Journal
AboutUs.org - a Sham
26 August 2006 › 29 comments
Update: Molly Holzschlag also shared her thoughts on the the topic – here.
Today began like any other Saturday. I sort of lazily woke up, checked email, looked at my Mint stats to check the incoming referrers – nothing too exciting. One URL in particular caught my eye though, that of AboutUs.org which had a page written up about me. Flattering as this may be, it was also a bit disconcerting to see that they had listed my personal info such as email address, phone number and home address – with a Google Maps indicator showing exactly where I live. I clicked on the AboutUs privacy policy to see what their terms of use are, and was greeted by this ill-conceived attempt…
It simply reads: “Please Do not abuse with the System” – with capitalization errors and all. This part of the site seems the least developed, when really it should be one of the more important aspects, especially if you are scraping aggregating data about people around the web. I looked around for some sort of opt-out choice, but there was none to be had. Forgive me for being blunt, but the mere existence of AboutUs seems like such abuse of other people’s information. It rips most of its info straight from Alexa, and then the additional supplimental stuff is just a copy and paste from the original sites.
As far as I can tell, AboutUs offers little by way of original content, or original thought for that matter. It does not seem to really do anything. For instance, at least Alexa tracks traffic related details, and offers some semblance of usefulness. This is not so with AboutUs, which only regurgitates recycled information in an attempt to create the illusion of an authoratative website. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that wikis have great potential for usefulness, such as Wikipedia. However, the drawback of wiki type software is that any goofball can do whatever he wants with it, in this case namely Ray King.
I also find it laughable that he is asking for volunteers to police the wiki, and is trying to get donations to fund his site. Here’s a news-flash for Ray: You’re not doing anything new. All this data already exists with real registrars. If people really want to know about these sites, they’ll just visit them directly. So perhaps you can find better ways to invest your time, and give up on pan-handling. It all just comes across as a pathetic attempt to generate Google ad revenue if you ask me, by linking to high ranked websites to increase one’s own relevance / page ranking. I’m on to your game.
I have talked to several other people from the 9rules Network whose info has been prominently displayed on this site without permission, and the general consensus is that AboutUs is rather pointless. Now, I don’t want to be mean, but I figured someone should clue this guy in that what he is attempting to do is completely unnecessary and will probably get more people upset with him than anything else. If he wants to make a name for himself, he should do it not by being a parrot, but by doing something useful instead. I am not sure what that could be, but Ray – I sincerely hope you find your niche.
Note: All outgoing links to AboutUs.org were using rel="nofollow" – Info.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 Larry Tomlinson
Heh. That incoming link was probably me. I saw an article on it on my WordPress dashboard, and decided to check it out. Being the great person you are and the wonderful website you have, your site was on my mind. So, I punched it in… and voila. My first reaction was, “Wow. I wouldn’t want my personal info (address, phone, etc) published on this uncontrolled site.”
I need to figure out how to remove my site as well.
#2 Faruk Ates
Just create an account, remove your own site’s information (or any info you don’t want to be there) and optionally offer to others to remove stuff for them as well.
And don’t bother activating your e-mail address, unless you really want to. But you can just use a fake e-mail address for your account, is what I’m saying. :)
#3 Natalie Jost
What’s more funny is that you can actually click “edit” and delete the whole page. I wiped out my page, even though they only had 1and1.com info there since they have free private registration.
#4 Adam
Argh! thanks for the post!
Just checked it out, it had harvested all my telephone numbers, screenshots of my pages, addresses and my content!!
this is not cool!
#5 Jared Christensen
I just wiped my page. Thanks for the tip, Natalie, and for the alert, Nathan.
Though AboutUs was not publishing my address and personal info, I am generally pissed off at sites that do. I know Alexa is just grabbing my info from my registrar, but I still think it’s an invasion of my privacy. Which is why Alexa can go jump off a cliff for all I care.
#6 Natalie Jost
You know, this got me thinking… isn’t this a violation of whois.com (and others) terms? I remember a case study from a business law class I took last summer that talked about a specific (real) case involving Virgin Records and a domain registrar, I forget which. The terms said that use of the information for these purposes or similar was totally against their policy and not what the service was intended for. It was never supposed to give the public open access to our personal info. It was just supposed to be a way for someone to get in touch with a specific domain owner, either to file a complaint about some activity on the website, or to inquire about purchasing the domain, that sort of thing, but fishing for data and then republishing it was strictly prohibited because people were using it to spam.
Oh, hey Jared, you’re welcome! I love your note you left. Obviously the guy has never actually been to your site. ;)
#7 Keith Bell
Well, that was a fun way to waste an hour, deleting all the entries for the couple of dozen domains I hold!
Of course, that’s not a complete solution, since anyone can hit the History tab and see what was there before. Looking around on the site, it seems as if Ray is willing to permanently delete domains, but needs proof that you are the registrant before he will do so (yeah, the irony… he takes your details without asking, and lets any Tom, Dick or Harry edit them, but he needs proof from you before he will remove an entry).
Natalie, I think you might be right about the misuse of the WHOIS data – I’d look into it, if I had the time right now.
Nice catch, Nathan.
