Warning: this is a very long post. It is intended to be used as background documentation for anyone wishing to confront Demand Media / eHow in or out of court to demand fair compensation for consideration received by eHow.
Scroll to the bottom of this post to find a support forum and additional blogs and articles about this issue.
Supporting documentation is posted throughout this site, and will be added to during the next month. Please ask if you need documentation that you cannot find, as I have access to deleted forum posts and screenshots that are not yet posted here.
So let’s call it the way it is: eHow and Demand Media stole thousands of members’ articles, promised to remove the stolen content and “generously” compensate their victims. eHow’s illegal and unfair practices were uncovered and pressure was brought to bear on eHow to remove the articles and compensate the writers, which eHow agreed to do.
Only they didn’t remove the content—they redirected the links to that content and botched that operation. And they didn’t compensate fairly or reasonably, much less generously.
Instead, eHow is trying to cover up the issue by banning dissenting members, deleting most eHow forum comments that differ from eHow’s version of reality, then claiming they do not delete comments (except we have proof, so that’s futile, eHow).
Among the allegations that eHow members are making against eHow/Demand Media:
- unfair competition
- copyright violations
- false advertising
- consumer fraud
The following table shows how the two types of eHow writers research, write, and promote their articles, and how they are [supposed to be] compensated financially:
| Article Sources | Users(eHow members who earn residual income) | Contributing Writers(Pre-paid Demand Studios writers) |
| Compensation Method | Ongoing residual payments for the lifetime of the article via a secret algorithm that is assumed to be based on page views and ad clicks. | Demand Studios writers are paid a one-time payment. They can opt for small residual payments, but rarely do. |
| Copyright Ownership | Writers continue to own copyright. | Demand Media owns copyright. |
| Compensation Amount and duration | Writers who do their homework and base their articles on SEO strategies, then promote their articles outside eHow, stand to earn potentially hundreds, or in rare cases, thousands, of dollars in residual income during the lifetime of those articles. An “evergreen” article could earn money for between two and five years, sometimes even more. | eHow generally pays about $15 one time for each article written by Demand Studios writers. |
| Method for maximizing earnings |
|
|
| Time Invested by Writer to Maximize Earnings | Research and promotion can take as much as four hours or more per article, as “users” often return to edit and promote articles that do not earn well. |
|
| Analytics | Writers have no access to true analytics of their articles’ performance. | eHow has access to all performance data, and can order pre-paid articles based on that data. |
* Demand Media owns both eHow and Demand Studios.
And the REAL “secret algorithm” is this:
- Take 5 parts of eHow users’ articles based on their research and promotional efforts, and let simmer for one month
- Remove from heat and analyze previous month’s traffic and earnings for those articles
- Do not share this data with writers who actually did the work
- Delete top-earning residual income articles, make random excuses for doing so, and replace with pre-paid content
- Copy all articles onto a duplicate site and do not pay for copied versions of content
- Deny doing so
- After being caught, claim you will delete copied versions
- Substitute redirecting articles for deleting copied articles
- Claim you will generously estimate and compensate for stolen earnings
- Compensate minimally, based on whether writers say that you, the Emperor, are wearing fine garments
- Ignore revolting peasants and censor their arguments
- Deny doing so
- Repeat
The full extent of eHow/Demand Media’s unethical business practices are yet to be known publicly, but will become more obvious as eHow further alienates even its staunchest supporters and more details slowly emerge.
