Is this an illegal or unethical way to reprint articles?

Plagarism is the biggest key to avoid...as you referenced.

What I would do, is use your new title...then the first sentence say:

Reprinted from: "Old Title" by _____.

Then make sure they still get credit at the bottom.

I think that is a fair and reasonable way to change title's on an article.

Alternatively, just rewrite the article, in your own words, but based on the information in the original article. Then add your own title, and submit to article directories yourself.

I'm reluctant to respond here because I'm not at all close
to being an expert on this subject but common sense tells
me what you propose seems perfectly fine.

You're going to use their contact fully intact including their
contact/bio box so I really don't see where there would be a
problem.

Tsnyder

You may not be qualified to write the content yourself but I wouldn't put too much faith in some random person from EZA either.

I do this all the time on my forum, the important thing to remember though is if you got the article from ANYWHERE on the internet then you link back to them.

Most authors of articles would be chuffed to bits that others are talking about them and quoting them but they would not be if you simply steal their traffic without giving something back.

It is also perfectly fine to state that you have reworded it for clarity as I also do this on occasion.

Giving a link back to the original source also negates the copyright issues as you are fully acknowledging their rights.

Are you reading the terms of service for the article directories that you are taking the articles from?

People write articles for directories knowing (hoping!) that other sites might pick these articles up with their links, but you would need to see whether what you are doing breaches the site rules where you took the article from.

That's my $0.02 anyway.

If it were my article I would be fine with that also. I have also done this on a few of my sites... introduced the article like: "I found a very informative article that I felt you might be interested in..." or "...from our guest author". I always include the authors bio box with all links live too. I think it does help with SEO if you have outbound links to other relevant pages, although SEO isn't really my bag.

Just keep the links live and normal size and you'd be fine if it was my article. I found one of my articles last week on a site with the font so small you couldn't read it! GRRRR!

Hi Larry,

Yes you can do this, it's called article wrapping, and something I
discuss with my clients.

Here's a link to an ebook I provide as part of a paid course that will
help. It's not written by me, but I do have give away rights to it.

HTTP://cloudzero.co.uk/slobs/article-wrapping.pdf

There's no signup

HTH

Glenn

Personally I would love it if people did this with my articles.

What I usually do if I use an article from an article directory is I make my own post with a paragraph or whatever and then I say 'Here's a great article by Author Name on the subject" and paste the full article with the resource box.

Lee

Hey LarryC,

Just go with your gut on this one. Do you think it would be right to do what you said? I'm not condemning you, it might just sound that way =p. But yeah, use common sense and think whether you'd like it done to you if you were that person who articles were being "reappropriated" .

Cheers,

-Johnson.

Write whatever content you want, but then you should post the auther's article exactly as the original including the headline.

You can have your own headline, then your comments or content, ads, etc.

After this just include the entire article with the headline. and byline.

Lambert

Always endeavour to give credit to whom it is due. There is nothing wrong in letting people know you got an article from a source. You can still use your keywords in the article but also give credit to whom you used his/her article.

As a Platinum writer on EZA and one of the top 25 providers on oDesk, I want to thank you for being concerned about this!
During the past 30 years I have seen my words appear in some strange forms in some very strange places. The only time I take exception is when someone strips my name out and replaces it with their own.
I prefer to see my work republished on a blog, with or without a new title, preface, or critique, than to publish it on some low ranking article directory that turns every keyword into a hyperlink to one of their own products.
I have had bloggers contact me, asking for permission to edit one of my articles to fit into a small space. More often than not, I volunteer to do this for them.
Again - thanks for asking - and for caring. Your post makes you one of the "Good Guys"

Here's A Tip For You...

You want content you can use for your blogs?

Start your own subscriber list, then post your
emails to your blog. This is original content.

What you proposed to do is copyright infringement.

You can get private label rights to articles and you can legally do anything you want to do with them including rewriting and and putting your name as the author.This is what a lot of people do with their articles. You can also hire someone to write the articles for you very inexpensively.

So long as you leave the original article in tact, with all links included, you're fine. (With respect to articles from the article directories.)

When you're talking about content lifted from other people's blogs, you need to be sure that you give credit to the author and a link back to the source. Fair use allows you to quote others' content so long as you give them credit. It is not copyright infringement, any more than quoting a source with proper citation is when writing term papers or a news story.

Here's an excerpt from Ezine Articles Terms of Service for Publishers. I'd read it carefully before deciding what you want to do with any reprinted articles from there.


