On average, every story I publish is stolen about 20 times. For example, numerous rip-off sites copied and pasted my last column on holiday layoffs more than a dozen times on the same day. Why? Because they get readers’ views without having to pay me a cent.
Sure, automated content scraping sites don’t make much money, but like spam, the process doesn’t cost them much, either. OpenAI, on the other hand, made $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023, and they didn’t pay me a dime, either.