Thieving weirdness

I have long been aware that there are a bunch of web sites out there that steal content from blogs and repost it, with varying degrees of attribution. Some alter the content slightly. Some alter it in strange ways, such as running it through an automatic language translator, then back into English again, so that it comes out mangled. I assume that all of these sites share one goal: getting found through search engines and redirecting the traffic to related commercial sites.

I just came across one of the strangest ones yet. First, re-read a few paragraphs of the post I wrote here. Then check out the bastardization of it here. (But please do not reward them by clicking on any of their ads.) It seems that they have run the text of the post through some software that takes an occasional random word, finds synonyms for that word, then replaces the word with a synonym or a mashup of two of the synonyms. For example, "Restrooms are very close, about 20 steps outside the poker room," becomes "Restrooms are very close, regardingconcerning 20 steps superficialsurface the poker room"--the stupid software apparently not recognizing context and seeing "regarding" and "concerning" as synonyms for "about," and "superficial" and "surface" as synonyms for "outside." The result is effectively unreadable.

It would be interesting to know if such sites really generate enough revenue to be worthwhile. On the one hand, you'd think that they must, else nobody would bother. But on the other hand, I can't figure out how they make money, when the content is so utterly useless.