Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful…
… well that’s how the day started yesterday, but it wasn’t how it ended! While sinking into my morning Earl I got an email from WordPress letting me know there was a pingback (trackback) to the wedding blog… and when I saw the pingback, my hand dropped in shock and my hot tea dropped. The steam that was to come, came not from the cuppa tea and expletives rumbled from my mouth!!
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dare someone plagiarise my wedding blog!!!
And not just one post, lots of them and not just a few words, they took the entire post, including my signature (check it out below)! I had just seen… NO, I had just witnessed Grand Theft in action!
Now funnily enough this isn’t the first time it’s happened to me so you’d think I would be used to it by now (I used to have an old website when I was a Bowen Therapist and had this exact same thing happen to me many times).
The difference this time though was that many posts had been ripped form the pages of Alice In Weddingland and promptly placed on a shiny, new blog as if they had done the hard work! And it appeared, I was not the only blogger to have had it happen.
“You’re **%^&$% kidding me”
And I was furious!
I’d felt those feelings before: the anger, the frustration, the hurt that your blood, sweat and tears can be so easily taken away, that someone stole my hard work and was passing it off as their own but this time, it affected me more, much more! I think it’s because as a blogger, so much of your passion, your heart, your vulnerability and your life is sitting amongst the pages of your blog. It’s a part of you! It is a huge part of me!
The worst part is that someone out there is either employing a robot to pick up RSS feeds or worse, reading it themselves and sitting there thinking “I’ll have that one, I’ll have that one” and so on! Plainly, without any consideration for the blogger who doesn’t just own the content but is the content.
I mean how would you feel?
And you can imagine how I felt when I followed the ping-back to Alice in Weddingland and here were all my posts…
The ‘Perps’ Need to Be Brought To Justice
(‘Perps’ – BlueBloods TV series – ‘Perpetrator’) 🙂
As a blogger and blogging every day (since Aug 2011) I’ve written over 200 posts, 60,000 words (OK not War & Peace :-)) but, I’ve posted 3000 or so images, made some great friends and shared many a cuppa tea in my posts. How dare somebody take that away from me!
Each post is crafted with the same love and care as that of the people whose work I post about. How dare someone think they can simply ride my wave! (Excuse my emotional state, it’s taken a while to shake it off).
I know it’s impossible to keep track of everything you post about as a blogger and many plagiarists slip through the net and get away with it but when you find it, I believe something needs to be done about it. It has to be stopped.
The worst thing about people who steal ideas is that they are robbing the creator of what they deserve. And fancy being stupid enough to rip-off not just 1 page but a whole load more including all the images and not just mine either but other high profile Wedding Bloggers out there.
AND my Signature too!!! OH DO Come on!!
Yeh, there was a smudge of Google juice on there but only because they were stupid enough not to take them off!!!
And even a picture of me! A clever thief? I don’t think so!
Why the Rant?
Because it’s just plain wrong!!! They have no right and it’s not just my work on my wedding blog. It’s also those people I post about, it’s the photographers images and vendors words! And I am like a Mother with her young, I care a hell of lot about the people I showcase! It’s their hard work and their passion that gets stolen too.
The story so far
After tweeting about this yesterday, I had amazing support from lots of tweeters including some frabjous people like Sara, of Under The Vintage Veil, who has also had this done to her and so many more people who were incredibly supportive! (A huge thank you for everyone’s support!) – this is the sort of thing a splogger can’t take away from me!!
So who is it?
I have a strong value which is, ‘everybody deserves a chance‘ and because of this, I won’t name and shame the Splogger… ‘yet‘. I can’t find out who owns the site as there’s no name or contact form on the site and their details are hidden in the WhoIs database, though there are 5 links at the top of the page that all point to a well known persons site in the Wedding Industry and both sites share the same hosting company…
So, I’ve contacted them to find out if they own the site and if so…
I’ve given them the grace, a chance (sadly not afforded to me or the other bloggers) of responding before taking further action.
And if not…
…as The Queen of Hearts would say –
Off With Their Heads!
But I want to know what you think? I’m new at this!
What do you think of sploggers doing the McNaughty!! (A wonderful term I discovered after reading Forever Amber’s blog yesterday – if you haven’t yet met her, you must read it, she’s incredibly infectious!).
Should they be named and shamed? Should we reserve them the right that isn’t reserved for us, that is, to give them a chance?
It’s such an emotional issue for me and it makes me so angry every time. If you love something, give it a plug, of any kind. A link where possible is the most appropriate angle but if not at least quote where it’s from so that readers can follow the path! It’s only fair.
So for those potential sloggers, if you’re reading this do me a favour, if you want to repost my posts, shove in a little link saying who wrote it or where the images are from. Give me and all other bloggers out there some Aretha!!!
R-E-S-P-E-C-T!!!!
