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We have another feed scraper out there – …
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ShaneS
We have another feed scraper out there – this time based in Australia. JAMS.tv here: http://en.jams.tv/ Off to do some research and contact them. Looks like a few others are being scraped besides The Nihon Sun so here’s what i can see right off:
Tony McNicol
Neil Duckett
Japan Probe
Tokyofoodcast
Tokyo Times
and more…Update from Deas’ article “Jams.tv steals“:
Get Soc'ing at JapanSoc.com - #1 for Japan blogs, news and people!
Comments
Comments are closed.
DBR 11:46 am on January 8, 2009 | #
Hey guys, I’ve had a further look and it looks as though this is the G’Day Japan people who contacted us a little while ago – unless you responded and said you wanted to opt out and they still have you on there then there is probably not a lot that can be done. It does look as though they are doing more than they represented to me and are showing full articles so maybe if it’s not working then that’s what can be done.
They do claim to have a lot of advertising clients and traffic though so I guess getting that kind of traffic in return could be an okay quid pro quo – assuming people don’t just read the articles at their site…
ShaneS 11:59 am on January 8, 2009 | #
Here is the email address of G’day m.akiko@jams.tv
I sent her an email requesting that she change to excerpts only or remove my feed from the site entirely and I will let you know what happens.
Ken Y-N 12:00 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Shane, they seem to be a proper company, reproducing in full (with permission in this case, I assume) the JNTA Australia blog/news release. Perhaps also contacting their advertisers would work here, as it’s our content that is attracting the viewers to their site. There seems to be absolutely zero original content there.
ShaneS 12:04 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
They did send an email earlier requesting permission to link to the sites but never indicated that they would be posting full articles. A misrepresentation at best in my opinion.
Here is the text of the email that we got and my response today:
Original from them:
Hi,
At the editorial team of G’Day Japan, an English magazine published in Sydney about traveling/eating in Japan, we have been scouring the web for THE BEST JAPAN Blogs!
We are upgrading our website as well, and we would like to have your website linked to ours, like below.
http://gdayjapan.com.au/
If we don’t hear from you within a week, we will assume you are ok with that.
If you have a problem, please let me know and we will take down your website asap!!
Thank you and keep up the fab work..
Akiko
G’Day Japan
My response today:
Akiko;
I just wanted to let you know that what you are doing is called feed scraping and is a form of copyright infringement. You are simply not picking up the feed and linking back to the blogs but you are posting the entire article on your site.
I respectfully request that you remove The Nihon Sun content from G’Day Japan (http://gdayjapan.com.au/) and Jams.tv (http://en.jams.tv/) OR switch the content from The Nihon Sun to excerpts only so that in order to read the full article readers are directed back to my site.
Attached is an email that I sent to Jams.tv on the subject.
Please respond to this request with 24 hours.
Thank you,
DBR 12:06 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
That G’Day Japan “magazine” is ridiculous. They contact us pretending to be some new venture that is going to have real content and just links to blogs and then put no content in and feedscrape. The girl who contactd us also pretended to me that she was new to the whole business so did not know the terminology – I don’t know how these people sleep at night except perhaps with lovely dreams of being a “magazine editor” lol
Ken Y-N 12:22 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Shane, I love that “if we don’t hear from you we’ll do it anyway”.
I looked at that site, and what I dislike most is that there is no link-back to the contributing sites. They even scrape the images so you can’t muck about with the image, and the Google FeedAds are also not working. I’d tell them to remove me immediately as I think they are getting a whole lot more out of you (look at the number of adverts!) for very little in return. Have you actually had any traffic back?
ShaneS 12:30 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
No traffic back due to the reasons that you cite in your comment Ken. The trick was that I linked back to myself on one of those posts and it showed up in my stats as a trackback (I think that’s the correct term). Linking to yourself is a good practice anyway and has added benefits when you are dealing with underhanded folks I guess.
They requested links not content so I ignored the email in the first place thinking that they were just wanting to put The Nihon Sun on their blogroll or use headlines or the like but that’s obviously not the case.
By the way I soc’d this and I appreciate your support. Will let you know if I get a response from them.
James 12:50 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Contact the advertisers and let them know directly. Jams.tv knows exactly what they are doing, and there is no need to give them time to respond.
