As has been mentioned in the past, cross-posting reviews on Amazon and other shopping sites is considered a User Agreement violation, under this clause:

"We ask that you refer or provide links to the Shopping.com Network if you choose to republish your content elsewhere and that you do not publish the same items of content on both the Shopping.com Network and other product or price comparison sites."

Don't do it. If an Advisor is giving you a hard time for this practice, listen to them. I don't know if downrating reviews is the best way to enforce this, necessarily. But I encourage anyone who is aware of cross-posting to notify us immediately with the details, including the review URL and member name. We're happy to handle it.

Just to head off this question at the pass, yes, Amazon is considered a price comparison site. You can buy the same item from them or various store partners and marketplace affiliates right there on their site. Many of these store partners are the same ones in the Shopping.com/Epinions network, so Amazon does compete directly with us and they do qualify as a price comparison site. The same goes for the UK. Even though Epinions does not have a specific UK site, Epinions reviews are used on Shopping.com UK. Same goes for Australia.

We have not been ticketing for this in a hardcore fashion but we will follow up with you if cross posting is brought to our attention and ask you to remove your reviews from the other site. Just to be clear, this applies to other product or price comparison sites. Personal websites, blogs, etc, or anything without price comparison features is okay. If you have Amazon affiliate links on your blog, on the other hand...

Not only is it an issue of feeding our competitors, but it can play havoc with how certain search engines perceive our site, drawing an apparent connection between the 2 sites where none, in fact, exists. This can hurt our traffic, which in turn hurts IS for everyone. In the simplest terms, if you put your review on Amazon and on Epinions, then Google might identify the duplication and decide to send visitors to only one or the other. Would you rather they went to Amazon, where you earn no IS? Or to Epinions, where you can earn IS?

It hasn't come to this yet but if we have to resort to ticketing or even incarceration, we will. However I'd much rather work with people to explain the policy and resolve the conflict.

Another question I know will come up is about copyright. Of course you retain the copyright to your works and can publish them anywhere you please. It's just that if they violate the Epinions User Agreement, we are under no obligation to publish them here and may choose to pull them.

Thanks to the community members who've brought instances to our attention recently.

So, I have to ask this question. What about reviews that are already posted at Amazon [books, music, movies etc] that subsequently get posted at Epinions. When you see someone post 100 reviews in a week [the pot calling the kettle black here] and you Google one and it goes to a reviewer at Amazon or another site ... how is that going to be addressed? That's something that needs to be addressed because I do recall at one point in time someone saying that it is allowed as long as they saying something to the effect of "also posted at [name of site". How can you really be sure that this is the same person? Anyone can go to Amazon and look at the reviews and pick a name off the list, create the same name at Epinions and post hundreds of reviews and make money from them. How long does it take to cut and paste a review - maybe 30 seconds?

While that might sound silly to most people, if someone stands to make a large chunk of money from it for an investment of an hours time ... I think that the rules need to be crystal clear. I might sound like a complete hypocrite when I mention people that post a lot of reviews at once [ones that were previously posted at other site], the reviews that I write aren't posted anywhere else. If this is going to be something that is enforced then I honestly think that this side of things needs to be added to it.

I have no clue if any of my few cross-post were at what Eps considers comparison sites or not... and I am not going to rack my brain trying to even recall where they are as it has been over a year since I did it...

But I am telling you right here and now that I am not going to go hunt them down and remove them, so if you plan to backtrack and inforce an informal request retroactively, then you might as well tell me to go on and cash out and kill my account now.


Doc

1) We ask - too "informal", flexible, vague. YOU MUST NOT is pretty clear.

2) Not hunting mine down either but will refrain from future cross-posting.

3) If a handfull of members have been picked on/ticketed based upon this informal wording clause, epinions owes them an apology.