Let’s expand on these assertions one at a time:
Unfair Competition
The eHow model is a setup for unfair competition.
eHow persuades its members to do extensive legwork to write articles optimized for search engines by telling the ‘users’ they will make more money by doing so, then eHow uses its site analytics to find the highest earning articles.
eHow then either deletes the highest residual-income earners and replaces them with their own similar, pre-paid, fully owned content, or simply competes head-to-head with those articles by using inside information based on computer analyses of the popularity and earning power of those articles.
eHow tells its “users” that they will be paid for their articles based on a secret formula that includes:
- Writing relevant, evergreen (non-trendy or seasonal) articles
- Researching lucrative keywords and optimizing articles for search engines
- Commenting on other users articles
- Being socially active on the site
- Promoting their articles on the Web
Copyright Violations/Fraud
On August 1, 2009, Demand Media launched a mirror of their eHow.com site. They assigned the mirrored site a UK domain name, which implied that the site was located in the UK, even though it is located in Washington state, and they called it, “eHow UK.”
Demand Media had no intention of paying for the copied content, as evidenced by the fact that they removed the Writer Compensation Program clause from their terms of service on that site.
Coincidentally, members who joined eHow during this launch period were not compensated for their work for nearly two months, when community protests finally led to eHow admitting and fixing a system “glitch” that had prevented new members from earning.
eHow forgot to remove their “Promise to compensate” language from the “About eHow” page of that site until it was pointed out to them in December, 2009. They then deleted that statement from the “UK” site in late December or January.
eHow was asked point-blank on November 5, 2009, if they planned to compensate writers for the use of their articles on the so-called UK site. They ignored the question for two months, and after continued pressure from the eHow community, finally admitted they did not intend to pay for the articles and would remove them.
eHow stated they were “Unable to pay” writers for their copied articles. Members were led to believe that this was due to international money conversion and pay issues, but there was no international issue involved. Everything was contained within the US.
Several misleading statements were made during this time, and lies of omission were made by deleting relevant forum questions asking where the “UK” site server was physically located.
False Advertising
eHow promises to pay member-writers, “users,” (as opposed to pre-paid Demand Studios writers) for the usefulness of their articles. They use the word, “promise.”
eHow encourages users (in writing, on their site) to invest time and energy into writing articles optimized for search engines. eHow also says that users should promote their articles to earn more money, and encourages users to socialize on the site. Users are led to believe that all of these actions will result in more residual income from the articles they publish on eHow.
In reality, this is what happens:
Joe Investor joins eHow, writes a few articles about how to buy gold, Demand Media sees that these articles earn maybe ten times what other articles earn, and they use the information provided by Joe Investor’s hard work to compete against him by commissioning a similar Demand Studios article.
There you have it. eHow can pay Joe $500 over the lifetime of his article, or they can pay a Demand Studios writer $15 for the same thing.
But eHow isn’t done with Joe just yet.
Joe has friends. Joe told his friends about the great eHow residual income opportunity last year. And Time Magazine told their readers about it, and many hopeful, out-of-work writers joined eHow in droves in the summer of 2009.
Joe and his friends bought all the eHow ebooks they could find. They learned SEO principles and how to apply them to article writing. They learned to build backlinks to their eHow articles, and how to promote via Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
Joe knows that his pay is based on a secret formula devised by eHow, but eHow gives Joe plenty of hints about increasing his income; eHow encourages Joe to spend time socializing on its site, reading and ranking other members’ articles, writing articles based on keyword research, and promoting his articles on the Internet.
Joe figured he would write ten articles a day for a year, then sit back and relax while his residual earnings rolled in year after year. Or that he would at least have a cushion if he couldn’t find a job that paid as well as the one he lost during the recession.
Joe was wrong.
Joe worked his plan. He wrote diligently for weeks, pumping out 10 articles a day. For each article he wrote, he did 15 minutes of research (Joe knows his investment topics already), 30 minutes of writing, and 15 minutes or more of promoting his articles. He made helpful comments in the eHow forums and on other writers’ articles.
He sometimes worked 14 hour days, but he didn’t mind. He was investing in his future, and his family was counting on him.
After a few weeks though, Joe realized there was nothing in his eHow earnings page. Joe had not earned one penny yet for all his hard work. Joe spent several weeks working with other new eHow members to persuade the eHow staff that there was a glitch in the earnings system.
