Shelly has kindly notified me that there is a blogger out there completely ripping off my work; including my sewing creations, my words, my pictures and even my image! and claiming it all as their own work. To make it semi-laughable, they are not re-phrasing or re-writing my posts at all but copying and pasting everything; word for word. I have only checked the first four pages of the blog but already have come across FIVE of my own posts; completely un-credited to me and claimed as their own work. I have no idea, but wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out the other posts on those pages are also ripped off, from other sources too…
I really do appreciate Shelly letting me know, thank you Shelly 🙂 however to say I am a bit upset is an understatement.
I’m not hugely internet-law savvy, but I do want to check out what my options are, what I could do to stop him/her immediately! if it is even possible to do this.
See, for the whole time I have been blogging I have been extra vigilant about keeping my own blog as original as I knowingly can and have been scrupulous about referencing anything that is not: everything that appears on my blog is my own work. When it comes to my pictures, I never use un-referenced images that do not belong to me; rarely do any images appear on my blog that I did not take myself, with my own two hands using my own camera. On the few occasions I have used an image from the internet owned by another party I have always been scrupulous about searching for and citing the source of the image. To find someone with absolutely zero scruples in copyright, or even any morals at all about someone else’s intellectual and artistic property is… disappointing.
Please, I would really appreciate advice from anyone who might have faced the same situation. Have you every come across another blogger stealing your images, using them unreferenced on their blog, claiming your own work as theirs? And if so; what did you do? I would really like to know 🙂
I can understand your feelings and I don't know what to say but how low they are. I look forward to hearing from others if they know how this sort of situation can be stopped.
Carolyn, Plagiarism of content is pretty common in the Internet these days and it is so wrong!! Besides other things, it also robs off one's morale. Not just in sewing world, I've seen it happen in other blogging worlds as well. All for extra cOntent to their website to generate more income through advertisements.
You can contact Google and complain with proof. They have and will closely that other blog down.
I've seen some people too change their settings so their RSS feeds don't contain all the content. That certainly doesn't make it impossible for someone to take your intellectual property, but I think it might make it less convenient for them!
good luck – this definitely sucks! 🙁
I believe you can also complain to the hosting company – in that case blogspot – and let them know that the content is stolen, and that you want it taken down immediately.
I'm sorry this is happening to you Caroline – your blog is amazing, and it shouldn't be compromised like this.
Hi Carolyn – you can report them to blogger. I've had this happen to me before – it's surprisingly common. People set up blogs that rip off posts from a variety of other people's blogs. When I reported them it wasn't long before their blog was taken down. Best wishes with it – I'm sure that you'll get satisfaction.
Hi Carolyn, I am so sorry this has happened. Complain to Blogspot and see if they will block the site. There are legal remedies, but they will cost a fortune and you will have to engage a lawyer wherever Blogspot is hosted – possibly in the US.
Take solace in the fact that your many followers will support you to the hilt.
That's lame-osity exemplified. Talk about deplorable!! Hopefully blogger can sort this out for you 🙁
Try this link – http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=157218 – there is an online form that you can complete. Most of the people that do this are trying to get more traffic to generate revenue – if you complain, they'll probably stop (and start another scam somewhere else, affecting someone else, unfortunately).
It is really upsetting when it happens to you. My sympathies.
Dear Carolyn, My name is Maja, I am from Serbia – South East of Europe. I like very much your posts and all the thing you have made. I do not know how you can manage it besides all daily routine of one woman and mother. Anyway, to be helpfull without commenting on dirty things that are constantly happening, the best solution is to put your signature over all your pictures. One example is http://www.stepalica.blogspot.com. Ask your children to help you to design your signature.
PS Your red dress is beautiful. All the best, Maja
Woh! Just checked it out; that's disgraceful! I agree that you should complain to blogger. It looks like a spam site anyway so it should be pulled down. How upsetting!
I only recently heard about this happening on other blogs, it is a sad commentary on the internet today. It is called blog scraping, I did a non exhaustive search on it and came up with a couple of sites with ideas on how to fight the scum that are stealing content.
http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-blog-content-scraping-how-to-stop-it/
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/content-scrapers/
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/beginners-guide-to-preventing-blog-content-scraping-in-wordpress/
http://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/dealing-with-scraping-from-a-bloggers-point-of-view/
Good luck getting your content back.
