Originally published at: TUAW Joins iLounge as an AI-Powered Zombie Site - TidBITS
The Unofficial Apple Weblog, an early player in the Apple blogosphere that has been defunct for a decade, has been revived as an AI-powered site that rewrites content from other sites. iLounge suffered the same fate. Avoid both sites from now on.
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I don’t understand how this site isn’t considered flat-out brazen piracy.
If AOL/Engadget’s lawyers need something to do, I think they now have a target they can and should sue into oblivion.
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Wow, thanks for that headline. I went to iLounge a few months ago and wondered what the hell happened. The content was incoherent and mostly pushed me through a bunch of reviews of cheap plastic crap. I used to go to that site all the time, I trusted their reviews.
A friend of mine is in a disaster due to a stupid domain name problem. She let a domain name lapse, it got snapped up by a domain squatter in Singapore. They want like $3k to sell it back. I told her, think real hard about a new domain. She said, “I can’t, that’s the title of the book I’m writing!” And she is horrified because the domain squatter loaded the fake page with porn ads. I don’t know what to tell her. I figure with scumbags like that, first they ask $3k and then they want $10k, so think a lot harder about a new title and domain.
A post was split to a new topic: Dealing with domain squatters
Your conclusion that the situation is depressing is exactly what I felt reading the article. Things are changing - and not always for the better. I’m going to let people know about your article.
Yeah, the same thing happened to me.
I kept a 5-day a week blog for 5 years to support my business writing consultancy. When I decided to fully retired I took the site down and let the domain eventually lapse.
I then discovered that someone had picked up the domain AND had scraped most of the daily content. Worse, they took my final post announcing my retirement and put words in my mouth recommending a paper mill.
I tried getting it taken down, but eventually gave up. It’s still out there.
Can you get law enforcement involved? If the site is claiming to be you, then that sounds like identity theft.
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I tried - couldn’t get any interest or help, even with a DCMA takedown notice.
That’s horrible—sorry! I’m not surprised law enforcement wasn’t interested, sadly, since I’m sure they see it as a relatively victimless crime compared to many others.
That said, you can sue anyone for anything, so that would offer some recourse. Probably not worth the expense, unfortunately, but maybe a threat would be enough?
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Everything that you published is copyrighted and you still own the copyrights even if you no longer control the domain where you published it. The copyrights stay with the author, not the domain.
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I don’t use Google for searches anymore. I don’t want to support their rapacious marketing.
Currently using DuckDuckGo, but I welcome other suggestions from the knowledgeable readers here.
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I’m with you, Colleen. DuckDuckGo is my default, even though they are utilizing Bing technology.
Not sure this is helpful, but Search Engine Journal did a story on 23 non-Google search options in Feb. Many are specifically tailored for certain kinds of topics but you may find something interesting.
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Not that the current articles are any good, but since the publication of this article, the new TUAW appears to have removed all posts from before July 2024, including those seemingly generated through AI summarization of the original TUAW’s archives.
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