Are article directories ethical?

If you'd read Profiting from AdSense article directories or Instant AdSense sites reviewed, you might think I'm quite cynical about article directories in general. A reader even sent me this comment:

All interesting stuff, but all it does it continue to populate the web with yet more rubbish. None of this stuff is of any use to people. The only motivation to any of this is make money off of Google with no real business case or compelling case for visiting these sites. It would be much better if sites of real use value where promoted and not Adsense value were promoted. I hope Google works to flush out this junk in time, but then if they get paid for the clicks will they? I think they should because it serves to improve the quality of the web. What do you think?

That's an interesting question, and I'd like to thank Jeremy C. for sending it in.

Let me first state that I have nothing against themed article directories in general. An article directory is basically a compilation of articles. Compilations can be extremely useful. An encylopedia is a compilation, for example. A phone book is a compilation. There are, of course, many music CDs/DVDs that are nothing but compilations.

Many people don't realize this, but copyright law actually protects and encourages compilations. Let me quote the definition of compilation in the United States copyright law, though most countries have similar definitions:

A “compilation” is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term “compilation” includes collective works.

And, for clarity, the definition of a collective work:

A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.

In other words, the person/company that creates something unique using other people's documents (WITH permission, I should point out — you can't just put someone else's material into a compilation — you only get a copyright to the compilation, not to the individual pieces in the compilation) is also entitled to copyright protection for the entire collective document. This is called a compilation copyright. Obviously, the government wouldn't be promoting a compilation copyright if it wasn't useful in some way. If you go to a lot of effort to create new material by collecting other people's material, you should be protected. But what's the definition of originality? Are all compilations useful?

Look at the phone book market. The white pages and the yellow pages are both lists of essentially the same phone numbers (let's restrict ourselves to business numbers for this discussion). But they're organized differently — the white pages are alphabetical by name, the yellow pages are alphabetical by category — and no one would dispute there's a use for both.

Where things get confusing is when there are multiple white page directories around from competing phone companies. Which one do you choose? Who has the latest listings? They all get their data from the same places…

That's the big problem with the AdSense article directories I see. They're just random collections of unedited material thrown together in hopes of grabbing a search engine's attention. There's no thought put into their organization. There's nothing special or unique about them. Even adding things like reviews, additional commentaries, definitions, etc. to the articles that were gotten somewhere else would be useful. Something to distinguish that kind of site from everything else.

So no, article directories are not by themselves unethical. Yes, they pollute the web space. Yes, Google and the others keep working to find and remove duplicate content from the search indexes. But directories can still be useful, so we shouldn't just ban them outright. I listen to compilations all the time, and I refer to article compilations as well. Of course, no one seems to want to be original these days, which is the bigger problem.

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.

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