My Blog Post was Hijacked!!

   

   

If you have a blog,  you spend time writing, taking the perfect picture and proofreading to get the exact words and image you want to express on you blog.  Recently, a post of mine was re posted verbatim from my blog.  In no way did I give the person permission, she did post where she stole the information from.  (As if she was doing me a favor)  She (other blogger)  also stole all my pictures from the post.  To say the least, I was a little upset.  I don't mind sharing my projects and ideas, but they are my projects and ideas,  asking first would have been the right thing to do.  So, I thought I would share a little of what I learned from my experience.

First, when you post a picture on your blog put a water mark or do some editing.  I prefer PicMonkey.  It is a great free site to add your blog name onto your pic.  They have a bunch of fonts and other great photo editing on their site.  Putting your name on the picture makes it easier to identify that it was your picture that was stolen.  Yes, it takes a bit longer to post, but saves in the end. 

Ask the other blogger to politely remove this post.  (Of course this did not work for me)  I gave the person the benefit of doubt that she didn't know the unspoken rules of blogging.   She gave me no response for three days.  So then I enlisted a friend of mine to help me contact the person.  If you have any doings with Tumblr, the writer is allowed not to post any of the questions or comments on their blog. Which is a little frustrating!!!!

My friend called her out and she actually replied and posted it on her site.  She said "that she gave me credit and that there should be no problem and that anything on the web was free game."  This is so not true!  The person who wrote the post and took the pictures, owns the rights to those.

 I started doing a little investigating to see what legal rights I had against her.  I found just the place:  Blogging Basics 101.  You can file a DMCA report with the copyright office in the U.S. ( If you are personally having this problem click Blogging Basics.)   After several times asking the other blogger to please remove my post,  I said I would have to report her.   (Sometimes, you have to flex your muscles.)  After an hour of back and forth with the other blogger, she decided that she was in the wrong (but wouldn't actually admit it) and removed my post and pictures from her web page.  After the first rude comment from her, I wish now that I would have just reported her because her whole site was full of copy and paste posts.

There is a wealth of information on the Internet, but someone spent their time and effort to make their "perfect" post and no one has the right to steal it from you without permission!!    There is also a great post at Happy Hour Projects on the Do's and Don'ts of   Pinterest Pinning (which was super informative) and Craftiments recently posted some great tips on how to protect your blog a little more! 

I just hope that none of this happens to you!  And if it does, maybe you will be a bit more prepared.

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