Long story short, after enduring insults and endless questions and theories about how Joe should learn to write better and improve his SEO skills, eHow finally ‘fessed up to bungling the earnings.
So Joe went back to writing, confident that he could invest in his future on the eHow platform.
Then Joe woke up one morning to find several articles from his library missing, apparently deleted in a quality “sweep.” But that was okay, because Joe was told that eHow did this to ensure that only high-quality articles remained on the site, and he figured he could learn from the experience to become a better writer.
Except then Joe noticed that one of his swept articles had been copied by a Contributing (pre-paid) Writer, including the photo of his own wife in her wedding veil! Joe was confused.
And Joe also noticed that his highest earning articles seemed to be the ones that were deleted for reasons such as, “Spam” or “Poorly Written,” while multiple articles about “How to Make Money with NeoBux” remain. (Neobux is a dubious site that pays for ad clicks, and articles about using the site are clearly nothing more than spam.)
But Joe still believed that he could achieve his dream of indefinite residual income if he just kept his nose to the eHow grindstone, and he kept on.
Joe also posted a few video tutorials, then noticed that he wasn’t earning on them, probably due to the fact that eHow offers an embed code that allows anyone to steal his content without linking back to it. It’s easy to delete the link and keep the video. Joe wrote to eHow staff for help removing his videos from sites that had stolen them, but got no response.
Then one day, Joe noticed a little UK flag at the top of his eHow profile page. Joe clicked on it, and discovered that the flag link led to a site that looked exactly like eHow, except the domain name had a UK extension.
Wow! This was exciting! Would Joe earn twice now? Would his articles reach people in Europe who would click on even more ads, making more money for Joe? And what about his deleted videos that others had stolen—did this explain why the videos were still live on the offending sites?
Well, the only way to find out was to ask.
And so, on November 5, 2009, Joe asked in the eHow forum,
Maybe this has been discussed, but I can’t find mention of it:
1. Do we earn money for our articles on eHow UK?
2. If we delete an article/video from our eHow library, is it simultaneously deleted from the eHow UK site?
Other members chimed in, repeating Joe’s question, but eHow did not respond.
eHow manually moved Joe’s question to another place on the forum, so Joe knew that staff had seen his question, but still they did not answer.
Six weeks later, after much community debate, Joe got a response—but not an answer—from eHow staff saying,
In Response to Questions about our articles/videos on eHow UK:
1. We have our own algorithm so it’s based on that.
2. If you delete articles on the US site, yes, indeed your articles will be removed from the UK site.
May I remind you that the UK thing is not what could be attributed to your decline in earings. Some folks are not even complaing (sic) about this, but you should remember that it is the holidays and usually earnings tend to drop during this period. Thanks.
-Rich
So Joe asks for clarification:
Thank you for responding, Rich.
Sorry, I’m still not clear on whether the algorithm includes UK views and ad clicks? Those article clones are undoubtedly competing with our original articles for traffic in the search engines.
I realize the algorithm is a secret, but surely you can tell us if we share in ALL of the profits our articles generate for eHow? The writers here work hard and invest in eHow because of a belief in the eHow system, and answering the question directly would go a long way toward restoring that sense of trust.
So just to be clear, do we earn on our UK article clones or not? Thanks.
Again, no response, no answer.
But while waiting, Joe and his friends begin to notice that their non-paying article copies on the pseudo UK site are ranking above their original articles for which they would be paid—if anyone could find them.
Joe and his friends post questions about this issue on the eHow forum only to be told by other highly astute members that eHow could not possibly influence Google’s search results as Joe seems to be accusing them of doing.
But Joe knows better. Joe knows that Demand Media is quite chummy with Google, as Demand Media is YouTube’s largest contributor, and YouTube is owned by Google.
Joe suggests to a friend that they begin listing UK articles on the forum that rank higher than their original counterparts.
