Is it right to take articles from other sites and just rewrite them ?

100% agree with u,
create your own article, make it unique, then Google will like your site and u know Unique article is powerful method to get no 1 in google.

Another option might be to re-post the content with credit. This would allow the author to at least get a link in. You might also contact the original author. They may be willing to do guest posts on your site.

If you use the articles for further information on a topic, that's fine. As someone who writes many articles on all kinds of topics, I will read articles or postings to get further information on a topic. Then I put the article aside and write my own article in my own words and style.

So may advice is not to take another article and then try to modify it. There is need for much more unique content. It will help your site to rank higher and also provides more benefit to the readerr. So avoid simple rewrites of information which already exists.

I find the bet way is not to simply re-write an article but to merge several articles on the same topic to make one 'killer' article.

Like find several article for 'top tips to do X' and combine them. You offer real value then to readers who are more likely to click your link for more...

:p This made me chuckle nice to see some humour around here !

Thats just rewriting and exactly what i was thinking about doing ??

Yes ... a quick WSO along those lines would more than cover the best steaks tonight, as you suspected.

However, just like so many popular ideas in internet marketing, it isn't necessarily such a good idea, I'm afraid.

Please excuse my putting on my skepchick hat for long enough to mention that identifying (in places such as EZA) articles with high viewing figures may be a way of finding marketers whose understanding of "article marketing" is so questionable that they're sending traffic (e.g. by backlinking, but often in other ways, too) to other people's sites - EZA's, in this case - rather than to their own.

These are certainly NOT people by whose marketing judgements (including "subject-selection" and "keyword-selection") I'd want to be guided, myself!

This is a way of finding articles written by people who are sending traffic to EZA. It isn't inherently a way of finding articles which are producing income for their authors. If you're going to copy stuff, at least copy stuff that works ...

Define 'use'. In most cases, it's still not fine to use other people's material. It's fine to be inspired by it, yes.

That's not enough to absolve you of copyright infringement. You can give credit all day long, but if you used it without permission, you still infringed their copyright ...and that's illegal. You're still open to prosecution.

NO SIR !!!!!!

As far as I'm aware that still counts as derivative works.

Just like taking someone else's article and spinning it is exactly the same.

This is a very interesting topic for me as a writer. Did you ever try to find anything in print that was a whole brand new subject or written content, something that had never been written about before? Ridiculous!

AlwaysFearless above is absolutely right, the only way to write or rewrite an article is to take ideas from several sources you have and give it a different spin, tell it in a different voice, expand on one or more articles and sometimes take the subject to a whole different level.

Even scientific research material will include concepts from other authors research.

I think its a very good idea to run any article you write through copyscape, even PLR shouldn't be an exact copy, but you do have that right with a PLR product .

I wouldn't see that as being very creative though and I like creative.

Taking an article and simply spinning or re-writing it is still copyright infringement and you could find yourself in hot water.

Maybe, if you're looking for articles in a particular niche, then others are too. If you don't want to/can't write the articles yourself, why not sign up to a few plr writers mailing lists and request those topics?

Claire, I really do struggle sometimes to wonder where you get your misinformation from.

It is not fine, it's derivative works.

I'm glad you have the sense to find it unfair and you advise people to create their own stuff but copying, rewriting and using articles from other sites is not "fine".

Quite possibly the most arrogant statement I've seen on this forum so far and that in itself is a huge statement.

Words have copyright protections -- ideas do not.

Product designs have patent protections -- the product idea does not.

Parse this as you like, but we are discussing legal rights of people to make money off the work of others.

I advise that we should "read a topic for comprehension, then write our own ideas about the topic."

The more likely scenario, and something I've observed myself on a popular quasi-political blog I regularly read, whose author not only has his content ripped off now and then, but posts on his blog about it as well.

1. The regular readers of his site also read other blogs, particularly ones where spun content is going to show it because we all look for more info on anything we read that is of interest to us. They come across it, and being fans of his, e-mail him to let him know.

2. He calls them out on it on his blog, though denies rewarding their bad behavior with any link juice, by publishing the info of the offending site as plain text instead of a URL.

Though he doesn't spell out exactly how he follows up on it, he does hint about it, and from the ire in his tone, I suspect his retaliation is along the lines of what I mentioned I would do were I ever in a similar situation. As I mentioned then, everyone who is anyone to the offending site - Google, their web host, domain provider, and their affiliate companies - would all be forwarded copies of the stolen content, along with my date stamped original for comparison, and the contents of my Creative Commons license which explicitly forbids derivative works.

I imagine any other content author would do the exact same thing. Fair use, with attribution, is fine. So is asking for permission to use it. Outright theft is not okay.

And to the content thieves out there: you may get away with it for a little while. But sooner or later someone is going to find you out. When they do, they're going to be less than pleased. If you're lucky, they may be generous enough to send you a notice demanding that you remove it. If they're not feeling so generous well then... sleep well knowing that tomorrow you may wake to find out that not only has your theft been discovered, but your affiliates have suspended your account, your domain and web hosting privileges have been revoked for violation of the TOS, and Google has de-indexed your site.

Of course, that is the worst case scenario. But even then, is it worth it?

No that is not ok. You are using justification, that doesn't pass the sniff test, to rationalize what is ultimately the exact same thing as someone who simply runs it through a spinner.

Subjectively one may be better than the other, but both are derivative works, and both are therefore copyright violations. The original author isn't going to care a whit whether or not you think your ripped off version of his work is an "improvement." Nor will those he reports you to using his date stamped original and your derivative "improvement."

Why is this so difficult for so many people to grasp?

If you want to use someone else's work as something to improve upon, then pay the 99 cents that PLR starts at and have it - legally - with full rights to do with it as you please.

I think someone needs to read the thread.

Brilliant.

Definately post of the week.

You ought to see my list too

Every time I see a thread like this I like Google more and more.

How about you create some REAL and WORTHWHILE content.