Banking Law

People behind a web site that calls itself "MyWayLending.com" has been taking my blog posts as soon as they are published on this blog and, without my permission, publishing them in their entirety on the MyWayLending.com web site. Like this post from July 7, 2010, for example. The content thieves who run that site give my posts my byline, but no indication that the post was originally published on and copied from Bank Lawyer's Blog. A reader of one of my posts at MyWayLending.com would think that "Kevin Funnell" drafted the post for publication at MyWayLending.com. It's akin to me taking an article from The Wall Street Journal written by reporter Damien Paletta and publishing that entire article under Paletta's byline on my blog, without seeking permission from the Wall Street Journal to do so and without any indication that the story was originally published in the Wall Street Journal. This is not "fair use" under US copyright law; it's a violation of the law.

I would have contacted someone at that web site about this, but if you take a look at the site, you'll notice that there is no information available about who is behind the site. There's no "About" or "Contact Us" or any similar tab, no terms of use or privacy policy, and, in fact, no information at all. That's not just odd, it smells extremely fishy, and not "fishy" in the sense of a well-grilled Atlantic Salmon filet with a piquant demi-glaze of morrel sauce, but "fishy" in the sense of the stench thrown off of a school of dead groupers washed up on a beach after 5 days in the hot sun.

I'll do some investigation about who's behind this den of content thieves, such as checking out who're listed as contacts with the domain name registrar. If they're pilfering my content without permission, I suspect that many of the other posts on that site have been "scraped" from other blogs and online publications without permission. The fact that they try to collect personal information from visitors by offering a "free" publication while giving out no information about who runs or owns the site is also a huge red flag that the FTC and/or state attorneys general might be interested in looking into further. In the interim, if any reader knows anything about these clowns, I'd appreciate an e-mail. 

It will be interesting to see how long it will take these jerks to react to the title and content of this post once it's automatically scraped and republished on their site. They appear to be shameless, so I suspect it won't make a bit of difference to them.