Wow. I looked at many posts on that blog and there are tons of your pictures and posts there. There are pictures of others that are likely not the creator of that blog either. I would do everything in my power to identify the creator of that blog and punish them to the extent possible for stealing your images, especially . I'm sorry there are such people in the world. I love your work and enjoy your blog. It's excellent in every way.
Thanks for the advice, everyone… I'm going to check out the form you suggested, thornberry
I think the best thing to do is to watermark all your pictures, to prevent them being used. It is so upsetting, and I hope you won't stop blogging as we all so enjoy reading your lovely prose and seeing what you make…. and… also wishing I was as talented, young, and happy as you always seem to be.
Best wishes… Cynthia in UK
Unfortunately, watermarking photos doesn't provide any protection, since I noticed that some of the photos within other posts on that same blog are watermarked with the rightful owner's site address, and they are STILL being used! Even if a photo is not watermarked it is a simple matter to locate the original source of a photo by doing an image search. By this way, I identified three other blogs that are being ripped off the same as mine, on this same one blog.
Sorry, I realise the fact that I have just spent the last half an hour doing just that INSTEAD of writing my intended new blog post, about my new dress; sounds kinda loopy, but I'm a bit riled up over this…. 🙂
I can understand how you feel – it is outrageous!!!I agree it does seem as a spam blog anyway, but, hey, look at the "hilarious" side (if there can be one): the links in the posts she stole send back to your own posts!!
Anyway, report it immediately. You deserve credit fot the wonderful posts you write.
Hugs!
Maryall @ http://handmadebymaryall.blogspot.it/
Wow, who would have thought anyone would be so uncreative? I think when we start blogs like this, we want to share and truly believe others will be as genuine and transparent as ourselves. I don't have any concrete advice to add to that given, but the very best of luck in sorting this out x
Horrible practice, so sorry that this is happening to you. I love to read your posts and hate to think that this kind of thing happening to you might make you stop.
Moving forward, there's Creative Commons licenses. It doesn't prevent people from taking content, but it means that they are breaking the law to do so and may give some weight to a Blogspot complaint.
This seems to be happening to so many people at the minute – either that, or people are really starting to notice it. I'm trying to come up with an appropriate abjective, and the main one that my brain seems to be settling on is 'sad'.
I'm sorry to hear this Carolyn – it is such an awful thing to happen and I can understand why you are upset by it. We spend a lot of time creating our blogs and you hope that it will be respected. I hope you are able to resolve it through the links above.
I feel so bad for you after reading your post today. I can only imagine how utterly upset you must be, but please, please don’t stop blogging – I just love reading your blogs – so inspiring and I really look forward to seeing all those lovely outfits you make. I’m not sure if this will help, but another blogger that I follow had a similar problem. I don’t think she had her blog copied, but she may have had some trouble with people leaving nasty messages on her blog. At any rate, her husband works in IT and was able to track down the culprits. Her blog is greenapples and she signs on as stitchywitch – her email address is: jmills01@gmail.com and her website is http://stitchywitch.wordpress.com/. I noticed that your admirer disabled their comments section, so no one can leave any comments or contact them. Not sure whether you can report them to the blogsite. Good luck and chin up, Carolyn! PS. I love your pics agains the Perth city background. My husband is from WA and we spend a lot of time there, so I love seeing your photos.
Well, at least this person has good taste in what they steal. I hope you recognise there is a weird sort of compliment in there, though I do appreciate why you are so upset. I know Mary Beth over at the Stitchery had a similar problem earlier
http://thestitchery.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/reposting-my-posts-really/#comments
but she is on WordPress. It does all seem to come down to the DCMA taking action, but I don't know what authority they have outside of the US.
I wish you luck with this. I must admit, if someone were ripping off all my blog posts I might rather not know…
The following are good deterrents: watermark images, include a least one link to one of your other articles in every article. These don't stop copying, but they make it less likely and they help lead readers back to your site. They also are good for SEO because Google counts your original article as "canonical" and the others as copies, so your work is easier to find.
But if you want to stop someone who is copying your work the best thing to do is go directly to the host. You can use a whois lookup to find out who that is. Provide clear evidence of copying with URLs, text snippets, image file names, etc. and include references to any specific laws being broken (your country's specific copyright laws) as well as any legal representation you might have. Be as specific as possible, and include dates. You can also use the waybackmachine website to help confirm dates. Most hosts, regardless of where they are located will take the offending site down. I've done this twice. Hosts usually act in less than 24 hours.
