Copying of VF reviews on other sites (was Someone also copied my review @ Collage!)
I was checking the Lalo 2 reviews and I see one I wrote, I can't remember which forum on Jan 2. but I never posted it! I can't believe this and someone else had the same thing happen! I emailed Collage and asked them to remove it and suggest they get to the bottom of it whether it's someone on their staff or Lalo's people...I wish we could find out as this is sooo not right!!
Aggie |
Wow! :eek: One incident reflects poorly upon both Collage and Lalo's people, but two confirms that someone with an interest in promoting Lalo's DVDs is deliberately seeking out reviews to post on vendor sites and that Collage has a poor system for checking to see if reviews are coming from legitimate sources.
For those who missed it, here's the other thread on a review cut from VF and pasted onto Collage's reviews. |
That's not cool. Lalo and his peeps are going to be in the VF doghouse now!
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Unacceptable! :mad: I started the other thread about having my review copied, and I had an ugly feeling that I wasn't the only one. I hope Collage clears this up ASAP!
P.S. Aggie-make sure you keep Wendy in the loop on this situation. |
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kassia |
Since the person who plagiarized those reviews on Collage obviously reads VF, I hope they are reading these recent VF posts and can see the damage they are causing Lalofit.
Perhaps because I'm an academic, I am really troubled by this copying of other peoples' work without permission. I have been on the fence (and ready to spring) about ordering Lalofit2, but I'm off for now until this gets sorted out. |
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On a side note, yesterday at Amazon I was looking at Mimi Solaire's Yin Yoga DVD, and noticed that in the item description, a review was given and credited as "Video Fitness Reviews"- the same review that appears here (a very good one!) by JustSandra. I was wondering if she or WWWendy had given permission for that to appear, or is permission even necessary? As long as the source is given, is Internet content considered to be public property and can be lifted and used in that way? |
I have complained both here and on Collage's forum. There's no accountability for reviews at Collage. You don't need to register, you can submit reviews multiple times.
Gaylene mentioned you can no longer place reviews for Strike Zone. I was able to pull up the review form with no problem, although the last review posted was July, 2009. So not sure if new reviews are being posted or not. One that gets me is the number of reviews (raving) of Jari's Extremely Ripped. Most were posted on the day that the DVD was released. I asked on the "Ask Collage" forum, just how that could have happened. It was other forum members that suggested people got their DVDs from other sources earlier than Collage's release date. Collage never did answer my question. I don't believe for a minute that all those reviews were from unbiased consumers. I've suggested they impose a way of limiting an IP address to one review of any single DVD. I suspect that's not going to happen. This thing with Lalofit I believe is a fan or staff member of Lalo's. I think not only should Collage be advised, but Lalo as well. I don't think he, personally, is responsible and should know. |
Is this (copying of VF reviews) happening with any other DVDs besides Lalo's? If not, then I doubt anyone at Collage is doing it, unless they have a thousand surplus Lalo DVDs to unload quickly.
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ETA: Here's the link to the Amazon review: http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Stretch-Y...3312042&sr=1-1 |
If my review was copied, I would contact Lalo and ask him about it. It really does seem like it's someone from his company.
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No, I did not and would not give permission for copying of VF reviews or forum posts elsewhere. It's up to the individual who WROTE the review to decide whether or not they wish to share it elsewhere, and if I ever get such a request I always forward it to the reviewer so that the reviewer can decide.
On the Amazon review, that looks a little different--we are listed as an Editorial review. I'm not sure about their policy on Editorial reviews or how that was added (can the publisher post or request that Amazon post an editorial review?). I noticed they did not use the reviewer's name, either. Has anyone else noticed VF reviews appearing as an Editorial Review on Amazon? I don't think a VF review should be listed this way, even if they had gotten permission. First, VF reviews are consumer reviews just like any others on Amazon, and more importantly, since VF does not post one single review of a workout that represents the consensus of the site--a lone positive VF review could be selected and posted in this way for a workout that had mostly NEGATIVE reviews on VF, yet on Amazon it would appear that the VF editorial consensus was entirely positive. That bothers me a lot, and is something I need to contact Amazon about. We used to have something in the footer of review pages stating that reviews could not be copied or used elsewhere w/o the permission of the reviewer. I will make sure that gets added to our new review section too, and I am also going to add something to our vendor/commercial posting page making it clear that permission of the poster/reviewer must be obtained before any reviews are copied or used elsewhere. I would have thought that was obvious, but evidently not. |
I'm also guessing that it's Lalo's people since both reviews are for for Lalofit.
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These situations are just so bizarre. I'm in shock that this is happening! :eek: Did Lalo's people (if they are the one's that did this) think VFers wouldn't find out??? If so, how naive could they be!?!?!
