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Rudydoo asked in Yahoo ProductsYahoo Answers · 8 years ago

Do you think its okay for pvgap.org to post our answers on their website?

pvgap.org is apparantly a non profit website advocating proper use of solar power. The way their site works apparently is to clip answers from Y Answers, and use them to answer questions posted to their website without our knowledge or permission. How would you feel about finding one of your answers showing up on their website one day with the preface, "We Answered:" I've been answering questions here for years under the avatar "Rudydoo." Here is a recent post by them, look at my signature at the bottom of "their" answer.

http://www.pvgap.org/solar-panels/15w-solar-panel....

Update:

Riki, I suspect you are absolutely correct, there isn't anything we can do about it. I guess I was hoping someone from Y would chime in, I wrote them weeks ago but nothing came back. The practice by these other websites is likely perfectly legal, just wrong. Thanks for writing...Rudydoo

Update 2:

Riki, I suspect you are absolutely correct, there isn't anything we can do about it. I guess I was hoping someone from Y would chime in, I wrote them weeks ago but nothing came back. The practice by these other websites is likely perfectly legal, just wrong. Thanks for writing...Rudydoo

Update 3:

Riki, I suspect you are absolutely correct, there isn't anything we can do about it. I guess I was hoping someone from Y would chime in, I wrote them weeks ago but nothing came back. The practice by these other websites is likely perfectly legal, just wrong. Thanks for writing...Rudydoo

Update 4:

Octavia, that is probably true, but I don't think pvgap.org is part of Y, nor is the website that Riki is posting either. Someone at these other websites has to physically be clipping and pasting these, I don't know of a program with the sophistication to match our answers with their questions electronically. Part of the reason I always start my answers with the question writers name is so it appears out of context on the hijackers website, still, they paste it that way and take credit, it just seems so out of place...Rudydoo

Update 5:

Yahzmin, I'm certain you're correct, there really aren't any 'rights' for guys like us who post answers, then someone else runs off and takes credit for them. There isn't any money exchanging hands here, so nobody outside of the websites is really interested. I'm convinced there isn't anything any of us can do to stop it, but is there any way to simply expose it? Maybe if I just clip this over to our local newspaper they might find an article in it or something, other than that I'm out of ideas. Thanks for the response...Rudydoo

Update 6:

Yahzmin, I'm certain you're correct, there really aren't any 'rights' for guys like us who post answers, then someone else runs off and takes credit for them. There isn't any money exchanging hands here, so nobody outside of the websites is really interested. I'm convinced there isn't anything any of us can do to stop it, but is there any way to simply expose it? Maybe if I just clip this over to our local newspaper they might find an article in it or something, other than that I'm out of ideas. Thanks for the response...Rudydoo

4 Answers

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  • 8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    If you carefully read the Terms of Service, we signed away our rights to our content by giving Yahoo the non-exculsive rights to it. So they can do what they want with it. And they allow other sites to use it, either legally or not. Legally, the site is supposed to CREDIT Yahoo Answers for the content. Yahoo even gives site developers special tools to use to "pick the brains" of Yahoo Answers and "harvest" the content. Check it out here:

    http://developers.yahoo.com/answers

    Other sites use the content "illegally", without credit. They use those tools, or RSS feeds or similar ways of accessing what they want. The problem is that most 'hijacking' sites like that are so small and resource poor that it is not worth Yahoo's effort to stop them. So they get away with it.

    So, yeah, bottom line - nothing we can do.

  • Anonymous
    7 years ago

    I've never been to this website, sounds like there's some fine print to read. Anytime I post something online, like right now, I'm assuming it will be posted for everyone to see. I'll have to check out the pvgap.org website. http://www.geinnovations.net/solar-air-conditioner...

  • 8 years ago

    Once a question is resolved it belongs to Yahoo to do with whatever they want with them. Not that I agree with it, but that is how it works.

  • 8 years ago

    nope I caught one the other day using one of mine on the site below , can't do anything about it.

    http://www.weegy.com/home.aspx?id=Home

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