Joe also knows that Demand Media is world renowned for their successful SEO strategies, and that they have unparalleled access to data gleaned from statistical analysis of millions of articles. Joe is now mighty suspicious.
On New Year’s Day, 2010, Joe’s suspicions are confirmed when he researches a specific financial article written by an eHow “user,” who has complained that his original article is missing from Google entirely, while its “UK” copy ranks #1 for its highly-competitive keyword title.
Joe compares the original with the copy, and makes a startling discovery:
The “UK” version is formatted quite differently than the original, and it includes several additional internal links (that Joe knows can boost its ranking), many of which are links to investment articles written by Demand Media employees!
To this day, Joe is puzzled. Was this done by a few employees without Demand Media’s knowledge to redirect traffic to their own financial articles? Or was this Demand Media’s own warped SEO experiment?
Anyone wishing proof of this can ask Crunchy Joe for a copy of the screenshots. Joe takes a lot of screenshots. Just in case.
And then, on January 11, 2010, nearly 9 weeks after having been asked, eHow staff made this statement on the forum:
Dear Members,
We’ve noticed the buzz around eHow’s new UK website and specifically the questions of whether WCP participants are paid for their articles shown on our sister website. We appreciate all the comments, as our community is what makes us special, and wanted to clearly address your concerns. At the moment we do not have a system to pay writers for their articles hosted on eHow.co.uk.
We’ve listened to your voices and since we are unable pay WCP participants in the UK, we’ll be removing your articles from eHow’s UK website within the next few weeks. We’ll keep you posted on our progress and thank you for your patience and commitment to eHow.
Best Regards, The eHow Team
It’s been more than a month now since The eHow Team posted that statement.
Articles have not been removed. Most of them have been redirected, but many have not.
And the claim, “we do not have a system to pay writers for their their articles hosted on eHow.co.uk…” Um, how is that even possible? It was clearly a typo. They meant to say, “We do not intend to pay writers.”
Intent is everything here.
eHow never intended to pay for their misguided use of copied articles on the fake UK website, despite their video blog post on January 29, 2010 claiming they would compensate for the articles they had copied and posted. A transcript of that video is on Write Fierce, a blog about residual income articles.
Their intention is to exploit the lessons learned from the time and research that residual writers invested on eHow’s website, using them to increase their own profits, and phasing out residual writers altogether.
Joe’s research showed him some time back that the site eHow calls “eHow UK” is hosted on a server in Washington state. “Hmmm,” Joe thinks, “That’s where the original eHow site is hosted!” Joe comments about this in the forum, and shortly thereafter sees this response from the staff on January 25, 2010,
In Response to Re: 01/22/2010– UPDATE on eHow UK site and US member articles:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: 01/22/2010– UPDATE on eHow UK site and US member articles : Maybe what everyone is missing is that the site was never in the UK. It was and is located in the US, and the Terms of Service for the so-called “UK” site omitted the WCP. The promise to pay readers was recently deleted from the “UK” site’s About eHow page, though it still exists on the US site.
Posted by bizywriter[/QUOTE] <<Joe’s alter ego
Actually we have an office in the UK.
So Joe asks,
So Rich, are you saying the UK site server is located in the UK, and not in the US?
But strangely, the question disappears from the forum. Joe asks again,
In Response to Re: 01/22/2010– UPDATE on eHow UK site and US member articles:
[QUOTE]According to the apology issued to Jade, the Demand Studios people had a tracking method implemented from the start. Which means they were certainly able to track eHow writers as well. I, for one, just don’t believe it was not purposeful, and I think they did track eHow writers. Otherwise, how in the world could they plan to ‘Generously estimate’ what they owe to each individual writer? [/QUOTE]
Joe>>That pretty much sums it up for me. Only no one has answered a significant question yet. I tried, but it was deleted twice. So I’ll try again.
Rich: your response to the statement by one member that the “UK” site is physically located in the US, and that there never was an international pay issue, was to state that eHow has an office in the UK. My question, again, is this: Was that statement meant to lead us to believe that the “UK” site is physically located in the UK?