And if you really want to repost the entire thing –
- Contact me first and ask or –
- Add it to your site and credit the work on here with one of the badges you can find here Get Your Badge or add a link at the bottom of the post referring people back to the original post with this link Credited to Alice in Weddingland Wedding Blog
Be a nice guy!
After all our escapades and the stories of others, as well as the advice I’ve been given and posts on what to do and of course, thanks to my Luke Skywalker (sorry Rob 🙂 ) I’m going to write a post next week that will outline everything you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you and what you can do about it and how to find out if you’re the victim of ‘Copy & Paste’. Because I am one of the lucky ones to have a Luke Skywalker to save my day! Rob is my internet guru (sorry honey, I know you hate the term but it’s true) and he knows all about internet marketing, SEO’s, Google, WhoIs and all that jazz! Me, I just like the jazz 🙂
Oh, one last thing…
You have my full permission to COPY and PASTE this entire post into your blog to spread the word that
SPLOGGING WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!
LIKE it, Link it, Twitter It, Stumble It, Digg It – Go For It 🙂 Let’s stop it now!!
Oh, and please leave your comments. This is an important issue and I’d love internet chatter on it so that we can stop it together! If it’s been done to you, how did you feel? What did you do? Except for Sara, I don’t know anyone else who’s been a victim of it but I am sure, a lot of you have, so drop me a line, lets get engaged in stopping splogging!
Zarn
P.S. I’ll keep you updated with how it goes!
P.P.S. Thanks for listening, I promise – emotional rant – now over!!! 🙂
P.P.P.S Maybe they’ll even re-post this he he! The Irony!
Shocking! Hope you managed to get it sorted soon.
Thanks for your support Clara!!! I’ll def. keep you posted 🙂 Zarn x
Shameless, I have had my blog copied now on quite a few occasions literally word for word. I have had the blogs taken down by blogger having reported them but what I found odd was it was normally young eastern bloggers who had no idea what they were doing and did not even speak the language?! I had one recently offer me profuse apologies and felt rather guilty afterwards! But I was shocked when I saw them for the first time. I hope you get it all sorted out 🙂
Oh no!!! That’s horrible! It’s such an awful feeling, it leaves you gutted. I’m really pleased you managed to sort it out though. It’s hard to believe people will do it knowingly but they do and for bloggers it such a nasty thing to do! I am sure there are some people who don’t quite understand it’s wrong, I guess that’s why I feel I will give them 1 chance to rectify it. It feels awful to have to do that though. It’s not just our content they steal, its our mood and time and energy! Will def. keep you posted – and thank you heaps for commenting 🙂 Zarn x
This is sickening! There’s always someone happy to steal other people’s creativity and is the reason I stopped posting my work on flickr as it happened time after time to my contacts. I say name and shame the culprits, might make people think twice. Credit where credit is due!!! (Sorry Zarn) Really sorry it happened to you and hope its resolved soon!!! Thanks for letting us all know xx
Thanks so much for commenting!!! And I do agree to naming & shaming, just after the first chance :)!!! Trust me, my alter ego ‘The Queen Of Hearts’ is standing on top of her Toadstool, ready. It’s such an emotional ride to go on when someone does this to you. Creative people deserve all the accolades they get and for bloggers it seems to be a hard issue to stop this sort of thieving. However, I am on a mission and thank you so much for your support. I will keep you up to date as it progresses and if there is no response – you shall be seeing the Queen arrive 🙂 Zarn xx
That’s not good. But I think I have an idea what’s going on, hopefully not stating the obvious. They’re probably using content to make sites that appear credible but aren’t really intended for people, but for search engines. So that the links at the top of the page look credible. A bit like link farms used to, and then you got sites which were full of the obvious or nonsense text. Search engines obviously try and discount these sites so I guess this is a step or two on.
I doubt the person who the links points to did it themselves, but I guess who ever takes care of their site also does their SEO etc (due to the shared hosting) and is building or commissioning lots of sites like these to help keep this well known person at the top of the game – in the search engines at least. Sounds like it’s subcontracted to from Laura’s post.
Anyway just a guess, and others probably know far more about the possibly dark arts of building good search results. I hope you get it sorted soon! I think though it’s a case of needing to be every vigilant as I bet lots of these sites are turned out all the time.
Absolutely and totally hands down agree with you Nathan. Rob (aka Luke Skywalker) also agrees! Thanks for commenting and letting us know your thoughts, it all helps in trying to prevent these people doing it to all us hard workers 🙂 Zarn x
Looking forward to the next post on it, I find these sites offered good advice and explanations of reasons and motivations.