Koichi 1:32 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Wow, this is ridiculous – When they e-mailed me, I told them I wouldn’t link to them, and it looks like I didn’t get wrapped into this whole mess because of that? Haha – either way, no matter how you look at it, it doesn’t make any sense. Good luck everyone, and let me know if you need any help with anything, like pretending to be an Australian copyright lawyer
Nick 2:21 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
I never got an email from them in the first place.
Viet 3:02 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Looks like spoke to soon Ko,
http://en-web.jams.tv/tofugu
freedomwv 3:02 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Why don`t they ask some of you to write for them?
Koichi 3:28 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Never mind, they got me too. I made the mistake of searching for “tofugu” on their blog…I forgot they don’t mention where the articles come from. ha! It’s on!
Ken Y-N 3:40 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
In a way, I feel a little empty inside that neither them or the last lot scraped me.
ShaneS 4:19 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Now you’ve all gone and made me chuckle! Better to laugh than to cry, no?
Anyway, I suspect Akiko won’t be too happy when she opens her email today…
ThePenguin 5:33 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Hmm, I also don’t seem to have had the honour of being scraped by these guys. Looking at their site they seem to have started intensively scraping from January 3rd onwards. I did have something similar happen on another blog I once ran, where a fairly well-known travel publisher set up some kind of Web2.0 blog/wiki site and seeded it with paraphrased copies of some of my articles. I only noticed because they hotlinked the images, and as they’d nicked quite a lot of content from some better connected acquaintances it didn’t last long
Deas 6:22 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
How do I get taken off of their site??
Ted 7:06 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
I just tried this plugin to add a nasty copyright blurb (naming Jams, but not their full URL) Maybe they’ll take me off? Worth a try anyway.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/copyfeed/installation/
Alfie Goodrich 7:15 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
The guy from the JNTO they are quoting and have an article from is someone I know. He probably wont be too happy when I email him and suggest to him he is named on and therefore supporting a website whose content is entirely scraped/stolen from other sources.
Shane; did you email Tony McNicol about this? He is a working working photojournalist like me and writes way more than I do. If his content is being scraped by these guys then I am sure he would be very interested to know.
Alfie Goodrich 7:27 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
P.S.
These folks join a long line that has some more famous organisations who have thieved from me in the past, including Italy’s biggest newspaper and media group, La Reppublica who even had underneath photos of mine they reproduced, their name as copyright. Cheeky buggers. I had lots of content stolen from Flickr too, on an industrial scale, which was being re-sold or given away free as part of a ‘get this free, buy this’ sort of deal at some company who did wallpapers and ringtones for mobile phones. I took all my work down from Flickr and visually, obviously watermarked it and put some back in very low rez. Most of the people stealing from Flickr dont regard it as theft, even when they are not crediting the original photographer or providing a link-back. Flickr dont pursue any of the infringements either and have provided an Application Program Interface that has made theft from their site easy and wholesale and if you are in any way clever with computers, you can steer around any controls in the API. I had all my pics set to All Rights Reserved, not Creative Commons, to be banned from use on ThirdParty sites and from searches. Didnt stop them being used. Flickr couldnt care less about it.
I also detested the reaction I got from at least 50% of the people who read about my woes; “Well, if its on the web then it’s fair game and gonna get stolen.”
Loads more said that it wasnt the same as theft in the real world, as I still had the originals. It was just a digital copy that had been stolen.
If one of those ‘photographers’ ever has an exhibition I will turn up, attempt to take their work off the walls and take it home and politely suggest that: “Well, what’s all the fuss about…. I mean, you have the original at home, don’t you?”
Peko-P 7:31 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Yeah, I got an SPAMMY comment from Akiko-chan on KyotoFoodie. I was like, OK, that sounds pretty ayashii.
My site is reproduced with out my permission on so many other sites out there, that I don’t hardly take notice anymore.
I work SOOOOO hard to produce original and meaningful content for KyotoFoodie, I’m all for fair use and generally am fine with people reusing some content IF they credit me and they link back to my site AND their site isn’t ALL about THEM selling ads around MY content.
Peko-P
Jason 8:04 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
I sent a much more forceful e-mail to Akiko. Thanks for the heads-up Shane.
CJW 9:38 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
You could try adding the following to your .htaccess file:
deny from 202.51.14.123
Also AntiLeech (http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/AntiLeech) is supposed to be very good, if you use a WordPress installation.
Deas 10:15 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
http://www.rockinginhakata.com/wp-images/jams.jpg
Ha ha! The Soc’s worked!
