Article spinning

Articles are spun (or re-written) by hand all the time in the media. As a general rule, if it passes copyscape, it's yours.

How many different ways can somebody explain what global warming is?

How many different ways can you explain to somebody how to keyword research?


By rewriting information you're simply researching, and writing from your knowledge. If it makes you feel better, spin 2 articles related to each other, and mix them up a little bit. That will surely make it very unique

or write 1 completely unique article based off of research and beef up the the characters 2 to 3 times the amount of original content with personalized type fluff content. Then start spinning. This is alot easier if on the first article you plan out alot of interchangable phrases and adjectives that will still make sense after being spun.

I hate to disagree with everyone here--but I must. I am assuming you are talking about spinning articles others have written, not your own.

Ya know, I see this all the time here and I never cease to be amazed. Having an article pass CopyScape means absolutely nothing. If that's your defense when standing in a Federal District Court on charges of copyright infringement--prepare to be making license plates for a long time and losing you ass(ets) as well. That's absurd reasoning.

If you begin with an article written by another person and run it through software to spin it--you have just created a derivative work of the original. Copyright law protects original works. It also gives the copyright owner the exclusive right to prepare derivative works. It ain't rocket science.

But if you want to prepare a ton of junk articles and pass them off as your own--go for it. But remember this post when someone files a court order with your name on it.

Read Title 17, U.S. Code. That's a good start.

§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works38

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.



--Mike

Theoretically, a 100% spun article would be 100% unique unless I am missing something here.

Spinners are a great resource if you take the time to assure a readable , quality article is the end product .

Your won original article , or one you had ghost written , in my opinion, is the only thing that should be run through them.

I really like Mike's post . He gives a reasonable opinion backed up by documentation . Hard to argue with post like that .

I certainly respect your point of view and maybe I was a little reckles with my advice, BUT with that being said, accusing a writer of creating a derivative and proving it is next to impossible. Take Hollywood for example. How many times have you seen a hit movie come out only to be followed by a slew of straight to DVD derivatives of the same movie. In relation to article writing it is that much more difficult. most articles that would be the subject of spinning would be how to articles. You cannot copyright broad based instructions. You can patent a process, but that is a different ball of wax. If that article contains a list of some sort, then it is even more difficult to protect, as you cannot copyright a list, no matter who did the research.

"You cannot copyright broad based instructions."

Brian, if those broad-based instructions are part of a nondramatic literary work, that work most certainly is protected under Title 17.

While it is true that ideas cannot be copyrighted, any written work describing those ideas can certainly be registered for a copyright. And look, no one actually reads the copyright registration forms anyway. Especially today, with Form eCO, they are submitted electronically and go into a database. The only thing registering a copyright does is to fix a date on which the work was registered.

Additionally, one cannot file a claim for copyright infringement unless they have registered a copyright with the Copyright Office.

Aside from the legal thingie, if someone takes one of my articles and spins it, no matter how well it is done--they have just profited from the fruits of my labor. Come on--and aside from that, spinning an article completely changes the keyword density.

Personally, no matter how much I want some traffic or link juice--I take too much pride in what I write to spin a single sentence of it. But that's just me.

Spinned articles are great nuisance. As an article directory owner it is really time consuming for us to go trough all of those spinned articles. I wish that people would stop doing it as spinning effectively ruins the article and makes it unreadable. I have always wondered how people can submit articles like that to article directories, don’t they ever read what the submission software gives out.

If you absolutely must create many versions of the article then have them professionally rewritten.

Agreed with several of the above posters: it's not your own work, but a derivative of other people's work, and you don't want to mess with people's work. You don't know who's going to slap you with a $38,250 bill for reprinting their writing (or a derivative thereof).

I guess it all comes down to where your own moral judgement lies. Like was said, it would ba hard to prove an article was a derivative, so, if your moral judgment tells you it is ok to do, then it is ok.

The only things that are illegal, are the ones that you get caught doing. If you don't get caught, then how can it be illegal?

I know this is a little (ok a lot) bit of a crass way to look at it, but bottom line, if you don't get caught, what is the penalty?

I hate to be a hard ass here, but I was accused of "lawyering" when I simply presented the facts--I did not interpret them.

It was suggested that an infringement suit could be brought against someone without registering a copyright prior to filing the suit. As I stated earlier, this is just not the case. The poster references some "geometry site" that spoke of copyrights but which has no affiliation with the U.S. copyright office whatsoever. If you are going to quote facts, at least quote them from the original source.

If you want some lawyering, here's something you can chew on. Download Copyright Basics from the Copyright Office.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf



On page 7 find the following excerpt...



I'm not a lawyer. I'm not giving legal advice. I'm simply stating the facts and referencing those facts with official publications from the U.S. Copyright Office. I am simply trying to make people aware of these facts so they don't get themselves in trouble.

I've registered over 40 copyrights myself. I've gone through the process and I've read hundreds and hundreds of pages of case law and statutory law related to copyrights.

You guys can argue until your blue in the face, making wild leaps of illogic founded in beliefs, not facts. Title XVII, U.S. Code. It's all there to read for yourself.

I don't have time for this nonsense...

--Mike