Sunday, September 2, 2012

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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23 comments:

  1. oooohhh, how rude! I must learn how to picmonkey my photos too, shame some people have no morals.

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    1. It was all quite shocking how little respect for other people's work she had. As for PicMonkey, it is pretty easy and is a lot of fun to play with.

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  2. OH, Amy, so sorry that happened to you. Is there any way to water mark photos once they are posted? I guess she forgot to read the terms!
    Linda
    mysewwhatblog.blogspot.com

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    1. Linda,
      I will try to do it on my own blog and see if I can't get something to work and then update you! :) As for her reading the terms, she had no moral compass and thought that everything was free game.

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  3. How awful Amy! So sorry you had to go through such a mess! I recently read about this same thing on someone elses blog. I use PicMonkey too, but in the beginning of starting my blog I didn't marked photos so maybe I should scout the internet for those older posts and see if they are out there by some nasty blogger. Thanks for sharing so we can all benefit!

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    1. No problem! The few bad apples that are lazy, make it difficult for the rest of us.

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  4. I am so diappointed about this. Blogging is about passion and showing yourself to the world, it doesn't matter if it is about crafting, parenting, fashion, cars, politics or other,your blog is just like you and belongs to you with every single word and picture. Noone has the right to steal it! Copiing a post is just like stealing your driving licence...
    Thank you for sharing your experience!

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    1. I agree. The experience was eye opening. I couldn't believe how she kept justifying her stance on stealing. And she had over 400 followers!!

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  5. I'm so sorry what happened to you. It is such a shame that there are people like that out there who don't know the proper etiquette about blogging. Thank you for sharing your experience and I hope it never happens again.

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  6. That is crazy. How did you come across the other blog? There are so many blogs out there how do you find out if someone has stolen your stuff? Sorry you had to go through that!

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    1. I just happened to be looking on my dashboard when she was so graciously giving me credit for my own work and I tracked it back to her. It was completely by chance. The Craftiments link shows you how to find other thieves.

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  7. This is a great post! You totally come off as taking the high road and dealing with this in such a mature way.
    Sorry this happened to you but good job on getting her to take it down (even if she was too stubborn to admit it). I hope it never happens again, not cool!

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  8. wow.. i never thought that would happen. I'll definitely do some watermark this time round.

    Its good you take action upon it. Sorry though that it happened to you.. Thanks for sharing though.

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  9. That's disappointing to hear and I'm sorry you went through that. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to check out those links you provided and do a little reading and research too.

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  10. How terrible Amy, I'm glad you got it straightened out after all your hard work!

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  11. It's a good thing you have such a good friend that will go up to bat for you

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  12. Thanks for posting this great info. I am new to this blogging thing....lol but I am curious as to how you found out that she stole your posts. I probably would never know if mine was stolen....lol

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  13. Thanks for posting this. I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you, but it was nice of you to share with the rest of us. We are new to the blogging world and there is so much to learn all of the time.
    Have a great weekend,
    The Busy Bee's.
    http://thebusybhive.blogspot.com

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  14. Amy, I'm so sorry she did that to you! I'm writing a post about how my photo from my blog (with my watermark) was stolen and she put it on Etsy and was selling Mickey Washer Necklaces with my photo!! I'm trying to cool off a little before I hit publish! Thank you so much for linking up and by the way, you will be featured tomorrow. You were one of the top 5 most viewed links. Hang in there!

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  15. Hi Amy! I hope this never happens to me. Sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for sharing your experience. I am a new follower from the Show & Tell link up. Hope to see you at True Aim!

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  16. How horrible! I totally understand this copyright issue, etc. and how vialated it makes you feel. A few years ago I had a yahoo email group I was moderating stolen from me. GRRR!!

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  17. A) thanks for the shoutout! But B) that stinks! I've had a few times that people have taken my photos and rewritten my tutorial on their blog. Anything on the internet is NOT fair game. Just like things published in books are not available for the plagiarizing, the same is true if you publish using any other methods including on the internet.

    I don't know if it's more rampant now, or if I'm just paying better attention, or if I have more blog friends than before, but I feel like this is suddenly happening a lot. If their blog is hosted on Blogger, that's easy to report - their blog can actually be removed. Other blogs hosted elsewhere are tougher but not impossible.

    I also can't help but wonder if a few of us need to really band together to make the people who do this miserable when it happens. Ten people telling someone off over their plagiarism might be even more effective than one! But then again, that's just me wanting to stand up for myself and my friends when I say that. ;)

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