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Wow, I'm not cool at all with reviews copied from VF, either represented as consumer reviews at Collage or as editorial reviews at Amazon. Wendy, thank you for getting to the bottom of this, and I'm sorry you have to deal with this on top of all else that you do.
Personally I have not nor ever would give someone permission to copy my reviews and/or posts. If I want to post a review elsewhere, I'll do it myself, thank you very much! I agree that it's weird to have one VF review posted as the VF "editorial board." But then it actually bugs me that so many DVDs I've reviewed just have my review listed. I'd hate for people to consider my review the last and final word on something! I guess the only upside is that people are recognizing VF as a prime source of reviews and information on videos. Still, why not just point people in our direction? Oh wait, because we bring up both the good and the bad! What production company is responsible for Mimi Solaire's? And for Lalo's? If it's the same, it looks like our culprit may be an employee for the company. |
WWWendy, thanks for the clarification!
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I did just add something to the reviews system stating that reviews cannot be copied without the writer's permission. That doesn't really help reviews taken from the forum, though, unless they read the rules.
It seems obvious that you shouldn't copy from one place to another without permission, though, so obviously whoever did it, doesn't care. It seems likely that it was someone associated with Lalo, because why else would someone do it? |
Thank you, Lisa, for adding the blurb to the reviews.
Threads on the VF forum shouldn't come up via search engines (in other words, if you type in "Lalo Fuentes" on Google or Yahoo or whatever, none of the VF threads on Lalo should pop up, although VF reviews might), so someone has to be reading VF deliberately. You know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself! |
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Weird, because I just did a search for "Lalo Fuentes" in Yahoo and didn't get any VF hits. :confused:
ETA: I did do the same search you did on Yahoo and only got this thread. Maybe I've just misunderstood the bit about being able to find VF threads via search engines. |
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I just wanted to let you all know that I got an e-mail from Collage saying the same thing as they did to Naturallove...also no apologies or any thing at all as to whether they would look into it..almost like they know. Anyways I also don't like to blame anyone...I mean how can we really know for sure unless someone comes out and says it.
Aggie |
I'm going to email this suggestion to Wendy, passing it on from my dh, about letting consumer alert sites know that people, most likely with financial interest in selling videos, are selectively cutting and pasting forum posts onto sites as official reviews. This is a small drop in a big pond of reviewer fraud (if we think this is a big deal, the video game industry has seen far, far worse, apparently), but since it's New Year's Resolution time people looking for honest opinions on videos deserve to know that reviews at places like Amazon and Collage may be doctored. (Yes, yes, I know common sense, grain of salt, and all of that, but not everyone's up with those things!)
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I assume that the video publisher or distributor is adding these reviews, or does Amazon do that? I've asked that in my email to Amazon, but I'm really curious how that comes about. I'm going to have to give some thought to header/footer language to go on VF reviews as well as every page of the forum that makes it clear that reviews and comments about video cannot be used without permission, can't be used for commercial purposes, and that all reviews represent one consumer's opinion do not represent the editorial opinion of videofitness.com. That may at least make a few people more wary of using our reviews that way. |
Wendy, a quick Google search ("videofitness.com" editorial site:.amazon.com) gives me these results - but there might be more:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...cm_rdp_product http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Burning-Fu.../dp/B000ZZT7BS http://www.amazon.com/Latin-Kick-Kic...ion/B0002D125W http://www.amazon.com/Shiva-Collecti.../dp/B001Y44DN6 http://www.amazon.com/Weights-II-Int...ion/B000092WDN http://www.amazon.com/Bollywood-Burn...ion/B000WH5AX8 http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Nature-Ba...ion/B00005Y7A6 Hope this helps. |
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I sent Lalo a comment. |
Wendy, can we have this thread stickied? That way if later on, if people come across a concern, they can look at this thread.
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I'd be stunned if anyone used one of MY reviews. Mine are usually gripes. :p
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It is annoying but it is just the nature of the internet, people habitually copy and paste things without attribution and few people recognize that is stealing the intellectual property of others.
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Marta, thanks for those links, and I've stickied the thread.
I just remembered that one of my friends from high school works for Amazon (a high level technical person) so maybe I can contact him for advice if I need it. A number of those Amazon editorial "reviews" seem to be short quotes, which might be "fair use" under copyright but I'm still concerned that they are representing a single consumer's comment as the editorial opinion of this site, because there is no such thing as an editorial review at VF, and for potential Amazon customers, IMO our reviews shouldn't carry any more weight than your average Amazon customer review does. |
I personally dont think Collage should be held responsible for this. They always seem to be getting a bad rap.
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