Copyright Issues yet again

Google keeps coming out with new tools and so on. Using these new options I found two more web sites that were coping my data. I emailed the first website last week, and the data has already been removed. I only just e-mailed the second site today and I have yet to hear back. A third site appeared to be using data from interfacebus, but the screen showed 'Domain gone' or what ever.

With all the computers Google uses they already know [I would assume] when a page has been copied. I've never seen a 'copied' page appear above mine in the Search Engine Pages [SEPs]. So in some way it really doesn't benefit a person coping the data, because you will always appear lower down the page. But I guess, if you have nothing to say [or write] than a copied page bets out a blank page.Anyway I have a few pages that need a bit of help;
Battery Control ICs.
Voltage Controlled Regulator ICs.
Charge Pump ICs.

The chart [Web Statistics] was first posted November 8th and 2009 PageViews were looking a tad low. Now this year is only lagging by 4000 pageviews from 2007 ~ with 15 days to go. So this year will be the highest year ever. I estimate over a 100,000 yet to hit the site. Oh, the site receives much more than 4000 pageviews a day.

Copyright Issues again

I was updating one of my pages a few days ago and I found a few entries that lack a bit of detail relating to the page they were on. So I was in the process of visiting those pages to get more detail regarding their listed products as they related to the topic I was updating, and of course checking to insure the company still produced that line of product. It's web site enhancement, site updates and quality control all with the same check; remember companies close product lines all the time..

I wasn't going to bring this up, but I don't really have any 'other' new issues to blog about.

So I'm checking out this companies web site, looking for data to enhance the listing I have for him on the page that's being up-dated. Of course we all know what's about to happen, right?
I come across a page containing data taken from my web site. Not good, but I had to read it a few times, I know it came from me but was a bit unsure how much of the data was lifted off my pages. It didn't take long after I pulled up the page the info came from, as the text was lifted verbatim, before I saw that much of a page was copied. Now I know how I write even if I don't remember what I write only because that section was written several years ago, but the give away was that although that page has been updated a number of times the section that was copied was historical, so I know it was never updated.

The companies web site only had a contact email for 'sales', while I assumed the web master garbed the data anyway, so I didn't even attempt to send an email. 

Well I deleted his contact info from my site, but not for the reasons you might think. Normally Google already knows the site has copied the text, cause they track that data. That site would never show up higher then me for any search relating to that same text . I removed his contact info because I linked to that company from twelve different pages on my site.
I was passing my page rank from my site to his, or reducing my own page rank, so his site would get a higher page rank. In Google's eyes, by linking to him, my site was voting for his site indicating I approved of his site. Well I don't approve of his site, and I'm not going to degrade my site, by passing away my page rank, while linking to him.

So his home page has a Google Page Rank of three [today], but he just lost twelve external page links that had page ranks of 3 and 4. It will take Google another month or more to spider the pages that just had those links removed, so it will be mid December before it stores my page updates and then January before the SEPs [Search Engine Pages] are updated. Remember, it doesn't matter if I sent him any visitors, I was telling Google I approve of his site...... Or it could be February before he sees a reduction in rankings.
Hmm, I have a label for copyright issues, must be occurring to much........

Graphic; Evolution of the Ares I Rocket [copyright free].

Document Copyright Issues

I was doing a little research the other day looking up some data to support the chassis design section of the web site.

So I pull up this Handbook from the DOE and I'm speed reading, scrolling through the pages really quick. Stopping for a moment as I see some data on equipment rack grounding I like, other wise I keep scrolling.

I scroll past a table with a blue background, and I stop ~ all the tables on my web site once had blue back grounds. It's an Ampacity table for copper wire. Just above the table is data relating to derating wire bundles, just like my site.

Scrolling to the next page I see another table for chassis wire color coding, again copied from me. Even the text above the tables has been lifted. Even a disclaimer I used about not covering Military color coding is used.. The next 5 tables, with text, all from my site.

Now to be fair the data used in the tables covering color coding by voltage and TFE wire Ampacity were both derived from some other DOD standard. However there are two differences here; first any data derived from a military specification did not have a copyright, and second I didn't copy their table I retyped and reformatted the facts.

So what is the issue here?
a. First the US Government does not copyright their information. So if I copy data from a military standard I'm safe, it's free to use.
b. Second, I do copyright my data and it is not free to use. Also my site is not listed in the References section of the document, so I received no credit for the copied data.
c. Third, Once my data was put into that government handbook I lost my copyright because US Gov documents have no copyright ~ so now anyone can re-copy it.
d. Finally, Did my tax dollars pay someone to copy data from my site ~ it's a double hit. I paid someone to undermine my website.
e. Guess what, this posting on site visits (6/20/09) noted a 50% reduction in visits to the page that lost the data [Wire Insulation Color Coding]. All the text and tables that were copied originated from that page.