(Is there a way to upload this image to the blog here and show it in comments, despite not having published this post myself? I put it on my server cause it’s all I could think of.)
ThePenguin 10:24 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
> You could try adding the following to your .htaccess file:
> deny from 202.51.14.123
That’s assuming the scraping comes from the same IP address as their web server (202.51.14.123). This IP address is evidently allocated to a Japan-based provider “Clara Online, Inc.”. ( http://www.clara.co.jp/ ).
There’s a list of scraped blogs here: en-web.jams.tv/jlog/weblist/page_no-0
Rocking in Hakata » Blog Archive » Jams.tv Steals 10:44 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
[...] from The Nihon Sun, wrote a quick heads-up notice at the JapanSoc Blog that caught my eye today. I found it because Ken Y-N, brains behind What Japan Thinks, soc’d [...]
Nick 10:51 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Sorry Deas, can’t put images in comments so I’ve nabbed your picture and put it in Shane’s original post. Hope that’s okay.
Deas 11:01 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Works for me! Ha ha – the more visibility it gets the better. (See, I’m all about sharing when you don’t scrape my feed. Grrr.)
DBR 11:29 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
I was one that got an email and I’m pretty sure I was left off because I actually had a bit of correspondence with Akiko via G’Day Japan and she knew I would be onto it quick smart (also, as Shane points out I haven’t posted for a while so maybe it hasn’t picked it up yet). Clearly she works for both companies and, unless that is all lies too, JAMS is a long time functioning site. Akiko completely misrepresented not only what they were going to do with our blogs but also herself – claiming in one email that she was new to all this and didn’t know the terminology!!!
Contacting advertisers directly will probably have more of an effect but be careful that you yourself have direct copyright infringement that you are sure of to complain about (which most of you do) because they could turn around and sue you for defamation if you aren’t absolutely sure of it (and these guys seem like they could be lawyered up the wazoo – they clearly make all their money from other people’s content.)
Good luck guys – I’ll post again soon and see what happens.
DBR 11:34 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
Oh wow – cool! Just checked JAMS and Deas’s title is the top left article under the featured one. Also on the related articles when you click on Deas’s article other similar articles (like one from japan Probe) are listed lol. Great grass-rooting (ye pune intended) there guys!
BTW guys – also just be careful you stand on solid ground – they do absolutely credit where the article is from they just don’t link to the original site (despite a link with the blog title being there it goes to their own page with the blog’s headlines) and then when you click the article title it goes to the full feed on their site which is the major copyright infringement.
Ken Y-N 11:43 pm on January 8, 2009 | #
I had a longer comment but I accidentally reloaded the page…
Basically Clara’s AUP/service contract talks about not infringing copyright, so you could contact them and see if they care or not.
There’s now two “JAMS.TV Sucks!” posts on their front page
ShaneS 2:03 am on January 9, 2009 | #
No response yet on my end and as of writing this comment our content is still on the site along with Deas’s post and one from Tokyofoodcast about thievery and scamming.
Alfie, I did contact Tony about this in and email so he is aware.
I wanted to contact Clara but can’t read or write in Japanese beyond katakana & hiragana. If this doesn’t get resolved in short order would someone with better language abilities than me be willing to write something up and share it so that we could all send it off to Clara?
CJW 3:01 am on January 9, 2009 | #
>That’s assuming the scraping comes from the same IP address as their web server (202.51.14.123).
True – a quick search through the IP access log for your feed would confirm this.
Koichi 10:32 am on January 9, 2009 | #
VICTORY – hopefully you guys got a good response as well? We’ll see if it actually disappears off the site, though…
http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/victory.png
ShaneS 10:45 am on January 9, 2009 | #
I just got the following email:
“Hi Shane,
I am just understanding the enormity of this problem. I will take down your and other website immediately.
We had not realised that the contents linking is a problem. We will do our best to completely redo our website immediately. Akiko”
They appear to have taken down those that have complained but there are still others there.
Also, be sure to check the back links as those have not been taken down and are still accessible – I just checked mine and I am still able to load the pages that were scraped.
Mike 10:49 am on January 9, 2009 | #
I got scraped indirectly – piggybacked off of Shane’s post. Guess my low profile means I’m still immune from this. If you need help with a Japanese draft of a letter though, I’m happy to help!
