Almost anyone who has a blog has found the entire contents of their blog copied on various blogs around the world. A startup has taken this wholesale stealing borrowing republishing syndicating to a new place: professional narration. Unfortunately it takes <sarcasm>a lot of work</sarcasm> to figure out how to ask for permission to reuse someone’s content, as Scott Hanselman recently found out.

If you are interested in the narration of Scott’s blog post about narrated blog post then you can download the MP3 or check it out the YouTube video below. I figure it is ok that I give this content away since it would be unusually difficult for me to figure out how to ask permission first.

For those who would rather read a transcript of the narration of his blog post about narrated blog posts I have included the automatic closed captions that YouTube generates below:

when is it stealing as posted on handsome and dot com written by Scott Hanselman anything you put on the Internet is going to get stolen its prefer a beloved shared a link to a but often he gets copied and copied again RSS is magical but it makes it even easier to programmatically syndicate copy content church around and you’ll likely find complete copies of your entire blog mirrored in other countries there’s so many web sites now media empires that have taken aggregation to the extreme giving it the more palatable name content curation not to be clear I respect the work involved in curation sites like dumbest weeds dot com require work and attribute creators but taking a post copying unique content even paraphrasing and then including a small Inc just as in kind forget about the legality of it remembering I N O but it’s just porn etiquette to not ask permission before using non Creative Commons content every week or two I got an email from some large aggregation site it says we’d love to reprint your post it’ll get you more readers the few times I’ve done is they’ve gotten 50,000 views and I’ve gotten three hundred referral views likely because the original appeared on handsome and dot com link at the bottom is in 4.5 aunt sites like buyer on over and BuzzFeed are effectively reblogging and embedding machines powered by link bait copywriters what happened next will shock you even if you make a piece of software someone may just wrapped slash embed your installer with their own installer and all the whole business around it me reading your blog posts today was pointed out to me that in nearly seven year old and not very good blog post a mine had been narrated effectively turned into a podcast by a startup called mono by the way it’s more than a little ironic that my post wasn’t even mine it’s an excerpt published with permission a friend Patrick Caldwell’s larger post I’ve used to you mono developer tools and embedded in a rated version here first let me just say that this is essentially a great idea it’s the opposite of transcribing a podcast it’s creating podcasts from existing content using professional narrator’s not just text to speech could be great for not just the visually impaired but also for anyone who wants to catch up on blogs while commuting where the content come from here’s a screenshot of the post on a mano site you can see my name handsome man is there but it’s not a link the headline is a link but you never know until you have read over it there’s really no easy way to tell where when and how this content came about I think that Amano could easily redesigned the side to put the content owner front-and-center podcast an audio snippets from blog post great idea except I wrote the script for this podcast and if I wrote the script and made it the narration then this must be a partnership right however if we look at two my nose own terms abuse so three claims no ownership or control over any of the content you post to the service your User Content you or third party licensor as appropriate retain all copyright patent and trademark rights to any of the content you post on or through the service you are responsible for protecting those rights okay so they don’t own the content by posting your User Content on or through the service you grants 03 a universal non-exclusive world the free license to reproduce adapt distribute and publish such content to the service and for the purpose of promoting so three and its services I’m pretty sure I have been granted them a universal license to my content as I didn’t seem at this link on their homepage it says that you tell us what article should be voiced the community submits links sometimes the content there a fan of but don’t own then mono narrated you may not aggregate copy or duplicate any so three content week but I can’t copy their content their content that was generated from my content does this mean I can get a book from the library narrated turn into a podcast Adam on a lab at chance Orman I’m fairly sure audio book creators get permission from the original authors I’m told by tomatoes Twitter account that on the first person to object to the content being copied without permission Scott Hanselman Adam on lap a longtime proponent accessible content but surely I’m not the first person offended by discovering their content copied at chance a min the feedback we’ve been getting from bloggers as they appreciate the distribution plus value-added you are actually the first I certainly don’t but d’amato is malicious mottos perhaps naive if they think they can narrate blogs without someone speaking up that said their narrator’s are top notch and our site now for both attractive and usable frankly I’d be happy if they narrated by all blog or at least the good stuff and not a lousy decade-old stop made a podcast feed my blog like their competitor cast if I but I’d like a model to do it with me sites like this should ass creators first and their business model should be based on partnerships with content creators assumptions stitcher has the right idea I’ve submitted my content to them and entered into a partnership that in just suck my podcasts and make a radio station even a single email from a monologue hey we would like to hear your blog click here in San this little form would have been sufficient married first ask questions later Michael dunbar knows with this Tweet advancement Adam on a Web kami typically English but the whole thing could have been avoided with manners that in easily solved problem and it’s not just a problem a tomato this applies to all businesses and start-ups that rely on content created by others I think it’s important honor attribution this isn’t about money recon copyright all those things to apply rather this is about netiquette when you’re building a business model built around partnerships and transparency assumptions around fair use and copyright ask first what are your thoughts dear reader