I have asked courteously twice before, and am asking again. After all, everyone will eventually realize the truth anyway:
The eHow UK site is not, and never has been, located in the UK.
Is this correct, Rich?
And one more question: Why did eHow fail to install the same tracking system on the mirror site that is on the original site? There was no international pay issue, so what else could this have been, except a case of intentionally avoiding compensating us from the beginning?
I would really appreciate a straight answer this time. I have been waiting for real answers since my first forum question on November 5th about the UK site, and my patience has long since run out.
And then Joe discovers he has been banned from the eHow site when others tell him his posts and Private Messages do not appear for anyone else.
And then after several members complained about the mere pittance that constitutes eHow’s idea of ‘generous compensation’ for their theft, we get this:
Hey eHow Peeps,
I’m really sorry some people are not satisfied with the payment results, but payments were based on the popularity and quality of the articles. If you feel that the re-directs are still not optimizing your earnings, then I would recommend checking out our writer’s resource page at the top of the eHow website. You can get access to it by going here: www.ehow.com/write.html“>http://www.ehow.com/write.html
-Rich
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, nothing, if you’re looking for consistency.
When Zero Club members complained that they had not earned one penny in two months, they were told to improve their writing.
When members asked if their article views were dropping because views were being diverted to the mirrored site, they were told to improve their writing.
And right on cue, that’s eHow’s answer for why they didn’t pay Joe and his friends for the theft of their articles—because they NEED TO IMPROVE THEIR WRITING!
Seriously? Because if the articles weren’t well written enough to begin with, why did you think they were good enough to STEAL???
I have gathered resources for you to use as you see fit. For those planning to sue Demand Media dba eHow, the screenshots and links here may help you find supporting documentation for your case. Or you may use this post and/or any documentation on my site to publicize the issue, as long as you give credit to Crunchy Data and include a link to my site.
For those wanting to investigate further, or who are still trying to decide whether eHow is a viable venue for earning residual income online (it’s not), I hope the resources here will either provide that for you or lead you to a source that will do so.
If you do not see screenshots or documentation on the site that you need, feel free to ask and I will try to find it for you.
Here is a forum/mailing list for eHow members/former members to meet and share information:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eHowrevolt
or email the group leader at: eHowrevolt@yahoogroups.com
Here are some other blogs and articles discussing the issues:
http://ajtyne.blogspot.com/search/label/eHow
http://writefierce.blogspot.com/2010/02/ehow-compensates-writers-for-uk.html
http://freelancewriterswanted-freebieoffers.blogspot.com/2010/01/ehow-uk-scam-censoring.html
http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com
Please write and/or comment to add your own relevant links and opinions. Do you have other insights or documentation to share? Collaborating is the only chance anyone has of seeing true compensation for this sham.
So stop by the Yahoo forum, or even send your information anonymously to me. If your voice has been censored on eHow, you can still be heard and counted.
We cannot stand by and accept that this fraud is setting a major precedent for how writers and other consumers will be treated online in the future. It’s not good for anyone.
P.S. Crunchy Joe almost forgot about the nearly 2.5 MILLION pages of monetized comments on eHow. com. I’ve mentioned this before, but just to tie it all up neatly for everyone, the millions of pages of comments are useless to readers when separated from their related articles.
But with all the ads on them, they’re plenty useful to eHow / Demand Media.
Joe was a bit dismayed when he realized he had been duped into leaving comments for other eHow writers. See, eHow hinted (strongly) that commenting was part of the “secret algorithm,” and could increase Joe’s income. But how can that be? Joe’s comments and the comments from others on Joe’s articles on those millions of stand-alone comment pages are not counted toward Joe’s earnings. Those earnings go straight into the lining of eHow’s pockets, just like his article clones on the fake UK site did.
Joe is disgusted with eHow / Demand Media.