ShaneS 10:59 am on January 9, 2009 | #
To check to see if your posts are still archived check the page that links like this:
Here is the text of the email I sent in reply:
It appears that you have taken the links to my site off of your home page but the links are still accessible via search engines etc. Please remove the pages indicated below from your website/server immediately otherwise you are still in breach of copyright laws:
Every page linked to from this page should be removed in it’s entirety from you site and server.
http://en-web.jams.tv/YOURBLOGNAME/
Deas 11:27 am on January 9, 2009 | #
Just got this reply:
“Hi Deas, We will take it down immediately. I will let the IT team know about the problem. Akiko”
My problem was ethics-related, not IT related. Ha ha.
Now, if I can get the archived content removed like Shane just mentioned.
DBR 11:39 am on January 9, 2009 | #
Looks hopeful guys – well done! I’m sure the posts you sent through to their feed helped enormously as well as suggestions that their advertisers would be contacted. It is an ethics issue and also a well-founded legal issue but it will be the IT team that can fix it.
I personally do not believe that anyone with a site like this (I give Alan the benefit of the doubt for having a slightly different idea) can think for a moment that what they are doing is okay/ They know that they are attracting people to their site by using other people’s content, providing none of their own – they HAVE to know that this is benefiting financially from the work of others which is at the heart of copyright law. How they can live with it on a personal basis escapes me, don’t they have any sense of a work ethic or a desire to have pride in what they create? Then again, I guess a lot of real world thieves take pride in “getting away with it”, probably chat around the pub about how they slipped in a bedroom window in the night so quietly they didn’t wake their victims. It is a pride of a sort.
DBR 11:41 am on January 9, 2009 | #
Sorry about the double post – my email response just came in and I thought I should link it since I’ve been talking about personal responsibility:
“Hi,We will take it down immediately. Sorry for the confusion, I am trying to understand what the IT team is doing myself.. I thought it links to the original website as well.. A”
Hmmmm
Ken Y-N 12:14 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
(Just in case JAMS.TV are reading)
I was thinking that people like http://newsonjapan.com and http://virtualreview.org do scraping properly. Indeed, NoJ emailed me when they were setting up and I was happy to link to them in return, and they provide a good slice of traffic to me. Virtual Review have never contacted me, and they are closer to the limits of my tolerance level, but they clearly link out, only take the first 50 words or so, and they don’t steal photos.
Deas 12:21 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
DBR – I’ve got a similar follow-up. Sounds like Akiko is upset too. Allow me to post the most recent email exchange here. First is my response to the acknowledgment of my cease and desist request. The two after are rapid-fire responses from Akiko. I’m chewing it over.
***
Thank you for your prompt response. Please remove the archived material as well, as my content is still accessible by search engine on your site. I am just upset at the shady nature of this scraping. Even if I had read your email request earlier, I would be angry – the whole thing was misrepresented. Your site never linked out to the sites it culled content from. It simply aggregated the fruits of other peoples’ labor, attached ads to that content in a closed system that trapped traffic on your own site (again, with your own ads), and therefore profited financially from stealing. That’s really underhanded at best.
- Deas
***
***
Hi Deas, I personally feel the same way–angry.. I also thought that the link was going to the original blog. Sorry for all the mess and I will let the IT team know about the archived material. Sorry again. A
***
***
Hil, Just got an email from IT saying they will try to change the whole format and send the link directly to the original blog by tomorrow. I will let you now when that happens, if you’d like to remain on the site. I understand if you wouldn’t…A
***
Stay tuned. And offer up thoughts or updates when you can, guys.
Koichi 12:37 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
At this point it’s not enough to have a link back to us, I think
DBR 1:11 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
I actually do hope that Akiko didn’t know what was going on because I was utterly fooled by her if she did.
Whether it’s too little to late is up to you guys I’d say – If they really do make such a big change quickly then most likely you could still deny them permission to do even that. I doubt that IT will just do that, though – this is a very carefully put together scraping site, the only sites that have external links to them are “members” with profiles (like Canyon) I don’t know whether they are paid members or not but they are in their lumped up with our blogs and frankly without our blogs the number of members would be pretty slim. SOMEONE there knew exactly what they were doing. Technically they could be sued for a proportion of profits earned while your content was being used but if they respond quickly enough then that would be seen as good faith – if in hindsight.
I took some time and sent an email to anyone on the front page today who had not been part of this or Japan Probe’s responses as far as I knew and so far have had a few “thanks for the heads up” kind of responses.
claytonian 4:03 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
I am insulted. That no one finds my stuff worthy to steal.
