Please pardon this departure from my normal fluffiness, but I’m feeling a tad cranky.
If you are reading this post on any site that does not have “tippytoediet” in its URL, then you’re most likely reading stolen content.
If you are reading this post on a site with the words “thighs” and “thinner” in its URL, then you are definitely reading stolen content. The owner of that site has been contacted by yours truly numerous times since November 2009 and is no longer responding to cease and desist requests. GoDaddy and AdSense have also been notified of this copyright infringement, which is in violation of their stated policies, not to mention a direct violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and International Copyright Law.
And a certain indicator of bad breeding.
Sharing content around the blogosphere is absolutely acceptable, with proper attribution. It’s how we share information and learn about other blogs. The more appropriate way to do it is to post a blurb about the article of interest and then provide a direct link to the original content. It is a great big no-no to publish other bloggers’ content in its entirety and present it as your own without express written permission. (Most people add “posted with permission” or words to that effect.).
If you’re a blogger whose content is being scraped onto a just-for-profit blog, there are steps you can take to stop the offender. The folks at NetConcepts.com have compiled a very useful article on how to stop copyright infringement. (See how easy that is?)
An easy way to find out if your content is being published elsewhere is to include the name of your blog in each of your posts or RSS feeds and then set up a google alert with your blog name in it.(You’ll want to put the name of your blog in quotes, like this: “The Tippy Toe Diet” to make it an absolute reference.) You can set your alert to notify you with each occurrence, daily, or weekly.
So, Mr. Content Thief, let’s see if you scrape this post as you have done with all my posts since November 2009. As you do with the posts of many other bloggers.
Shame.
Thank you, lovely readers, for your patience in allowing me to take care of this little bit of annoyance. I’ll be back tomorrow with my normal fluffy, perky self. Or as close as I can get on a Monday. 
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
OMG – I had no idea that some jerks would stoop so low! I have google alerts for both my blog name and my "real" name. It is interesting to see what pops up. The ones with my real name are never about me:)
I hope your problem gets resolved soon. Blogging should be fun:)
That sucks…
and is oddly flattering….
but mainly sucks. Hope it gets resolved soon!
Ok, I came back because I thought my earlier comment may piss you off. I was just trying to look at it in a positive light. You have great content. But theyre a shmuck for stealing it.
Yeah that site sucks… It steals my posts too.
It happens all the time. I've never let it bother me.
When I used to post at Cranky Fitness, I had someone blithely lift an entire flowchart and post it on their blog as if they'd created it themselves. Never seemed to occur to them that someone else had actually done the work and should, ethically, be given the recognition.
wow, that takes alot of nerve. i'm sorry that's happening to you
That's the reason I make my posts so incredibly ridiculous… so nobody will steal them.
VENT AWAY SISTER.
we need to get this to stop!
Carla
Thank you for venting! That's just wrong!
Thank you so much for this info! I had no idea some scumbag website was plagiarizing my blog! Ugh. Your vent helped me and I'm sure more than a few others, too. Thanks again!
These thiefs are even worse than spammers. It really s*cks when someone takes credit of your hard work *getting flashbacks from office life days.*
I've read so many stories of before and after photos being copied and used for weight loss supplements the person NEVER used. Who do these people think they are?
Rant on …
OMG I didn't even know this kind of thing could happen. Rant on girlfriend!!! If there is anything your readers can do to make it stop, let us know.
Plagiarists are active everywhere. An Amazon reviewer copied one of my reviews and after looking over his stuff, I discovered that every review he wrote for the last two years was stolen. At least Amazon can easily delete the offending reviews.
Eek! Scary scary scary. Thanks for spreading awareness about it, Cammy.
Geez, is there nothing that is sacred anymore? Lucky for me, I don't have anything posted that is worth stealing, but if I did, I'd be cranky, too. It sucks that you do all the leg work, the writing and the thinking, and some no brainer person can come along a claim the content as their own. I hope you are successful in your attempts to stop them in their tracks. Good luck to you.
What a jerk!
I am very nervous about this myself, I have a whole book on the internet an not just a blog. It has become socially acceptable to steal in our society. It started with people stealing CD tracks on the internet, and now copyrights in general are being disrespected.
Oh, I'm going to have to check up on that! Thanks for the warning! You have every right to be furious.
Wow, that's wild. Thanks for the alert – I just did the google thing. I do not understand people sometimes.
YIKES! I have not come upon this so I best check it out! THX!
Wow. People are pathetic. That's all I have to say in regards to content thieves. It pisses me off!
I'm sick of those scrapers, too. Thanks for the info about NetConcepts – I had not heard of them before.
I'm sorry this has happened to you. My friend has it happen all the time. She found the thief's phone number in a whois search and called him. It is a lot of work to get them to stop. And a full time job to keep up with it. One thing you can try is changing the RSS feed to make it not the full post but a partial post with a link to read for the rest. That would certainly screw the scraper for sure.
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