And I know just how he feels.
Loading ...
This is pretty serious. If it’s all true we need a lawyer.
It’s all true.
Not only is is all true – it’s worse then Crunchy fantastically outlined.
http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/is-the-ehow-uk-compensation-enough/ talks about the use of Complete.com data to snow the writers.
They can’t even get their PR right.
Oh and thanks for the link Crunchy.
Kim,
I bet eHow is banking on this being too “confusing” for the casual outside observer to understand…..I read your entire article, however, many may fail to grasp the gravity of this situation if they just skim, or read only the first sentence….
To anyone who has made it as far as this comments sections, I encourage you to really go back, read, and re-read this article…..and, I strongly believe we ALL take the time to really understand what had occurred here over these 6+ month.
….With all this factual information at the table, at this point, I can’t help but to STRONGLY question the motives and intentions of those who would continue to promote and defend a website and company such as this. I think the real question is: “What do THOSE people, in particular, have to gain by continually sweeping these issues under the carpet…..or, by telling others to “leave it alone” or “just leave eHow if you are unhappy with it”?
…..This tells me that these people, that continually defend eHow are:
1) Fearful that speaking out against them will lead to a subsequent loss in earnings, somehow, under their ‘secret algorithm’ payment scheme.
2) Have some kind of monetary vested interest in this platform surviving.
3) Just to know, or don’t have the time to fully grasp or understand what is/has occurred. (Crunchy, you have done a GREAT job….hours upon hours upon hours of work to ensure that all this information is laid out in one centralized location….these people HAVE no excuse if they don’t fully understand what is occurring.
4) People who just choose to turn a blind eye to it because it’s the easiest thing to do.
…..One thing that people REALLY need to understand is that their are MANY other websites in this industry that are striving to do the same thing as eHow. As a result of what has occurred with eHow, even more research will unveil that eHow’s popularity is slowly diminishing, while writers are becoming attuned to these occurrences and gravitating elsewhere…..
The damage has been done. Their reputation has been tarnished.
….for those who rely significantly on their earnings from eHow, there is hope elsewhere…..but, PLEASE, ensure that you have all your articles saved to an external Word Document! Safeguard your work and writing…..as eHow has demonstrated, they can delete or “sweep” your articles, at any time, with little to no feedback as to why they were deleted or feedback regarding what you can do to make your articles better and be a better contributor to the website.
If you choose to continue to write for them….SAVE your work!
Thanks, Howie. For some reason, this comment slid by me before. I just read that InfoBarrel just added Amazon Affiliate capability for writers? How about another guest post. You and Jason probably know more about InfoBarrel than anyone except the actual owners.
P.s. Kim,
Allowing fraud like this to occur, only sets a precedence for all the other user-generated, content sites out there to do the same.
It’s the perfect business and construct to seriously scam people if those companies wanted to.
My Prediction: The morally and ethically upstanding companies and websites will rise to the surface, while eHow’s reputation (and use) will continue to dwindle as more and more people become aware of this situation.
Crunchy,
I posted this post to eHow’s Official Facebook Page…
http://www.facebook.com/pages/eHowcom/93743106025?ref=ts
(I anticipate that it will be deleted….lol)
Deleted?
Oh, you mean deleted as in not deleted, just redirected and pretending to delete it
Oh wow. Amazing. Thank you for compiling it. I have blogged about this, but not in such detail.
The thing that got me was: Except then Joe noticed that one of his swept articles had been copied by a Contributing (pre-paid) Writer, including the photo of his own wife in her wedding veil!
OMG. I am shocked! How shady and evil. I have seen them delete articles and then feature articles with similar titles on the same topic with the same data points. But I’ve never seen them steal pictures before!
Nichemomma
Thanks for writing this. It must have taken a LOT of your time.
Thanks, AJ. And I still missed some of the issues!
This is an impressive write up. I can’t say that I disagree with any portion of it.