Jordan 5:47 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
I’ve stolen plenty of your Anki decks and Japanese study methods.
Koichi 6:17 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
If it makes you feel any better Claytonian, I would steal from you
Deas 7:01 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
Clay – your stuff is lots of video…they’d have trouble properly scraping.
(But heck, I’d steal from you too!)
Ken Y-N 10:30 pm on January 9, 2009 | #
If it makes you feel any worse Claytonian, I wouldn’t steal from you
Claytonian 12:23 am on January 10, 2009 | #
Well I guess in that case I will finally relent and put out a new anki deck soon…
Thanks to all that would take the time to steal! T_T
ShaneS 8:40 am on January 10, 2009 | #
FYI This is not over yet folks. The links to your posts may have been removed from the from page of http://gdayjapan.com.au/ BUT they appear to be continuing to scraping the feeds behind the scenes. They picked up my post from last night and have it archived at jams.tv here: http://en-web.jams.tv/nihonsun/view/id-16532
I gave her until lunchtime today her time to rectify this situation and I don’t really care if it is a Saturday in Australia and Japan and a holiday weekend to boot.
ShaneS 9:20 am on January 10, 2009 | #
Akiko has now backed out of this completely saying:
“I have been hired one-off by JAMS as a freelancer to find brilliant Japan blogs and ask you guys to be linked. I also thought that the link will go directly to the original blog. This is the extent of my connection with JAMS.”
She is now directing all queries to info@jams.tv
I sent an email to Clara ( info@clara.ad.jp ) notifying them if the copyright infringement via their contact form and forwarded the confirmation I received to the address above.
I wish that they would just do the right thing but I guess that is too much to hope for given that they don’t seem to have any ethical standards in the first place.
Ken Y-N 10:27 am on January 10, 2009 | #
Shane, that excuse sounds rather fishy to me. Hardly seems worthwhile to hire someone to do that, then keep them on the payroll/mailing list until the complaints get too hot to handle.
ShaneS 10:58 am on January 10, 2009 | #
My emails seemed to have worked as the content appears to be gone although I will check back after tonight’s post goes live to see what happens.
If you were on the list before though your posts from yesterday have gone up on the site.
ShaneS 11:06 am on January 10, 2009 | #
Does anyone have contact info for Jordan ( http://www.chirimotsumoreba.net/ )? His feed is being scraped too: http://en-web.jams.tv/chirimotsumoreba/
Also this site: http://tokyodrinkingglass.blogspot.com/
And this one: http://kyotofoodie.com/
Jason 11:21 am on January 10, 2009 | #
It appears the archives of my site have been taken off jams.tv also.
Deas 2:11 pm on January 10, 2009 | #
I think my archives have been dumped, too. A few keywords still pop up results, but clicking on them leads to an empty profile page – ironically with a link out now. (It says “WEB: http://www.rockinginhakata.com” ha ha.) Where the post content should be, it just says “not found” in red letters. Score. Anyone else got an update like Jason and me?
Deas 2:15 pm on January 10, 2009 | #
Maybe I spoke too soon. The “Daily Access Ranking” Jams.TV widget on the right side still lists 3 of my articles, and has mini-blurbs if you mouse over them. So, even though if you click through it shows you an empty profile page, the information is still in there somewhere… Maybe it takes awhile to flush completely from the system. And maybe I’m being too generous with my benefit of the doubt thoughts.
Mark 5:56 pm on January 10, 2009 | #
I was immediately suspicious about the Akiko inquiry. Then,she didn’t reply to my response. Finally, her response was the she had been ill. It all seemed like a scam from the start. The GDay site issue may be solved, but the Jams trouble continues. If Jams fails to respond, there is always one, final effective method: contact the advertisers that are on the Jams site. When the sponsors begin to get complaints, Jams will act.
Jordan 8:55 pm on January 10, 2009 | #
Shane thanks for pointing this out to me. I was never contacted for any thing like this so I thought myself free from the hassle of dealing with. Guess not. If anyone ever needs to contact me in the future messaging me via JapanSoc is probably the fastest way of doing so.
DBR 1:53 am on January 11, 2009 | #
@Shane Pretty sure Kyotofoodie knows – she did a post similar to Deas and it came up on the front page on the same day (just not as high up)
@Mark – it is possible Akiko was ill as she responded to my reply virtually immediately and we had a bit of a back and forth over a couple of days as I asked her to describe exactly what they were doing – I don’t know why she wouldn’t have done the same with everyone back then.
