3Ders.org Accused of Major Copyright Infringement

[RedSox2013]

So You all may have read the articles at 3Ders.org before. From the outside they seem like a decent news source, but if you look deeper into practically every single article they ever publish you will see that nearly 90% of each article is taken from various news sources and blogs. Not just ideas but entire paragraphs, word for word, usually from 2-3 websites per article. This is repeated in nearly every single article they publish, publish under anonymous names of course. Here is a quick case study posted on Reddit today:

3Ders.org may be one of the more popular 3d printing news sites, but they are the biggest copyright infringer in the industry. Take for example this article they just published:
http://www.3ders.org//articles/20140...inting-ip.html
Now it seems like it is original content, but think again. Take the first sentence:
"Greater availability and affordability of 3D printing has sparked a revolution, the implications of which are said by some to be limitless. "
This is a directly copied from an article written by Kim Walker on Computerweekly.com:http://www.computerweekly.com/opinio...om-3D-printing
Now Take the second and 3rd sentences:
"However unauthorised commercial production of patented products by 3D printing may constitute an act of patent infringement by the user of the printer. In addition, keeping, using, offering for disposal or disposing of the resulting infringing product can amount to infringing acts."
This is taken directly from the 3rd paragraph of an article written days prior athttp://www.taylorwessing.com/downloa...ter_guide.html
Nearly 90% of the remainder of the article is just Copy & Paste of the Press Release issued by the company. Any original content that they do write is in poor English.
This is not a one time thing. I could do the exact same this for nearly every single article posted on 3ders.org. It's pathetic that this person is getting away with this.

[eveninggown]

Yeah, it's pretty well known that they do this. That's the reason that I never read their articles. A lot of what they write doesn't even make sense sometimes. 3dprintingindustry and 3dprint are my two main sources for 3dprinting news.

[ChiloquinRuss]

If you follow the links they ALWAYS post with the article and look through the clients websites, what they are mostly quoting is from a PRESS RELEASE from the client themselves. Be very careful what you call copyright infringement. Russ

[Geoff]

Nothing new really, newspapers have been doing that for decades. I don't visit many 3d news sites, 3dprintingindustry.com seems to be fairly reliable.

[Feign]

I find 3Ders to be an okay way to get a general idea of what's going on at a glance, but I take all their articles with a grain of salt. In most cases it's very obvious that they copy paste from press releases, especially obvious when it's clearly a translated Chinese press release. They seem to always read like advertisements or children's writings.

Also, "World's First" is getting old, I swear.

[JMK]

If you follow the links they ALWAYS post with the article and look through the clients websites, what they are mostly quoting is from a PRESS RELEASE from the client themselves. Be very careful what you call copyright infringement. Russ

This really isn't the case Chiloquin. I've seen on numerous occasions where they have had an article that was composed at least 50% of sniplets from multiple websites. For example, they may take one setense from the NY times, another from the Philiadelphia Enquirer, and another from ABC News (note this is just an examples I'm throwing out there). I've seen it happen several times, and have heard of others complain about this. I assume that if the original writers don't have issue with this there is no big deal, but it's not how you make a name for yourself in the journalism business (trust me I've been a journalist for several years). On top of this, they should have the writers name, and easy contact information of the writer for when problems like this occur, but that's no biggy. Just my 2 cents