: At least I can be sure this post will not be plagiarized by them!
Update: The Jews News site owner has responded with righteous indignation.
WOW, nice slander piece of me on your site…absolutely pathetic for another Jew
to put that up especially during the 9 days. you are a disgrace, maybe contact
our page if you have a problem instead of slandering us to your readers.
shameful truly shameful you should be embarrassed to write things about me like
that that are blatantly not true.
And this:
nice slander job bro, way to help out the klal with achdut…if you dont want you stuff ripped off then put a watermark on it like everyone else does who wants the same. i have never even heard of your page or site until today, if i see something on a friends wall WITHOUT your logo then how in the heck do you expect me to trace it back to you? you should be ashamed of yourself for slandering someone you do not even know ESPECIALLY since you never took the time to email me first.
So it is apparently ok to steal someone else’s work during the 9 days, at least if there is no “watermark” (kind of hard to “watermark” written posts I would have thought).
As I explained to the gentleman, I have contacted him in the past, and it made no difference.
As for the claim of slander, truth is a defense to that.
