I Am a Great Big Ol' Content Thief...

...And I take other people's hard work without permission to use in entirety for my own financial gain because I'm too lazy to write my own original material but still want the dough. My advertisers should drop me like a hot potato...

My friends and family should shun me...

And my beloved dog should bite my leg.

Okay, so maybe I'm not a content thief-- me, the true author of Of Cabbages and Kings upon which this post resided first. But the dude or dudette who seems to be leveraging my Feedburner feed, complete with my illustrations, for what Feedburner calls "Uncommon Uses" very well may be.

As the site in question I refer to doesn't allow for comments, and their email form leads apparently only to an advertiser site, I hadn't found a way to contact them to ask them politely to remove my posts. Y'know, the posts that make up the content on their shiny new, highly-ad-filled site.

So I thought it would be entertaining to write this particular post on the topic. I imagine their automatic posting program will load it under their "Epic Fail" category, like they did a number of my other posts.

Let's enjoy the irony of that together.

And while I'm on the subject--

Providing me with a linkback guised as "Click here to read the whole post" when my whole post has already been included in the site, and there's absolutely no reason to click, does not make it all hunky-dory.

It is neither hunky nor dory.

If anything, it is fair-usey loopy-holey. And not as flattering as one might think.

So, this is a test of the Emergency Head-Off-The-Folks-Who-Don't-Know-What-a-Copyright-Statement-Is-All-Rights-Reserved-Please-Remove-My-Posts-Now Messaging System.

I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt. That the person just somehow didn't know you can't simply lift whatever you like from someone else's site without asking.

That the person doesn't realize I actually really care about what I post here, and that all my content isn't just LOLCatz photos or jokes your grandmother forwards to everybody who goes to Bingo with her.

So here's to new beginnings! As in, you, Content-Reappropriator Dude or Dudette, can begin to find all new content to plop in your ad-glutted site and operate it without me. Thanks!

Because I kinda don't think your advertising sponsors would find seeing this post scraped and slapped up on your site quite as funny as I would.

Just sayin'.

___________________________

UPDATE: Ah! It looks like they've suddenly truncated the posts and offered attribution!

Three cheers for choosing to take the path of proper Fair Use! He shoots, he scores!

12 comments:

Katherine said...

Sweet! You won you won!!!! I will have to remember this the next time I am copied. Why do people DO that!

Unknown said...

Katherine- I guess it's just mind-boggling to those of us who blog because we actually like blogging. :)

They want to make money with a blog, but they don't want to do the work. It's sort of like kids wanting A's in school but don't want to write their own assignments.

LAAAAAZY.

ReformingGeek said...

That's just so wrong. I'm glad you called them on it.

As for advertising on blogs, I'm amazed that people make money because I will never click on an ad on a blog! I guess I'm in the minority.

Unknown said...

ReformingGeek- I don't click on ads on blogs either. I don't know who does, but apparently someone must, because folks sure do keep trying.

Shawn said...

I just caught someone doing the same thing. Except they seemed to have gone through and hand-picked a few choice posts and then sprinkled them in to their blog alongside seemingly original posts. They even changed titles and one or two words to make it more suitable to their personality.

Jeez, you take a brief 10 month blog vacation and people think they can just come in and loot the place.

Unknown said...

Shawn- Oh, hey, welcome back!!! Though I'm sorry to hear the evil-doers have chosen to strip the furnishings of your blog while you were out. I hope you have the person a good old-fashioned smackdown.

Robert Crane said...

ya know, you didn't have it so bad. at least your stuff wasn't being picked up and reproduced on a cambodian human trafficking humor site of all things.

it's god awful i tell ya! count your blessings toots!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on their "lisening" to you...not everyone would.

Alas, I recently copied some pictures from the 'net (phots from the audience of a concert I was in) and didn't save the URL. I did post them onto my blog anyway, but said I grabbed them from the 'net...didn't "take them as my own" (which would've been hard to do since they're pictures that I'M IN, LOL!).

Tgoette said...

You know Jenn, I've always lived in fear that some jerk would try to misappropriate my writings on my blog and present it as their own.

That is why everything I write is purposefully awful and often annoyingly dull.

So far, so good.

Jenn Thorson said...

Bob- Cambodian human trafficking... humor?!!!


Which of those words totally doesn't go together?... Let me think... :)


Sharon- Heh, I think you're pretty safe with the pics, there. :) That's a lot different than using someone else's entire blog to populate yours with content.


Tgoette- Heh, don't think you'll get off so easy; I never said the posts he was using of mine were any GOOD. I just said they were being used. :)

Nanny Goats In Panties said...

Sometimes I find snippets of my stuff on some horribly crappy link-farm auto-aggregator or whatever it is, just to get content which makes no sense and I don't think real people actually read it - they are the worst sites I've ever seen. It must be that they are making money somehow and maybe they have a hundred sites like that so they can feed their wife and camel. I'd love to know what site this was that did this to you. Bravo to you for the win.

Tiggy said...

Agh, don't ya just want to track these people down, stake out their house, wait for them to come home then punch them in the throat? I know I do.