This is good advice above.
I realize that this is an old post, but I've had to do this for artists whose work was infringed online. I would suggest contacting the main host first (wordpress, facebook, etc.). They will usually take it down quickly. Provide the URL of the page containing the infringing (copied) material. Also include URLs to your original material (post), to show that the material is yours. If that doesn't work, look for the website's registered owner and the hosting ISP on Whois. Send a copyright infringement notice to the ISP and to the indicated owner.
As a deterrent for visual material, if you have photoshop, I would add a subtle watermark to the images. Also be sure to fill in the File Info and indicate that the image is copyright to you. The universal form of copyright notice should be something like: "Copyright © 2012 Jane Smith" . (The copyright symbol is usually the option-G key combo). For anything posted online (i.e. internationally) be sure to include, at minimum, the word "copyright," your name, and the year. The copyright is the year in which the photo was taken, usually. (Some variation on this in different countries). For text material, consider putting the copyright notice in between paragraphs, with the text in a color that matches your blog background. That way, if you've got someone cutting and pasting, or some kind text-stealing bot, chances are that the "copyright …" will appear in their infringement, if they don't catch it.
Hope this helps someone…
Jen
Hi Carolyn,
Sometimes a good way is through a side entrance….Sundance Catalog is advertising on this "blog" (I use quotes because who knows how much of it is original). I sent Sundance an email as a longtime customer who noticed their ad on a blog that steals original material. Most likely they won't like that. Maybe they can do something!
Love your original work and blog!! Thanks!
Casee
It's also not a good idea to link to them. It gives them traffic, which is what they want. But also, it provides their website with better SEO, which is bad for yours, since they are copying your work. Feel free to get in touch if you want more info.
Oh no, that is just sad and pathetic. I wonder why people do stuff like that. I guess they get money for the adds? I also wanted to point out the copyright violation form to fill out in Google help center (http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs). I hope it works out.
Much love to you and all the work you put into keeping this blog interesting and beautiful and funny. 🙂
xx
Carolyn, I went back to take another look at this blog and found that their last entry was November 2012. Maybe they have already realized that they have been caught out and stopped blogging/stealing. However, you have been given some good advice in the above comments and I would definitely report them to Blogger.
I'm sorry this has happened to you 🙁 but glad we found it so something can be done about it.
Good luck with your complaint!! 🙂
I've been reading your blog for ages, but rarely post. This is infuriating, & I hope that you're able to get this blogger dealt with. Keep up your fantastic blog. I've learned so much & gotten so much inspiration from you.
Blogging/stealing…….. i can't understand this. It is so poor.
Please don't be sad!
Christine
Wow, that's crappy! Why would someone do that?! That's crazy!
I'm glad lots of people had some good suggestions. What a total crap thing to have happened. You really do have one of the most inspirational blogs around. Hang in there.
'A little sewing blog' recently had the same thing happen and she took down her blog. It was on an x-rated site. She filed a complaint and that blog was shut down. She has now re-opened her blog. You can reach her at http://alittlesewing.blogspot.com/ While it's shocking and sickening to find out this has happened to all your hard and loving work, it doesn't seem to be difficult to get it taken care of through blogger. Good luck.
Really sad to hear this! Hope that the user get their page taken down. Hugss!
Carolyn, I'm upset for you even though it is not happening to my blog. That is not nice at all. I sincerely hope the site will be taken down and everything will be sorted out very quickly. I love your blog very much, as you know.
Oh no! I read a similar story only a few weeks ago on 'Kashmere kisses' she has had her blog, which she thought she had shut down, stolen and all the images were used on an x-rated site. Why would people do that? Good Luck with your complaint but as you say, it is using up time when you could be doing productive things with your time. Love to you. Jo xx
Oh Carolyn I am so sorry for you. The barefaced cheek of some people, blog stealing, whatever next, its an intrusion and I hope you can manage to get it sorted out, sadly I have no advice about such a matter to give you.
How awful.
Something similar happened to me, and I posted a few steps in how to fight back.
