2016By Sean Keeley on

Anyone who has worked in online content long enough has had a moment where they’ve come across something they’ve written on a site they don’t actually write for and wondered what’s going on. What’s often happening is a website without its own content takes the title and a few paragraphs from your piece, then adds a link back to your site at the bottom, and enjoys the benefit of traffic without having to pay for the content directly.

It’s not plagiarism, per se, but it’s not entirely on the up and up either. Some mighy consider it a content farm setup. It’s the kind of thing that gets hit with cease & desists all the time and is generally frowned upon by any publishing platform of note.

So when writers for SB Nation’s Sacramento Kings blog Sactown Royalty noticed that someone had lifted the bulk of a post and put in on their site, that probably wasn’t the shocking part. What was shocking was who had actually done the lifting.

The site in question is Amico Hoops, run by NBA columnist and Fox Sports Ohio NBA insider Sam Amico. Dealing in NBA news, the site is a mixture of original content, reprinted press releases (“churnalism”) and the aforementioned practice of front-loading a post with content from another site before sending you to the originator of the content. At least, that’s what it was before Sactown Royalty noticed.

The article in question, about DeMarcus Cousins showing support for embattled head coach George Karl, was published February 13. The Amico post, which was filed under the byline STAFF, was published on February 15. Now when you click on the article on Amico Hoops, it immediately redirects you to Sactown Royalty.

Though, it remains curious why Amico even links to the site at all considering his reaction to being called out initially.

If that’s true, it’s strange that Amico’s site would link to that “garbage blog” in the first place and continue to do so following the controversy. That’s a fact plenty of folks have been having fun with on Twitter.

Cooler heads seem to have prevailed and it’s probably a lesson learned for Amico’s site. Just because you throw a link up at the bottom doesn’t mean you can just take someone else’s content wholesale and make a profit on it. That’s old school Internet thinking that just doesn’t work anymore. And really, it never did in the first place.

[Reddit]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.

View all posts by Sean Keeley