Have you been Sarahed?

Sarah, if you're reading this, PLEASE plagiarize a review on your experience of being Sarahed. This one looks like a solid 4 stars

 

Some people fancy themselves "social media influencers" and are looking to get a response from the businesses they review across
social media platforms.
You may have noticed the Sarah A account received a few responses from those representing the restaurants and businesses.
This is a way to get attention and a chance for the business to offer the person a free meal, discount, etc...in order to 'make it right'
so the reviewer will say good things about them online.

 

I believe that those responses were also "Copied" from the posts that she stole. Refer to the @Basil post (or it may have been from someone else) on the previous page.

 

I've had published stuff pinched a time or two, but that was a while back. Hell, I don't really even think about it any more.

 

Understood, @DaiLun. Thank you.
I was speaking to the possible motives of someone who would take the time to copy, paste and
switch a few words of a review in an attempt to get a response from the business. Not just yelp, sadly.
Negative reviews generally get more of a response. Squeaky wheel and all.

 

Time to start writing very dense reviews with hidden messages in text heavy paragraphs. See how lazy the person is.

 

It may also be time to watermark pictures. What a PITA!!

 

Be sure to write it backwards so the hidden messages will be heard..

 

You don't want it to be THAT hidden.

Just see how dedicated they are to wiping and in the middle of a big paragraph in the middle of a sentence "if you're reading this on yelp the dbag who posted this revue copied it from another site"

 

There are ways to do it that aren't that difficult, and a big watermark/logo across the entire image might prevent people from stealing, and reposting them on their own site. Or it might not. What it will do, is make the pictures more difficult to be enjoyed, by everyone else.

I've been a (amateur) photographer for nearly 50 years, and have been around a number of professional photographers, and photography forums. And I constantly hear about people having their pictures stolen. For instance, I know of guys who shoot sports (mainly high school), and then sell pictures to the parents. In order to prevent theft, they post low resolution proofs on their web site, and put huge watermarks across each one of them. And guess what? The parents still steal them. And then tell their friends how to do it. Some people would rather get a crappy resolution picture with a watermark across it, for free, than to pay a few bucks for a nice, clean, high resolution image. Sad.

It's like I always tell people.....if you don't want it stolen, don't put it on the internet.

 

TLDR, for those who didn't read page 1.

I and probably others have come to the conclusion originally proffered by @alanleroy that "Sarah A" is not an actual person but a fake profile to be used for malicious intent and may be the product of a fully- or semi-automated bot.

Once the Sarah profile is removed from Yelp, there are likely to be many others.

 

Yes! She got me!!!



Definitely my photos from the "Food pics by restaurant" thread (page 8)

Kind of a shame to report it, but i did.

 

@Basil , out of morbid curiosity, I started looking at her posts too.

One REALLY stood out for me, as I am a sucker for eggs benedict.

When I read her line about "a sampling of their 3 Benedicts, from best to worst," I KNEW I had seen that on VMB....so I looked...it was yours! from your Terrace Point Cafe post!

I have them below.

If "Sarah" is a nefarious Yelp bot, then my vote is, Yelp pays for a cushy FBR trip for all VMB post that were robbed. (We know that won't happen, but nice to dream!)

Hers
https://m.yelp.com/user_details_reviews_self?userid=uQnsRRcEXX4u-xfLUNs1kA

Yours
https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/forums/index.php?threads/food-pics-by-restaurant.145599/page-17#post-1603670

 

Sort of.

 

I'm interested in Sarah's review of P.F. Changs...

 

I know this is off-topic, but Vegas Bright is dead? I didn’t know that.

 

Yup, that was one. Also Nine Fine Irishmen, Carson Kitchen, Julian Serrano, and Lago

 

This must be a pretty common practice on the interwebs. Quora had a woman (in the strictly cyber sense of the word) who always posted the same structure of a question asking about various travel locations. The verbatim responses would wind up on her travel website, no attributing the information to the author. Part of me thinks it's just consolidating data. The other part of me thinks this isn't too far removed from the old days when that fine line between research and plagiarism was an issue in college papers. I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, it's a labor saving method for content building. Kind of like, if there isn't an explicit copyright sort of caveat, why not use it (as is often the case with coding)? In the words of our good pirate friend Jack Sparrow..."take what you can, give nothing back". Unless you're legally bound to do so.

 

Quite common, and quite illegal. I'll address the photography issue here, as that is what I'm most familiar with.

The instant a photograph is created (i.e. when you push the shutter button), the photographer legally owns that picture, and the copyrights to that picture. No one is legally entitled to use that picture without the photographer's permission. The photographer is NOT required to register the picture with the copyright office, or place a watermark/logo on the picture. The photographer owns the copyright to that picture, period. Having the photograph registered with the copyright office will however, greatly increase the chance of recovering damages (money) if it is stolen, and the whole mess ends up in a court of law.

There are exceptions of course, such as if a picture is considered to be in the "public domain". But that most certainly does not apply in this case.


Plus, it's just plain rude to steal someone else's work.

 

I figure you folks just need to stop producing such awesome prose and pics in your TR’s and the problem resolves itself..

jk.