Timothy 6:07 am on January 11, 2009 | #
Hi, Thanks Shane for letting me know about this. I contacted Jams and Akiko and requested that I be removed. She replied quickly and I now seem to be be mostly out of their system 1 day later.
Also, I sent an email to my friend at TokyoDrinkingGlass and alerted them to the situation.
Thanks Again!
Deas 5:27 pm on January 11, 2009 | #
Just got this email about 30 seconds ago. Thoughts?
“Dear rockinginhakata.com
We would like to apologise for all the inconvenience and unpleasantness we caused regarding the way we linked and ran your blogs.
＊ABOUT JAMS.TV AND G’DAY JAPAN
We’re sorry we had not explained the relationship between these sites properly.
G’day Japan (http://gdayjapan.com.au/) is a website run by Jams.TV Pty Ltd. The website plans to introduce Japanese culture and travel and its sole purpose is to promote tourism and cultural exchange between Australia and Japan.
Since the production is lead by JAMS, all the information on G’Day Japan has been uploaded onto JAMS as well. That is why your blogs were automatically uploaded onto JAMS, and we apologise for the lack of explanation.
＊CHANGING THE FORMAT OF THE WEBSITE
Our purpose is to introduce your blogsites as well as adding our original content, so we have changed the format of our site to solely display excerpts from your entries.
1.We will directly link to your original blogsite from the top page of G’Day Japan (http://gdayjapan.com.au/) . Only your blog entry update information will be shown on the top page.
2. The content to be displayed on JAMS (http://en.jams.tv) will also directly link to your blogsite after clicking on the blogs’ excerpts.
3. If there are photos along with the blog entry, the excerpt will display only one of them, which will be thumbnail size.
4.JAMS will not display any extra content from your blogsite other than the excerpts.
We hope you understand that our purpose is to introduce your blogsites as part of vital cultural information on Japan. It is not intended to plagiarise content.
If you could reconsider liking your blogs to our site since the format changes have been implemented, we would greatly appreciate it.
If you have any comments or proposals to our site, please e-mail us at info@jams.tv. Sorry for all the inconvenience.
JAMS.TV”
Peko-P 8:33 pm on January 11, 2009 | #
JETRO Australia’s Business Partner: JAMS.TV!!!
The Japan External Trade Organization, or JETRO, run by the Japanese government is promoting itself on this sleazy site, jAMS.TV (what a stupid name). Send your complaints to JAMS.TV’s partners. JETRO Australia is a major partner. JETRO Australia’s contact info is below. Send them a message.
jn@jetro.org.au jetro@iprimus.com.au
After you finish explaining to them what manners and common sense are, it seems that they are available to give investment advice. Oh goodie! I can’t wait to invest my money in whatever they tell me to. You can choose from: Ms Emiko Yamamura, Mr Fred Taylor, Mr Matt Schneider. Be sure to call them ‘Ms’ and ‘Mr’ as they refer to themselves on their own website as they must be really smart, not to mention superior to us. Because, hey, they advertise on JAM.TV. Why didn’t I think of that?
Just think Japanese taxpayers, your hard earned money is going to buy advertising on JAMS.TV.
Thanks JETRO!
JETRO Contact Info:
JETRO Sydney
Level 25, Gold Fields House
1 Alfred Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
Map
Tel: +61 2 9276 0100
Fax: +61 2 9251 7631
Office Hours:
Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
For Sydney Investment inquiries please contact:
Mr Fred Taylor
JETRO Investment Advisor
Mr Matt Schneider
JETRO Investment Advisor
Email: jn@jetro.org.au
JETRO Melbourne
Level 26
35 Collins Street
Melbourne 3000
Map
Tel: +61 3 9654 4949
Fax: +61 3 9654 2962
Office Hours:
Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
For General inquiries please contact:
Ms Emiko Yamamura
Trade Enquiry Officer
For Melbourne Investment inquiries please contact:
Ms Jennifer Bean
JETRO Investment Advisor
Email: jetro@iprimus.com.au
http://www.jetro.go.jp/australia/
ShaneS 7:47 am on January 12, 2009 | #
@ Deas
I’m not sure what to think here. It was professional of them to send out the email (I got one too) but I’m tempted to email back and let them know when I see some original content on their site I will consider giving them permission to link back to me.
