Yesterday – as with most days – I had more on my schedule than I could realistically get done. About midday, as I was triaging, I noticed that there was a new link to my blog somewhere out there in the Internetz. Generally I try and click through to anyone that’s linked to my blog to see the context, see if there’s a way for me to comment in an interesting way, and general curiosity. I don’t always get to it – but I do try. So I took a moment to go visit this site that had linked to my blog.
Imagine my surprise when the first post on this site was titled Sluts Abound and started of thusly:
Welcome to Halloween Season, folks.
Around my house, Halloween means everyone gets dressed up in something absolutely freaking adorable and runs around like little hooligans, trying to scam candy. (Yes, this includes me and my husband. I may even be reduced to putting up a picture later this week…we’ll see.)
If you’ve been reading my blog recently, you’ll notice that this word-for-word how Monday’s post started out. I admit, at first I was just confused. So I scrolled down to the next post. The second post was titled On gender, sexual orientation, and children and started off like this:
I am thinking this morning about a blog post by Hugo Schwyzer and The Atlantic article I read yesterday.
Hugo’s post is his response to a question about a bisexual man who is in a monogamous marriage with a woman, and what that means. The Atlantic article is about transgendered children, the range of reactions and parenting approaches, and what it all means in adulthood.
Which is, of course, how my post from last Thursday started out. Now, you might be able to fill in the dots more quickly than I was. I had to read through every post I’ve written for the last two weeks, and then go back and make sure that I wasn’t missing some overly-clear message at the top that everything written on this site was written by someone else – namely, me. I wasn’t missing it. In fact, the only reason they had linked to my site was because I had self-referenced a previous blog post in the last two weeks. Happy that I did, eh?
I moved quickly from confusion to being really pissed off. It also made me realize that I’ve written some good stuff in the last two weeks! I also feel totally violated and completely protective.
I’ve called my hosting company – ironically they also host the dirty rotten thieving site that is putting up Google ads and attempting to make money off of my good writing. They tell me that they’re going to make this other site take down my content. But I notice that this morning they’ve gone ahead updated their site to include my post from yesterday called Making menstruation personal again so clearly no one has made any headway yet.
So this morning, if you have a moment, please jaunt over to this other site (http://www.sexualitytips.info) and leave a comment for me, telling them what thieving sinners they are. (They have now started blocking comments on their site. You are still encouraged to comment on this post – your outrage and suggestions are helping me feel better.) (You’ll notice the copyright notice at the bottom of this page. They certainly didn’t.)
And if you’re so inclined, take a moment to peruse the last few week’s posts I’ve written – but please be kind, and peruse them here rather than over there. Here are all of the posts that the dirty, rotten, scoundrels re-posted, but these links will take you to them here at my site, where they belong:
Making menstruation personal again
On gender, sexual orientation, and children
Top Ten Things To Do Before You Have Sex: a list for teenagers
Advertisements – the good, the bad, and the ugly
What sexuality education is not
About me and my blog (can you believe the gumption – to include this post on a different site??)
You may now feel free to proceed to outrage in the comments section, both here and on their stupid, derivative site. Just be sure not to click on any of their google ads.
Here’s a resource you can use to alieviate this kind of thing- http://www.copyscape.com/ You enter the name of your blog in, and they search for anyone using your words on THEIR blogs, forums, or websites! If you quote a news story, you’ll get some false positives, as it will find other people quoting the same story, but other than that it works really well.
October 29, 2008 @ 7:10 am
This sort of content stealing site would be trivial to set up (technology wise) if the person whose content you are stealing puts the full content of each post in their RSS feeds. Of course they could always steal it manually, but the easier it is to steal the easier it is to make a quick dollar.
I would not recommend shutting down RSS, that would kill your ability to be syndicated on sites like http://UUpdates.net, but since an aggregation site won’t show the full content it should be OK to set the RSS feed to only show a summary.
On the bright side someone noticed your content is worth stealing. Best of luck in dealing with these people.
October 29, 2008 @ 7:34 am
I’ll go over and leave a comment this evening (if they haven’t been taken care of by then)… the site is blocked by work firewall.
Good for you, taking it to the host. Most hosts will jump right on this.
October 29, 2008 @ 8:13 am
Thanks, everyone!
Joel, I’ll take a look at copyscape.
UUpdater, I’m not going to shut down RSS – I agree that it’s doing more good than harm. I have thought about going to an RSS summary rather than the whole posts, but I know how much more likely I am to read a whole post if it comes through my RSS than I am to click through if I only get a summary. So I will leave it all as it is for the moment – but if this happens more often, I might have to re-evaluate. And yes, it did make me a little proud of my content. 🙂 I don’t often go back and read through two solid weeks of old posts – it really gave me a new perspective on the quality of substance of what I write about.
And yes, NookieNotes, I really hope my host (and theirs) gets this taken care of ASAP.
Now, on to writing a test to give to college students next week!
October 29, 2008 @ 8:34 am
Looks like they’ve blocked comments over there, Karen.
It will serve them right if the plagiarize this post too!
October 29, 2008 @ 9:02 am
Sigh. Thanks for letting me know, fausto. They were still allowing comments yesterday – I guess too many people were pointing out that their content was plagiarized. And I certainly hope that they won’t be paying attention and will post it on their site too! 🙂 But if they do notice the content of this post, then I hope they’ll take down my content already!
October 29, 2008 @ 9:07 am
If they do steal this post, just imagine how much fun you can have with your next ones, until they finally catch on!
October 29, 2008 @ 9:17 am
OMG, that is the best idea I have heard all day, fausto! Thank you for totally making my day.
October 29, 2008 @ 9:19 am
hey, it looks like their site has been suspended! Hooray! Wow, what an experience!
October 29, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
[…] you’re confused, see the post below. Or click here.) Filed under : UncategorizedBy karenrayne On October 29, 2008 At 12:57 pm Comments : […]
October 29, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
That’s terrible. I’m glad they’ve been disabled. I’ve linked to your site by the way, in a recent post to your ten tips post and my links. As the mother of a girl who turns 13 tomorrow, I think your site is wonderful!
October 30, 2008 @ 5:48 am
Hi Lone Star Ma, and welcome! I’m delighted by your link (which I had seen, and had been meaning to comment on) and that you enjoy my site.
Happy Birthday to you and your daughter.
October 30, 2008 @ 10:16 am