I Am Not Sure What I Think of This

My Friday Vespers post was picked up by a site called blogrunner that tracks blog references to the New York Times.

That is fine, and they do provide links back to my site, but they reproduce the whole post in it's entirety, pictures and all, so why bother clicking on the link?

It seems like a good idea, but a better execution would be something closer to what basil does, or that other guy, Instysomething.

UPDATE:

It appears the photos are hot linked too. If I knew how to change one without changing the url I would say hello.

UPDATED UPDATE:

Last night I sent blogrunner the following e-mail.

Good evening,

I run a blogsite called The Ebb & Flow Institute and you have used an entire post of mine on your site. While I appreciate the links there is absolutely no reason for anyone to use the link when you provide my entire post.

Also you have hotlinked all the photos from my post using my server space everytime someone loads the page on your site. I have free server space provided by blogger so it is not a big issue with me but if you do that with another blogger who is paying for the bandwidth don't be surprised to find the picture changed to something you don't want to see on your site.

Pile On

I received the following reply.

Thanks for your message. Your entire post was picked up because it is part of your atom syndication file. I agree this is not cool if this is not what you want, and we will remove your blog from blogrunner. We're adding features to the site that will allow you to control how your postsappears on BlogRunner, but its not ready yet. Thanks again, sorry for the incident, --PL, BlogRunner

It seems they have taken down the pictures [eh, wrong Pile, that was temporary, they are still there and the location is unchanged] but the article remains in full. This was never that big a deal to me because blogger is free, but they provide it free for people who use their blogs. That is a decision the good folks at Google made and I am sure there is a business reason for providing it for free.

My concern was more about using my writing without permission (I have to protect my intellectual property you know). Most people use a snippet as a teaser and then provide a link for people who want to read it in full. That way the author gets the traffic and appreciates the promotion and the link. As of this writing I have received one hit from the site, far less than I have sent them.

So the moral of the story is, if you are going to take one of my posts in full, take a better one, not one I threw together quickly while trying to talk The Onlette™ out of a hunger strike.