‘Coupla mentions, here of some issues I blogged about recently.
The first is about the Originality.ai website. (my original blog here) For a while, there, the subject seemed to fade away on the VO forum site where it first appeared. But it came back, and I’m glad it did…because ace VO talent Peter Drew chimed in with a great contribution on what was developing into a conversation about copyright and content rights. You’ll see his comments “below-the-fold” in blue when you click “read the rest of this entry…”
The second is concerning the free VO evaluation being made by the start-up VO website VOCareer.com. (my original blog here). Fellow SaVoa Advisory Board Member, Scott Diskin, decided to take ‘em up on their offer, and wasn’t so impressed. You can read his comments, and the VOCareer response “below-the-fold” in red, when you click “read the rest of this entry…”
P.S. I wasn’t comfortable attaching the VOCareer evaluation form Scott mentions without their approval (see CopyScape copyright issue blog), but Scott would likely be willing to share it with you if you asked him. I saw it, and can concur that it’s not particularly revealing nor did it appear to be very labor-intensive.
My thanks to Peter Drew and Scott Diskin for allowing me freedom to excerpt their comments.
CourVO
You can use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998, to get Google, Yahoo!, Bing and the other search engines to remove copyrighted material or an entire web site from their indexes.
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
If you have a serious case of copyright infringement by a fellow VO talent or other legitimate web site and you decide to challenge the offending party through a lawyer, make sure the lawyer is at least familiar with DMCA or, better yet, locate a law firm well-versed and experienced in copyright and DMCA.
If an article you wrote appears on “scraper” sites, the general consensus in the SEO/SEM world is to ignore them because these sites exist and are indexed literally for just several weeks to months. Scraper robots go out and steal content and then generate worthless sites. As soon as the search engines figure out a scraper site is simply stolen copy surrounded by affiliate ads, that site is dropped deep into the index or simply de-indexed. Operators of scraper sites create these sites with the intent to make them rank very high in the SEs indexes with the goal of getting as many clicks as possible on the affiliate links on the site before the jig is up and the site is de-indexed. These guys very often operate hundreds of scraper sites at any one time. They can rake in thousands per week from affiliate link clicks. You know the old hard sell ad copy cliche, “How do we do it? Volume!”? That’s how scraper operators work.
From my research, the original author of the content doesn’t have to worry about these scraper sites affecting the “PageRank” and index position of the original content on the author’s site. The SE algorithms are aware of the date the original copy appeared and where it appeared. The algorithms are smart enough to distinguish scraper use from the original posting and any legitimate republished postings of that original.
Also, be aware of jerks that steal domain names you’ve purchased but not using. This happened to me. Ever come across a worthless site of affiliate ads that features a picture of a pretty girl, presumably a student, wearing a backpack? That site’s run by a guy in far eastern Europe who steals domains and puts up worthless sites for a living, simply looking for affiliate link clicks. He stole one of my unused URLs and put up the pretty girl site. I came across it and just felt it wasn’t worth the effort. Eventually, after coming across the site several times while searching for voiceover related stuff, I got fed up and notified my domain registrar and had the pretty girl site using my unused domain shut down. So, if you have registered domains that you aren’t using, punch the URL into your browser and see if anything comes up.
‘Goes to show the virtual world is no different from the world of bricks and mortar. Just enough crooks to make it a pain in the ass sometimes.
Cheers,
Peter Drew
Peter Drew Voiceovers
http://www.peterdrewvo.com
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Not sure if any of you got an email earlier in the week from the folks at vocareer.com, offering a free evaluation? I did, and decided to see what they had to say. Their evaluation is attached, and it looks like they are just trying to drum up business… BTW, the demo that I sent them was my narration demo, and it was produced by David Goldberg – doesn’t get much better than that!
Scott Diskin
Dear Scott,
Thanks very much for your interest in a VOCareer.com free VO evaluation. The results of your evaluation are attached as a word doc and PDF so that you have multiple viewing options.
It is our goal to provide you with honest, industry feedback and suggestions for improving your voiceover career. We welcome the opportunity to review our findings with you and to discuss further recommendations that will help you reach your goals. We believe that there are dozens of excellent services available for you to chose from and we make valuable recommendation for your career that involve not only our services but those of other well respected voice companies.
A career consultant will be in touch with you soon to discuss your unique needs and our recommendations. Thanks very much. We look forward to speaking with you.
Brandon Falls – Talent Coordinator
Office: (704) 246-5294 * (866) 967-0129 * Cell: (704) 807-0435 * Fax: (954) 834-8132
