On Blogging

In which I confront a dirty rotten plagiarist

I’ve heard of it happening.  Rumors, suggestions, a passing mention here or there.

I’ve even had it happen on a small-scale to me. 

But this!  THIS was personal.

I was checking my email one last time before going to bed when I read this:

Subject: You’re getting ripped off, did you know?

Did you know about this blog (link removed to avoid sending traffic) ripping off all your stuff?
Is it your secret side project?
Is its some sneaky way to make money? If so let me in on it.
If it’s not I figured you should know someone out there is stealing your gold and making it garbage.

I’m in Wii coma, let me know if I was wrong.
kiss kiss
Casey

So I clicked on the link.

And couldn’t believe my eyes. 

My latest posts, ONE AFTER THE OTHER after the other, were displayed on another blog as if they belonged there.  There was no link to me.  There was no MENTION of me.  Just my writing.  Oh, and a whole boat-load of ads.

SOMEONE, some dirty rotten low-life scum, was making money off of MY WRITING.

(this made me slightly angry)

Quickly I did some research.  This is what I learned.

1) People can’t steal your content without your consent.  Copyright is implicit, and doesn’t require you to register or display a copyright symbol.  What’s yours is yours, period.

2) Usually when people steal your content, they’ll take it down if you email them.  If that doesn’t work you can email the hosting company and they will often help you.

So I looked up the domain name of the offending site at http://whois.domaintools.com/.  Sure enough, there was the name, address, and phone number of the dirty rotten plagiarist.  Oddly enough she had the same first name as me. 

Eww.

I sent the BAD JENNY this email,

Subject: Copyright infringement notice

Attention Jenny Marks,

This email is to let you know that your site, www.momstay.com is in copyright infringement for displaying my original content from my site www.absolutelybananas.com without my permission or approval.

Please remove all content that has been copied from my site within 24 hours or I will contact your hosting company to request that your site be shut down.

Jenny Blackburn
www.absolutelybananas.com

And the next day I get THIS back,

Dear Jenny Blackhorn,

I am sorry but I don’t think you understand the definition of “copyright.” For one, when you post information from other people’s sites on your own blog, that is not copyright infringement (if so, then your own information on your website, such as information taken from seattlemomblogs.com, would be copyright infringement). In order for something to be copyright infringement, it must violate a copyright, and posting a blog does not make your content copyrighted. If you don’t wish for other people to use the content from your site, I strongly encourage you to disable your RSS feed, which is how this information was fed off of your site and onto mine. You maintain an RSS feed, and thus my site was able to feed your site’s information to my own via the RSS. As long as you maintain an RSS feed through your site, other sites have the ability to use content from your site directly on their own via that RSS feed.

For information on how to LEGALLY copyright your information and protect your information, please visit this article:

http://www.todays-woman.net/article1347.html

Unless there is copyright warnings on your posts and on your RSS feed, you have no legal standing in this matter as content on your site is not automatically “copyrighted.”

Your content was removed from my site, however, but you would not be able to contact “my hosting company” as I am my own hosting company lol. That is quite a silly threat to make to someone. Just FYI. Please be more informed on how to protect your content from auto scraping programs such as the one that used your RSS feed to post content from your site on mine. As long as you maintain a full text RSS feed without any copyright notice on it, this is going to happen to you from other websites.

Thanks,

Jenny

Oh if only you could have seen the smoke pouring from my ears.

she doesn’t think I understand the definition of copyright…

LET ME AT HER!!!

Of course I had to set her straight.

Jenny, 

Sorry but I don’t think you understand the definition of “copyright.” All original work is automatically protected under US copyright law and it is absolutely illegal for you to take it and publish it as your own whether on a blog or elsewhere. (see http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork if you’re confused; “Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”). It does not need to be registered or explicitly say “copyright” in order to be copyrighted. Call an attorney if you don’t believe me.

As the author, I own the copyright to all my work and can publish it wherever I like, whether on Seattle Mom Blogs or elsewhere. The difference is that I, as the author, am entitled to do this. It is also legal for other bloggers to post my content with my permission. See, as the author, I get to decide where my work shows up. As not the author, you don’t get to use my work without my permission and make money off of it. In what world would THAT be legal?

Jenny

She did take my content down.

So why am I still so ANGRY?

After I calm down I’m going to write a very thorough article about how to avoid this situation (and no, the answer is not to TURN OFF RSS as the bad Jenny suggests)!

So… am I alone?  Has this happened to any of you?  And how do YOU avoid this kind of situation?

Catch more of Jenny Blackburn’s humorous anecdotes on being a mom, a woman, and a whole lot crazy at Absolutely Bananas.

If you have questions, anecdotes, or topics for “On Blogging,” email jenny[@]seattlemomblogs[dot]com.