#8 Jared Christensen
Natalie – My registrar’s TOS for WHOIS info says: “The compilation,
repackaging, dissemination or other use of this data is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of Register.com.”
So Alexa, AboutUs and (possibly?) Whois.org violate the TOS, unless Register.com gave them written permission (doubtful).
#9 Nathan Smith
It would seem that anyone using info aside from the registrar that you have given it to would be in violation of the WHOIS terms of service. Alexa, AboutUs and the rest seem to be misuing it. At least in the case of Alexa, they perform some meaningful service and are considered to be somewhat authoritative. AboutUs is just a chop-shop, run by a hack out to make a quick buck at the expense of others. Since Ray’s address is listed on the site, perhaps we should all pay him a visit the next time we’re in Portland.
#10 Natalie Jost
or sign him up for all kinds of junk mail! woops, did I type that outloud?
#11 Steven Tew
Surely publishing a word for word copy of your ‘about us’ page would constitute a copyright infringement?
#12 franky
Actually they have an interesting page with small tips : http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUsBot
It is obviously that all the information is robot generated.
More than the WHOIS-info, isn’t AboutUs a copyright infringment too?
#13 Natalie Jost
Franky, that is exactly what that legal case I mentioned was about. Virgin was using a bot to snag personal info from register.com and tried to say that because it wasn’t a human being doing it, they couldn’t be held responsible because somehow the wording in register.com’s policies said something about a person. I think it was resolved in the registrar’s favor though.
And as far as AboutUs, he’s illegally snatching and publishing private personal information that is supposed to be only up to the registrar with whom we hold our domains. At least it should be safe to assume that. Personally, I think it’s worth doing something about to keep my family safe, not to mention protecting copyright, but does anyone know who to contact and how to go about making this guy accountable? I’m inclined to start with his host because surely the host would have a policy against this, no?
#14 Nathan Smith
After less than a week since people starting posting about this guy, it seems that the majority of Google search results for the term AboutUs.org turns up articles speaking negatively of Ray King’s endeavor. It makes me wonder why his site is still even online at all. Surely something will be done, but I’m just wondering why it has taken this long, when so many people clearly disapprove of what he is doing. If I were him, I would throw in the towel.
#15 Natalie Jost
I emailed his host to let them know how I felt and that I wasn’t alone. Not sure what if anything they’ll do, but it was worth a shot, especially because he has now put up notice saying he’ll reinstate our information if we delete it. Pig.
#16 Ray King
Thank you for the feedback. I’ve read the concerns expressed and if you have time, I’d like to share my thoughts. They are posted here: http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs:Concerns. I welcome additional comments from you and your readers. – Ray.
#17 Gordon Brander
That right there pretty much convinced me that I’m going to be more selective about what content I deem creative commens on my site. I’m all for share and share alike, as long as it’s not abused.
#18 Nathan Smith
Ray: It’s funny that you try to gloss things over with diplomatic talk, when what you are doing is so obviously illegal. You are pathetic, surely you realize that. I am wondering how much longer you think that this charade will last.
#19 Natalie Jost
My note to Ray sent via email (a little nicer than I wanted to be):
Ray,
I can appreciate all the work you’re doing to remain just this side of legal, but nothing about sharing private information about others is ethical. I believe I have every right to insist that you remove my page altogether. I don’t want a page about me or my site up there for public editing. You’ll probably want to come back with some statement of terms that allows you some sort of reign over my domain information, but I’m asking you as a human being to just knock it off. It’s rude, harmful to families trying to keep some amount of anonymity, and not near as secure as you believe. My personal information IS registered privately, but someone could still post information on your site which I have not allowed to be published elsewhere, and snippets? Be honest, in most cases you snapped a whole page of content, and fair use doesn’t apply when you’re using that text as the sole contents of your own site. I hope that you’ll have some kind of conscience here and let this endeavor go because people can be hurt over this. If you get away from your computers and bots and get out into the world and meet people face to face you may find they’re worth protecting.
~ Natalie Jost
#20 Matthijs
Well written Natalie. We should all write him in similar ways. In the meantime I’ve adjusted my robots.txt file which seems to have been effective. But the fact that I have to do that is stupid. It should be the other way around. If he wants to gather personal information or copyrighted material, he’ll just have to write everyone personally and ask for permission. If I had the means and time right now I would send him a letter from a laywer.
#21 Simon Koldyk
Sorry, just because this is a small website why is he being “attacked”? Go check out your domain on alexa.com it has that same information avaliable and I doubt you received an email from their either.
#22 Nathan Smith
Simon: You bring up a good point, and I agree that both Alexa.com and AboutUs.org both use people’s info without expressed permission. Except, I don’t think that either are entitled to do so in that way. I do not consider it an “attack” to stick up for the right to have people to respect my privacy. In my opinion, we need to hold these dregs of society accountable more often.
#23 Ted Ernst
Seems like I’m hearing three objections to aboutus. One is about personal information, another is about copyright, and a third is about the site not providing any value. Is this right?
