Open Letter to the Loser Who Stole My Post
UPDATE!!! The post has been removed. HURRAH!!! The blog is public again, but Chef Renato has blocked me from commenting. Oh, well. I did try to thank him for deleting the post.
A million thanks to all of you for all your advice and words of encouragement. I am so fortunate to be a part of such a great group of bloggers! You're the BEST!
Dear Chef Renato (or whatever the hell your real name is),
Imagine the shock and anger I felt this morning when I stumbled upon your blog, Top Chef Season 4, while doing research for my weekly Top Chef post and saw that you had plagiarized my entire post about last week's episode! I'm not talking about using an excerpt or two, but the entire post, word for word, without attribution or any credit whatsoever. Even the little dots I use to format my paragraphs were there. (For future reference, I color them white so they don't show up in my posts.) I couldn't believe that someone would have the unmitigated gaul to do that! This is the INTERNET, loser! You put that post out there for the world to see, including me. Did you really think I woudn't find out?
At first, I thought that I just missed your link back to my site, so I carefully checked the post again and guess what? There was no link back to my site. But you already knew that, didn't you?
You stole from me!!!
...
I left a comment for you to immediately remove the post from your blog and you deleted the comment.
I emailed you at the address listed on your Blogger profile, but as you know, it was an invalid email address.
Coward!
When I checked back on your site a few hours later, I saw your half-assed attempt to add a few phrases here and there and mix it up a little so that it wouldn't be so obvious that you stole from me. However, your feeble attempt didn't work. Those words are my intellectual property and I want them off of your site now!
If you had contacted me ahead of time and asked me nicely, I might have consented to let you use some of my words in your post, with a link back to my site. But now, all bets are off. I have bookmarked your blog and intend to cross check every post on it to make sure you haven't done this to anyone else.
I work very, very hard to provide informative and entertaining content on my blog. I value my readers very much and cannot fathom why someone would come here and steal from me.
If you're reading this right now, then take a look at my profile. I am an attorney and, even though this is not my area of expertise, I have many legal resources at my disposal. I will figure out a way to stop you from doing this again to me or anybody else.
Sincerely,
Susan @ Sticky,Gooey,Creamy,Chewy
Note to my regular readers: I apologize for my outburst. I am just soooo mad right now! If you have ever been victimized in this way, or are as outraged about this sort of thing as I am, then please help me take action. Be vigilant when surfing the net and report any violations you find.
..
Also, If anyone has any advice on what action I should take, please let me know.
... ..Also, If anyone has any advice on what action I should take, please let me know.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming!
Comments
http://www.google.com/blogger_dmca.html
git that bastard!
I believe in karma, something's gonna bite this guy in the ass.
Cowards like this need to get a pinky finger cut off each time they pull a stunt like this.
I hate when people steal my stuff!!
Hang in there, Susan ;)
And what a coincidence you wrote about Mineolas. I just saw some at the store yesterday and was wondering what they were. Thanks for the explanation!
best, m
It's just disgusting! Someone used one of my photos and didn't ask this week, least they put a link to my blog though. still~!
There are a few things here you can take advantage of:
(1) they run ads on their site. Contact the advertisers to complain of the copyright infringement. They might drop the blog
(2) its hosted on blogspot. Complain to them/Google about copyright infringement. If you want to get more formal, send a DMCA takedown notice. That will nuke it.
(3) send the blog owner an email before you do these things with a short explanation that you intend to do this, so please save us both the trouble and just remove it entirely. Give deadlines...like you have until 4/05/2008 12:00 pm est to do x, y, and z or I will do a, b, and c.
(4) document everything you do and that they say/do
i hop this helps! you'll get through this :-)
By the way, I did try to email this jerk, but it got bounced. I also left 2 comments for him on the illegal post and both were deleted. I gave him 24 hours to remove the post, which has not been done. My next step is to contact his advertisers and then I will probably have to file a DMCA complaint.
I'd much rather be cooking or blogging! :(
There's a lady doing something similar here in Brazil, she even steals our photos!
You are right to tell the world about that jerk, people need to know about that kind of people!
take care and do not apologize for sticking up for yourself!
xoxo
Gabi
One of the first things I would encourage you to do is remove the link to their site. Don't draw any more attention to them or help them with their search engine ranking. You are not hurting them by posting that link, only helping them.
Second, as mentioned in the comments above, file a DMCA notice with Blogger. If you want, I can help you with that. I have stock letters on my site and I know a means to file the notice via email, namey by scanning your signature, saving the file as a PDF and emailing it to their DMCA agent at amac at google dot com.
Finally, consider filing a spam report with Google. The site is almost certainly a spam blog, automatically generated based on keywords. I doubt any of the content is original.
Let me know if I can help in any way, just drop me a line if there is anything I can do. I am happy to help!
BenOver
BenOver- Aah! Chef Renato, I presume. An anonymous coment is just what I would expect from you.
I have not threatened anyone nor have I said anything that is untrue. You and I both know that.
Remove my content from your site and I won't bother you again.
That's the danger of the internet. Most of us don't copyright, therefore plagarism runs rampant. People even plagarize personal ads!
I was plagarized myself recently. I got into fanfiction writing a bit last summer just to try something new. (Dorky, I know.) Recently an astute reader of one of my stories discovered it had been translated into Italian and posted onto an Italian fanfiction site as if she had written it herself. I asked her to stop and she was banned from the fanfic site.
I hope this guy gets banned from Blogger!
Again, thank you all so much for your support! I can't tell you how much it means to me.
I am really sorry and feel for you.
I'm so sorry this happened to you! I would really encourage you to send that letter to Blogger no matter that he made his blog invitation only. What he did is NOT FAIR and something really needs to be done. Anyway that is my opinion...I'm not an attorney but I do know that anything that you permit to happen will continue and multiply.
Carrie
A million thanks to you all for all your advice and words of encouragement. I am so fortunate to be a part of such a great group of bloggers! :)