Outright Theft of Gardenblogger!

Here's an interesting addendum to our discussion of blogger ethics, something I received through my Google News Alert about GardenRant.  Readers will recognize it as the very clever April Fool's post by our friend Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips 'n Ideas.  Notice anywhere that it gives him credit?  And Stuart assures me he has no connection with this site and certainly didn't give any permission.

Comments

[Doug Green]

Stuart had better check the other articles on this site and file a dmca complaint with the isp hosting the site to have them all taken down. There's quite a few more from his site there according to copyscape.com

[Annie in Austin]

Susan, this has been going on for quite a while - you obviously missed the discussion when my entire blog was stolen in February -

http://annieinaustin.blogspot.com/2007/03/someone-is-stealing-my-content-and.html

I discovered posts swiped from my Transplantable Rose but there were also stories by Carol of May Dreams Gardens, La Gringo's Blogocita, Trey's Golden Gecko and OldRoses. Carol and La Gringa also wrote about this topic. At that time most of the stolen blogs were coming from Blogspot feeds, but the techniques have no doubt been refined since then.

Some of the procedures to complain about the reblogger sites involve the trouble and expense of sending snail-mailed certified letters. This also means that the blogger who has been ripped off gets identified, while the thief is still veiled.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

[Christopher C in Hawaii]

If you go to the main page of the thieving blog, Gardening Tips 'n Ideas is listed and linked in the right side bar under Contributors. Stuart may not be aware of this if he didn't give permission or was not asked.

Stealing content is not new and it happened to Annie at The Transplantable Rose.

Interesting how worked up we can get over possible theft of content when some schmo is doing it for ad click revenue, but let a major corporation write up some legal sounding Terms of Service and it is as American as apple pie. Broken record here I know.

And inquiring minds want to know about possible missing comments from G+G.

[eliz]

I saw all my posts from Gardening While Intoxicated on another site, as well as quite a bit more. It seems to be quite common. I think they do it for the ad revenue.

Feeds would seem to make this pretty easy.

The ISP for the one that was taking my posts was unreachable.

[RICHARD THOMPSON]

This was very funny. It goes along nicely with typical America behavior...I got mine so see you later...pleae ladies do not sell out since I love reading your blog regularly. Given the state of the world it is necessary to have a quiet dose of what really matters...garden on people.

[Kathy]

There's this one, too: http://hotmendoan.blogsome.com/ I'm switching WordPress to a partial feed only, Blogburst be damned. Garden Voices asked my permission; none of the other feed grabbers have done so.

[layanee]

Well, you are all worth 1.3 million in my book and since I am new to blogging I am outraged on all of your behalf!!! This is tooo low and 'karma' will take care of these copycats if no one else will!

[Trey]

Annie at The Transplantable Rose first informed me of stolen material showing up on various sites. Carol at May Dreams Gardens told me about Google alerts which will notify you when this stuff happens. I am starting to see more and more of this. Like Annie says, it’s so difficult to go after these people it rarely gets done. Certified letter? I am afraid this kind of stuff is going to get worse before it gets better.

[Kathy]

After posting the comment about the blogsome blog stealing my content, I emailed blogsome showing them links to the blogs posts and the corresponding post of mine. They sent me an email back the same day saying they had taken down the offending blog. It won't always take a registered letter.

Feeds do make it easier to steal content. WordPress lets you set your feed to either excerpt or full. I have no problem with an excerpt feed being republished, as the reader must follow a link to my site to read the rest.

[Kylee]

I don't know why this shocks me, but it does. What a shame that people do this!