Scraper sites
Splogs
8-proven-steps-to-prevent-your-content-from-being-stolen-by-spolgger-copycats
Its depressing as I’m sure getting caught sometimes and having to take content down is in the business plan and I doubt is an issue as there’s no real hazard or downside in doing it. Either new content or a new site will go up. Once it’s happened I can’t think of a course of action that will deter this, not like you can name and shame as there’s a lot of deniability, room for coincidence and could libellous. While clumsy attempts at manipulating search engine rankings could more be to damage a rival – though your techno Luke Skywalker may know whether than happens if at all. Does Luke know whether stolen content appearing on splogs might degrade your own rankings?
I think things like google plus are away that sites get verified as for humans and not search engines, but then more hacking of google accounts will probably happen to make the make splogs look real. It’s all very Darwinian!
Bit of a downer for a sunny day!
Look, people doing this show themselves up as devoid of any imagination or creativity. Its sickening but the trick is being fast enough to get onto, and be known for, recognising the next thing, something which imitators will never achieve. You clearly have a keen eye for curious and unusual detail and no one, not even plagiarists will be able to take that from you. Natashax
Totally agree with you Natasha! And thanks to Hubby’s hard work (it was a tricky one) we’ve found the owner! Here goes… Zarn x
If you are in a creative industry and you are good at what you do, others may take the easy route and pass your work off as their own. When i create a cake i am so proud of what i have done and want to share my passion with others…there lies the danger…other less creative individuals can then steal your work without asking and pass it off as their own. You have given them a chance (which they do not deserve!) If you have no joy….then off with their head!!!
This is so sad, yet unfortunately it happens all the time. People just think that they can get away with it, its the same when people truely hand make their own items with their own unique designs, put them up for sale and someone just copies the design and sells it as though they have made it themselves. They do not take into consideration just how long it takes to come up with something unique.
Just so very sad, so I would name and shame these people, they are happy to steal from you so they have no respect whatsoever.
Oh no you poor thing, can’t believe this happened! Hope you can get it sorted soon too!
Oh my I so feel your pain. I’ve been blogging since 2006 and it always hurts when you’re work is ripped off. Sounds like you’ve taken action, and enlisting the support from other bloggers is a great step too. I’m impressed you restrained from outing the perpetrator. Really you never know if it actually was just plain ignorance, bad programming, or what. Intellectual property is such a huge issue all across the Internet. I guess we all need to be our own best advocates. Good luck!
Emily Anderson
Author/Blogger http://www.ecochicweddings.com
I love a good rant! What better place to draw attention to such an issue than a blog that has many many readers/followers.
I’m horrified that there are people out there behaving like this, though unfortunately not surprised. When all is said and done this is stealing. It doesn’t matter what form it comes in, whether it’s someone trying to sell a handbag that has been replicated from one of the major luxury designers or whether, like you have found, someone has ripped off your blog. The point is that creativity, writing, designing, photography, all of these things take time to build a reputation and you can’t earn respect in an industry by taking what doesn’t rightfully belong to you. I believe you’re well within your right to be p**sed off, angry and upset and I think you should carry on trying to find out who has done this to you. Many creatives aren’t fortunate enough to find the people who are plagiarising them; I hope you get to the bottom of it…good luck!
Hi Zarn!
I just noticed this post come in my referrers today, so I hope you’ll excuse the late response! I just wanted to first of all thank you for the link, and for your lovely comments, and secondly, to say how sorry I am that you’ve been having to deal with this. As you’ve seen from my post, I find my work plagiarised by sploggers at least a couple of times a month now, sometimes more often (in fact, I just had a bunch of posts removed from a splogger site this week), and as you say, it doesn’t really matter how often it happens, I still always get that horrible feeling of knowing that someone has just knowingly ripped me off: it absolutely enrages me, whether it’s one post or hundreds of them. Anyway, I hope you managed to get this sorted, and if there’s ever anything I can do to help, just let me know!
Oh no! How very frustrating, Sploggers are the worst! In my experience { and as others have said here} it’s likely this ‘mcnaughty’ is running a whole host of spam blogs to create link juice for other sites. They’re probably running a host of automatic feeds to whack onto multiple ‘blogs’, no craft, care or consideration involved. SUPER annoying. In my early career in agencies we came across these thieving shenanigans a lot. It kind of niggles me that such outfits {usually from far flung places} still get away with it. If you can report it, go and raise merry hell with the blog host and try and contact the splogger directly. However, if it’s a genuine new blogger on the scene that’s perhaps a different matter that needs a more tactical approach. Good luck!
Just come across your post and had to comment. That is such a horrible thing to happen to you!
I firmly believe in naming and shaming – if more people were more assertive when they’d been burgled in this way it might stem the trend. I’m always on the lookout for my website and photographs being copied – there are unscrupulous people out there who have copied other photographers’ work (including photos and text) and set themselves up as a photographer. In these cases the real losers are the future brides and grooms who book somebody based on their website (which is one of the reasons why it is so important to view sample albums of full weddings).
Pixels are property too!