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Domain: contentville.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to contentville.com.

Stories · 1

  1. 95 (thousand) Theses (for sale)

    Yro · Money · · posted by michael · from the do-as-I-say,-not-as-I-do dept. · 375 comments
    kkkalen writes "Have you completed a Masters or PhD thesis in the last eight or so years? If so, it is probably for sale at http://www.contentville.com, a for-profit company which I understand I partially owned by NBC and Time. Mine is there and I never gave them permission to sell it. As far as I know, I am the sole owner of the copyright on my thesis. Even my ex-supervisor had to ask permission (he did) before he could make it available on a web site (for free, by the way)."

    "I am shocked that that this company is engaging in what amount to piracy of my work. Actually, it's worse than that since they are offering it for sale. Imagine the lawsuits and jailtime I would get (a la FBI Warning) if I burned a few hundred CDs of the latest movie release and sold them on the Internet.

    "I imagine a great deal of Slashdot readers have completed graduate work. I just wonder what they make of this?"

    Well, we'll see. Contentville is funded by CBS, NBC, a huge book distributor and a database aggregator - it launched last month. These companies are in Congress right now lobbying for a law to protect databases - that is, to make re-using information from places such as Contentville illegal. Not just copying the information, but even using any of the data or facts from databases would be illegal. A number of database-protection bills are in Congress right now, and if one of them passes (very likely), the poster above won't be able to make use of his own thesis without paying Contentville - since Contentville went to the effort of compiling their database, and the law would protect that effort.

    Steven Brill, so-called "media watchdog", is just in the process of settling with thousands of freelance writers whose work he also, uh, appropriated.

    It looks to me like a crystal-clear violation of the No Electronic Theft Act, passed a few years ago. Will Steven Brill go to jail for not more than three years? No. He's a "media watchdog", and only "pirates" go to jail. (Aside to Steve: if the NYT or Washington Post start referring to you as a pirate, best flee the country - the FBI will take an interest in the case then.)

    Contentville. We get our Content the old-fashioned way - by stealing it.