There is no way that they did not have the ability to track the UK. It would be bad business to not do it, plus that is just a ludicrous thought that they wouldn’t see if it was beneficial to them.
I’m angry. eHow has never apologized, Rich has never apologized.
The whole thing is quite unfathomable. The fact they are not fixing anything just makes it worse.
JP, you are correct. They are pretending to make amends and doing nothing of substance whatsoever. But it’s all a game to eHow and Demand Media. That’s why they pretended the so-called UK site was in the UK instead of the US, they pretended to remove the stolen articles, and they pretended that they planned to compensate writers fairly, and it was all lies.
And JP, you pushed the issue back into the foreground when it was being ignored, and we all owe you our gratitude for that. Thank you.
Ah, but the differentially-weighted, adult female has not yet begun to vocalize musically!
Honestly, I’m just getting caught up on the topic. I really appreciate seeing your viewpoint and hearing your story. I agree eHow has not treated its WCP writers well in the past few months and with the cheaper content form DS, does not have a huge incentive to do so. I’ve blogged about my thoughts as well.
WriterGig I know you’ve been out of the loop for a bit – I can’t figure out what is in it for eHow to screw up this way. Strange times.
I can’t find a single flaw in this article, except that it is perhaps a little too slanted in eHow’s favour. I would not be able to be so kind.
They cheated, they lied, they got caught, they lied some more, they never apologized. And no doubt they don’t have the morals to not do it again.
As always, just follow the money trail. It always leads back to the real evil.
Thanks for posting such a detailed and accurate storyline for what eHow has done and is continuing to do.
Thanks for an astute comment, Glorybug. You are correct. It’s shocking what eHow and Demand Media continue to get away with while their (dwindling numbers of) supporters defend them by saying that what we accuse eHow of doesn’t make sense for them to be doing–of course it does! If Rosenblatt can line his pockets with the average, hard-working person’s grocery money, he’ll do it.
If some of this doesn’t make sense to someone, then they either don’t understand how SEO works, or they don’t understand how greed works. I’m just glad this isn’t another Toyota, or most of us who trusted eHow wouldn’t be here today. And that’s one reason we cannot allow this to continue unchecked. We get what we tolerate. We deserve what we tolerate.
The reason eHow and Demand Media have gotten away with this outrageous, unethical scam is because we, the writers have allowed it. There have only been a very small handful of people on eHow who have stood up against the behavior described above and every one of us have been banned, censured, ostracized and burned at the stake not only by eHow it self, but worse, by the smug community members who have been unable to let go of their petty illusions that eHow is some wonderland and can do no harm.
There have been numerous “plants” placed on the forums whose sole intent was and is to disrupt the rebellious speaking out of a few members who saw this coming early on. These plants rant and rave about eHow ad nauseum and in one case one of these people actually went as far as setting up certain members to discredit them in the eyes of the community. I believe these plants were placed in the forums and PAID by Demand Media purposely to lure people in to trusting them and then betraying that trust through an elaborate ruse to discredit them entirely.
The only way that the UK issue will be resolved is if members refuse to allow eHow to continue perpetrating their absurd theft of member copyright material by suing eHow and Demand Media in court. Unfortunately the majority of members writing for this company are doing so to put food on the table in these hard times and are not in a position to sue the Goliath company. And so the time-honored, 21st century American business model is perpetuated. In a nut shell it can be defined very easily…SCREW THE LITTLE GUY. Rosenblatt is another Bernie Madoff and should be taken down and one day one of use will find the money and the balls to do so.
Thanks for publishing this work Kim. I know it took you many hours to compile it. Keep up the good work and find someone big to put this in the mainstream news.
Thank you, Lord, the truth is finally seeing the light of day. If I was a preacher, I would put on a sermon right about now. And to every single writer out there, the picture painted here is the ugly truth. It’s even worse then told here, and I pray many will read this and say no to ehow the esow.
Amen to that, Thirdstone.