I’m guessing Ray is receiving criticism on the first point because he’s a human being, so easy to point to him as a privacy problem. The real problem, if there is one, is that we don’t control our own private data. This information is already available. So if there’s a problem, it seems that’s the problem. I hope everyone here is supporting Identity Commons or one of the other groups working on this issue.
Copyright – well, I pretty much think copyright is bull, so objections to aboutus on those grounds are going to have a difficult time with me. The page is about your site (any site). Wouldn’t it make sense to describe it in your own words? Is the issue that he’s using too many words? Well, let him know that. How many would be okay?
The third point about the lack of value-add is an interesting one. Anyone care to say more about this?
#24 Nathan Smith
Ted: I suppose we’ll just have to disagree about the copyright issue. I would just be talking past you, since you think copyright is “bull.” The issue is not the amount of words, or that he is describing the site at all, but that he puts the accompanying personal info along with it. I agree that the availability of such info results from a lack of a solid way to restrict it in the first place.
As far as there not being any added value – AboutUs.org doesn’t do anything new. Like I said in my article, it just re-hashes people’s info while bringing little to the table as far as originality. Sure, others can add whatever they like since it’s a wiki, but to me that just seems like an extremely lazy attempt to generate Google ad revenue. I’ll admit, Ray’s idea is a smart one from a selfish money making standpoint, but that doesn’t make it justified. It does however, make him look like a criminally clever sociopath.
#25 Ted Ernst
Nathan,
I’m trying to tease apart the issues. Is copyright really the issue, or is it the personal information? Or is it the unique way they’re combined? It sounds as if you’re saying copyright isn’t really the issue, even though you’re saying we disagree. I don’t actually think we disagree. It sounds as if you’re concerned about your personal information, and I am too.
To be honest, my first reaction when I heard Ray’s idea was similar to yours (I didn’t think he was acting like a sociopath, but perhaps that’s because I know him in person). I couldn’t see how such a site was useful. Why on earth would anyone go to a site like this when google or another search engine gets the same info without the middleman.
And I kept thinking about it, because the whole wiki-that-covers-the-whole-web idea intrigued me. I still couldn’t figure out how aboutus.org/category:javascript could have more relevant information about the great javascript sites than say, javascript.com, or aboutus.org/category:kayaking and kayaking.org, for another example.
So while I didn’t think the site would actually generate any adwords revenue, it never occured to me that it might somehow be evil. And if it doesn’t generate revenue, it dies, right? And why would people contribute to the site if Ray’s the one making the revenue (if there is any), right?
But the more I see how the bot works, to bring in information that starts out an article on a site, the more I really like the whole idea. Every site can have it’s own community-written article about it. And as those articles are written, they get featured on the homepage, thus driving traffic to the site. Very cool, it seems. So maybe there is some revenue and a useful service here, as people turn to the site as a non-greenwashed source of information about websites.
So if that’s so, then the two remaining issues are the publishing of personal information, and the volunteer efforts that create value for Ray. For the first one, I know Ray’s working on the personal information issue, trying to figure ways to allow site owners to control their information. For the second one, I’ll leave that to Ray to address.
#26 Nathan Smith
Ted: Yeah, I see what you mean. Still, I think usage of personal information and site content still fall under copyright. At any rate, it’s a gray area for sure. I think I’m starting to accept the fact that sites like these probably won’t go away anytime soon, simply because it’s virtually impossible to police the Internet because of its very nature. So, while I think it’s wrong and my opinion of Ray still stands, I am tired of belaboring the point. It’s like my grandfather used to say: “You can’t educate everybody.” C’est la vie.
#27 Todd Libby
Bravo Ray, you’re a sport… exploit for your benefit, way to go. Funny thing is, you look like the fool here and maybe ought to re-think your position on this whole “I can show your personal information if I want” issue. It makes you appear childish and stupid.
To the topic in general, I personally don’t want my personal info plastered on sites if I do not want to, that just ridiculous, period.
Let me throw out the name Rebecca Schaeffer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Schaeffer
Now if Ray wants to post this stuff and this sort of thing happens regardless of that miniscule chance… I hope Ray does a lot of thinking about how much this AboutUs.org junk is absurd. Ray, be smart for a change, don’t be a horses’ rear end.
#28 Hugh
As the creator of probably the biggest competitor for aboutus.org (http://chainki.org), I have a few observations:
a) I’m amazed at the alexa.com rating which aboutus.org has – it is jumped from nothing to extremely high very rapidly. It will be interesting to see if that remains the case
b) I think there will be many people willing to add their OWN site (with all the unbias, NOT, that this implies), but not so many who will care two hoots about becoming editors for free, as soon as they see that it is a COMMERCIAL site – I note that this is not actually made very clear and you could easily get the impression that it is non-profit. Since a lot of the value of such a site would come from people actually organising the websites in an intelligent way, I don’t see how it will become popular without that vast investment of peoples time in structuring the content in some intelligent way.
c) I do think the idea is pretty neat though and the execution of it is pretty well done. If it became non-profit I think it might just be onto something.
Hugh
#29 Adaire Cain
It seems that old Ray has been busy. This is a good time to take a look at what the Public Interest Registry people are trying to do about this http://pir.org/Strengthening/PolicyLeadership.aspx