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2011/12/fight-back-against-content-theft.html
Until this happened, I had no idea that the majority of existing blogs are
"spam" blogs filled with stolen content. A Google engineer explained to me
that they had to shut down blogspot in one country purely because of
this problem. It would be awful to be an honest and creative blogger in
a country where the vast majority are not. I see that the blogger that
stole your content looks like s/he might come from that banned country.
It's not personal. In fact, it might be a (software) robot.
I just finished taking the final for the edX.org Copyright Law class.
I will write a post about the experience and a series about global
fair use in copyright. Now that I know more, I will change the
copyright notice on my blog to Creative Commons non-commercial
sharealike.
But, I still recommend the rest of the steps in my post.
You can email me any questions.
Don't waste time feeling hurt. Just act and Google/Blogspot will
take care of it.
So sorry to hear about this – it happens a lot to photographers, and while few of us can aspire to the results HONY achieved (when DKNY stole some of his photos for their window display, he created sufficient public pressure that they paid 25000USD to a charity of his choice, although he had asked for 100000USD), I think getting the offending site taken down (and the user blacklisted?) would be a slight relief. Unfortunately there is always a danger when we share information publicly that it will be taken and used by others, but as one commenter said, once the anger has dissipated you should see it as a compliment too!
I hope you find the strength to get back to usual posting soon – I am curious as to what the weather is doing today 🙂
Thank you so much everyone, for your help and supportive advice. I've calmed down, and am planning my complaint to blogger 🙂
Oh, this sucks!
That is really horrible! I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Unfortunately I don't have any advice but I hope the problem can be resolved.
How bizarre and horrible. I hope everything gets taken down swiftly and that this doesn't have any lasting impact. Take care 🙂
I'm so sorry this has happened to you, Carolyn – I hope all the good advice that's already been offered will help you to resolve it quickly.
I had no idea such things happened. Though would want to know if it did. Thanks for sharing so others can be aware. I'm not hugely savvy either. Yuck!!
Did anyone notice that it says "Posted by Nice Girl." Now that's ironically hilarious considering what she's doing.
Carolyn this is so infuriating! I took another look at that blog and did quick search on some of the other posts. A significant amount of the content appears to have been copied from another blog, Shoe Daydreams. Maybe you could get in touch with that blogger and both lodge a complaint with Blogger. ("Formal Snuggie" and "Flutter into my dreams" were the two posts I found easily).
How very odd, and kind of sad that instead of taking advantage of Blogger's capacity to support creativity, this person is stealing your original materials! I understand that you must feel out of sorts over this, and I hope Blogger resolves this for you.
I can´t believe it…I imagine the frustration you feel, if I pass, I'd be on my nerves!
I am so sorry to hear this has happened to you Carolyn. I know that it has happened to others as well (I have had one image taken to be resold as wallpaper, so it seems that anyone is fair game in the internetworld). I have no idea what can be done, and in any case, the emotional energy and upset would be seriously demanding. Very upset for you.
Wow Carolyn, this really sucks. I noticed recently on Facebook a photo that I found was stolen from someone's blog, (Google image search is great!) and notified the owner of the photo. It is appalling how people think they can use whatever they want from other people just because it's on the internet. I recently went through all the photos on my own blog and watermarked them, thankfully I don't have that many posts yet. Good luck resolving this issue.
I just noticed this. I hope you resolved the issue and hope that the other blog has been removed! Too bad that people feel the need to do this. Why you would want to steal someone else's content is beyond me…keeping photos for personal inspiration is one thing, but why you would feel the need to try and pass it off as your own content is beyone my comprehension. I hope you have resolved this nonsense.
Carolyn, sorry you're going through this too. As a member of The Sewing Divas I've dealt with internet theft and reuse for years. It's constant as is the effort to use comments to drive traffic to commercial sites. After my experience with that very famous group I intentionally keep my readership as low as possible at The Stitchery. I don't aim for a big crowd, I have nothing to gain from having a big readership. The fight is exhausting but worth it. They, whoever they are, are just wanting to have content with little effort. You've gotten excellent advice in the comments. I wish you God Speed!
oh dear what a shame, can't really add to anything more than the others have said, perhaps you should name and shame them
Wow, I haven't heard of this happening before reading your post. What a bummer, and I am so sorry this has happened. It looks like you've gotten some really good advice about how to proceed.
I have been busy for the past week and missed this post carolyn. So sorry this happened-but also you have lots of support to remedy it. Hang tough!