I may be shooting myself in the foot here in terms of getting some additional traffic but then again, I’m not sure if I care…
What does everyone else think?
DBR 2:24 pm on January 12, 2009 | #
Actually I am cautiously impressed with the response Deas pasted above and with the fact that they have published it for all to see on the G’Day Japan site. From a business point of view that’s a big deal – if corrections in various media are made it is usually done in a small way which has to be hunted down (like page 52 on the left hand side at the bottom or in the last 2 seconds of the news after the fluffy kittens piece.) I, too, am doubtful about original content but they have made it so that you cannot read full posts without going to the site (without any frames) which is much better and makes it more of an aggregator. There are ads on G’Day Japan, though, so “tourism and cultural exchange
between Australia and Japan.” is not the sole concern of the site and until they do put their own content up then they are still making money off other people’s work and everyone individually has to decide how they feel about that.
THE MAIN POINT IS, as I see it, that no matter how wonderful G’Day Japan was (say all their profits were given to charity or some such) there seems no choice to just be on the one site and JAMS is an appalling, unethical, bottom of the barrel, use-other’s-content-to-make-money site which was not part of the permission that was sought in the original email.
From what I can tell, the JAMS site sells “blogspace” to businesses and the headlines of the real blogs are used to fill in the gaps between their clients “ad-blogs”. SO, the deception is at least twofold:
1) they using the real blogs to attract viewers to their clients thinly disguised “ad-blogs” and
2)they are using them to con current and future clients by presenting a full, constantly updating page and saying “look how many blogs are on our site” without making it clear that most of the blogs are not their own.
That JAMS did not see it necessary to put the same apology up on their site shows bad faith in my view but I can see why they couldn’t – it would undermine the very basis of their business model.
I am sorry if Akiko is upset and was caught in something she didn’t understand but whether it was her or someone else – someone at JAMS knew what they were planning and knew that sending out those emails from the less obviously money-hungry site and failing to mention JAMS was a deliberate ploy to deceive.
Alan 3:01 pm on January 12, 2009 | #
You are all correct to be protective of your content. Your time, energy and thoughts have gone into the work and that should be respected. Keep in mind though that for every good idea that is developed there are many other bad ideas that simply dont work. The web is still developing and people are still working out what people want to see, how to show it them and what methods can or cannot be used. In the event of mistakes and bad ideas, it should be a priority to identify what is not right immediately and correct it before causing any further harm or disruption. (and try not to repeat the same mistakes again).
Whilst you have issues with JAMS that may be very valid, If they are willing to work with you and promote your sites then it may deter others who wont work with you or answer your mails from merely taking your content. It may also help promote your sites if the feeds are used in the right way. I dont know JAMS or their intent, but it appears that JapanSoc is fulfilling its role by allowing everyone to talk about the issue and work out what you really want. JapanSoc is like the Association or Union for Japan Bloggers who have a viewpoint on Japan who want to get the word out but want to also protect their rights. That is quite a cool concept for JapanSoc. If you didnt have these issues to address though, the common goal of JapanSoc bloggers may be just to chat about general matters. In a way the trouble you encounter along the way actually comes to define the role of JapanSoc. This is not meant to encourage or condone the actions in any way. It is just a reflection on the changing and growing steps of JapanSoc.
Just watching the traffic and hearing people’s appeals for action, it looks as if the society that is JapanSoc and the Japan bloggers community is growing through an important phase and becoming to understand its place in the wider web community. As Japan bloggers you are no longer a lone voice on the web, you have truly become a community. With it comes problems, but JapanSoc appears to be a good forum to discuss and help solve those issues.
It may be an idea if JapanSoc were to post a FAQ or article about feedscraping and describe what is considered totally unacceptable behaviour and what is considered possible under certain circumstances. This would not be giving permission but would explain some of the “definately not permissible” uses.
I hope JAMS fixes the problems you have addressed and can work to the benefit of all of you.
Nice work JapanSoc!
Nick 3:41 pm on January 12, 2009 | #
Thank you, Alan. Regarding the FAQ issue, since we have a dedicated site for questions about JapanSoc at http://faq.japansoc.com, it would be very easy to add additional FAQ sections to it, such as a “Japan Bloggers FAQ”. Such a section could be made up of contributions sent via the contact form. I can also assign Editor permissions to anyone dedicated to seeing it develop.