If you wish to publish/reprint any article from our site in your ezine, website, blog, forum, RSS feed or print publication, you must:

• Respect the copyrights of the authors by publishing the entire article as it is with no changes.
• Agree to include the FULL Resource box or SIG line at the end of the article.
• Agree not to change the title or content of the article in any way.
• Agree to make all links so that they are Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
• Agree to include the article source credit below each article reprinted with the link active:
  
  Article Source: EzineArticles.com
• Agree to not put any of the articles found on this site to any web site that also contains warez, illegal mp3 or other files, instructions on how to make bombs or steal, or expressions that promote hatred or profanity or racism or bigotry, or contains pornography or exploits children or animals or any human, or any other unlawful activities.
• Agree to never reprint any article from this site via any unsolicited email, spamming, or pop up ads.
• Agree to never sell any article from the EzineArticles.com directory.
• Agree to never charge others to view any article you reprint from our directory.
• Agree to limit the number of articles reprinted to no greater than taking 25 articles from our site per calendar year per unique domain that you own. In addition, for domain owners of many domains, you may not reprint more than 250 articles per year (10 sites x 25 articles reprinted per domain).
• Agree to not include the rel=nofollow tag in your HREF statements.
• Agree to not use any content from our site in audio or video derivatives whatsoever.
• Agree to never translate any content from our site in any language. You may not create derivative works from any of our content.
• Agree to not add any active links to any article you reprint from our site. This unethical behavior would lead someone to believe falsely that the author of the article endorses the active link when in fact there is no truth to that.
• Agree to never reprint any author photo or images found on our site.

I hope this helps,
Lee

LarryC... A couple of things jump out at me.

It sounds like you want to add something to the content portion of the article along with your own affiliate links.

If I were the writer of that article, I would strongly object to this as it detracts from the links I will include in the resource box, and you are changing what I said... yet you are putting MY name on it as required by EA terms. You CANNOT put someone else's name on something you have tampered with... unless you get the original author's permission to do so.


What you CAN do, however, is leave the entire article (title, content, resource box) intact and do whatever you wish before and after it. In other words, give your blog post title whatever works for your keyword optimization efforts.

1. Write an opening para again targeting your keyword.
2. Write a summation para after the article resource box and target your keyword again.
3. Add your own affiliate links after the article/resource box (or in your opening para if you want) so that everything you took from EA stays together and original.

That way, you get the best of both worlds:
1) an article on a topic you cannot write yourself
2) an article that meets the EA TOS reprint rights rules
3) a keyword targeted post that suits your needs
4) a legal way to add your own affiliate links - anchor text, even.

Then, you have absolutely no worries from the writer or EA (or whatever article directory you get it from).

And... as someone already said about getting articles ANYWHERE and using them freely as long as you acknowledge the source - is NOT true or acceptable. You MUST ask the writer or the site owner for permission to use the article UNLESS it is stated somewhere on the site that you have free use of the site's content. In most cases, they will allow you to use the article as long as you give them the backlink... BUT YOU HAVE TO ASK.

Whatever you do, DO NOT do what one user did with one of my articles. He tampered with the resource box by turning one of my keyword phrases into hypertext pointing to an affiliate program he was promoting which happened to be the same one I was promoting in the article. I reported him to EA and they took care of it for me.

Yes, he kept the rest of my article and resource box intact, but he redirected some portion of the resource box to his own affiliate link. You can't do that. For one thing, it's just not fair play.

Sylvia

You might even want to consider contacting the original owner and asking if they would rewrite the article a little so that your article isn't exactly the same as the article directory version. Many would be happy to.

If you add their contact bio info shouldn't be any problem, or you always ask for their permission

Wow, I left this thread and got smacked down! If what you say is true, then there are a lot of blogs that are violating copyright. I think fair use is a matter open to interpretation, and like has been said, it depends on what type of content you are using and the reason you are using it.

As a writer myself, I can tell you this about my work: if you want to use anything from my blogs, you may use it so long as you give credit and a link back to me. I blog to sell things, so I want the exposure. If you want to use my articles from the article directories, then all you have to do is leave the resource box in tact. That's part of the terms of use we agree to when we submit to the article directories. Furthermore, we WANT our work used.

One other point jumps out at me: a lot of blogs are using content from article directories, which is not the exclusive property of that blogger. So copying and using that content is certainly allowed, per the terms of the article directory it came from. Just leave the links in tact and the article may used by anyone for any reason. In fact, it is the dream of most article marketers to have their work picked up over and over again. That's exposure, and it's a good thing.

I started a thread <a href=http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/168101-someone-using-my-article-no-linking-back-eza-what-do.html>HERE</a> about having an article of mine that had been reused and my bio had been ripped out. I also found a couple of articles that had been reused with my bio intact.
To me it is dead wrong for someone to benefit from stealing from you but when it does happen you have to ask yourself is worth the time and effort to go after the low life's?
Even though my first thought is to pull a Rambo on them I think that at this point in my IM career its not worth my time.

Ooops! That works on craigslist but hey I am only a carpenter trying to learn here.

I think you can go ahead with what you are thinking. But ensure to keep the resource box intact especially if most of the information you have used is from the other Writer's work. In this case you both benefit.

Elphas

Hi Glenn, I really have done this before. It was a long day.

Here is the link http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...a-what-do.html