Notes;
1. For a number of years many tables on the web site had blue back grounds, but a few years ago all the tables were changed to a clear background. Changing the background color was one of a number of changes I made to reduce the bandwidth of the site. A clear background does not require any HTML code, while a colored background requires bgcolor=xxxx (what ever).
2. In some cases the department seal used by some agencies do have restrictions on use. I'm not sure if I can display the DOE seal or not, I know NASA does not like it.
3. The chassis design section covers a few dozen pages and addresses the issues that may come up while designing an equipment chassis, with Equipment Rack data..
4. I will be using data from this handbook, I have already posted a graphic for an equipment rack ~ again there is not copyright covering this DOE Handbook.

Comparing Visits from Different Years

One of the reports from Google Analytics is an overview of visitors from any two dates that are of interest. You can also compare any two sets of date ranges. In this case the graphic to the left compares 1-1-08 to 7-22-08 vs. 1-1-09 to 7-22-09. The graph points [dots] are per week, but you can show data per day or per month. Click the image for a larger view of the data.

Notice that the graph lines appear almost identical. However the data indicates there has been a -0.56% increase visitors from this year to last, or around a decrease of 7000 visitors. That's less than one day worth of visitors, so maybe the site went down a few hours more this year than last.

Not much to worry about until I scroll down the report and review the data on a per page basis. That's when the data starts to look troubling. Here is a sampling of a few of the pages that are in decline, ignoring the few pages that showed an increase in visits.

CANbus -4.24% in visitors.
USB Interface -5.21% in visitors.
interfacebus.com [home page] -15.68% in visitors.
PCIexpress Interface -37.28% in visitors.
RS422 Interface -5.16% in visitors.
SerialATA Interface -7.19% in visitors.

Now these are not buses that are in decline, so there is no reason for these pages to see any decrease. Unlike the RS232 bus that is being left off newer computers; that page also showed a -12.25% decline, but I can deal with that.

So what is the deal with a graph that shows no real decrease, but many pages that seem to be in decline. Well when you check the blog listing new engineering pages, you'll see that over a hundred new pages have been added over the same time frame. So the new pages are leveling out this year even as a number of pages are seeing a reduced number of hits.

Hmm, I happen to be looking for the VME64x pin out today, my page came up first in a Google search but I decided to select the next guys page. Sure enough there's my text, plus a link back to me ~ stay off my site. Guess it's time to start looking at some of these other pages to see what's finding its way onto other websites.

Most of these guys running hardware or engineering sites aren't engineers at all, you can kind of tell by what they copy.

The point here is always spend some time searching the Internet looking for your work. I found a guy a few years back who had copied my PCIe page [and a dozen others], but I had just written the page. It had taken several hours to generate the different pin out tables in HTML, and he grabbed them in a matter of minutes.... Better stop now or I'll start naming names. Oh had two typo's I found weeks later, to bad he missed garbing the up-dates.

Links from an External Page

One of the data points AWSTATS provides is a listing of Links from External Pages.
AWSTATS is the server side counter used by interfacebus.com.
With the start of the new month the listing is small and still workable. Scrolling down the list the column indicating page visits goes blank, while still indicating hits to the site.

That normally means that another site is directly linking to graphic files on my server [site]. The site is using my graphics from my server. The graphic wasn't copied, it's being used directly from my server ~ using up my bandwidth. Not really sure if I like that better than just taking a copy of my picture file.

So I checked a few of the sites using the largest bandwidth [most hits] and visit the other web site. Once I find the graphic file their linking to, I go back to my server change the name of the pic file and up-date my pages so that they to point to the new file name. I save bandwidth and they end up with a broken link. Some times I'll leave the old file name valid but change the pic file to a graphic of my site address :)

Both sites I check were forums, which normally don't allow people to upload graphics. Web sites normally just take the graphics out-right.

The attached graphic is an example forum site that had copied one of my pic files. Some time last year I changed the file name and had a graphic of my site name up-loaded......

Web Page Strength & Importance

I came across backlinkwatch.com while searching the web. This site gives you all the links pointing to your site [back links]. Of course Google will do that as well, but this site provides two other pieces of data. First, the site indicates if the incoming link has an attached 'rel=nofollow' tag to the link, indicating that no page rank is passed with the link. Second the site shows the total number out going links on the page that contains your link. The more links on a page means that a smaller percentage of Page Rank [PR] is passed in each outbound link. The site found 5,158 backlinks for interfacebus.com. From the Back-link report I found tagurls.com which ... hmm, not really sure what it's telling me. But I found seomoz.org which gives an indication of page strength [SEO site]. interfacebus has a page strength of 6/10 per their report. Than cloudalicio.us was found which shows the number of tags [links?] occur over time on del.icio.us. Also checked out Technorati, guess they track blog activity.

Then I found this one http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/reqs_bestpractices/laws_regs/copyright.shtml.

Hmm, while interfacebus.com was rated 6 of 10.