A Word about Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, and the Brazen Thief

Thanks to my friend, Jamilla, it was brought to my attention that a scraper blog has been brazen enough to steal my content and pictures repeatedly. In fact, this bottom-feeding thief has stolen about 39 complete posts from me, which include my watermarked photographs (including some of my cats), and my written content verbatim. I had to spend the entire day yesterday filing a complaint for each stolen post along with my original post, and I am still only 1/4 of the way through the lengthy process.

That I am in academia makes this a far more egregious offense, and one that sadly can result in the offending students being kicked out of college, or that can go on their permanent record and prevent them from ever having the possibility getting into graduate school. There are real world consequences for this type of theft that should really make a would-be criminal think twice before transgressing. Sadly, internet thievery is so prevalent, and the offenders seem to feel impervious (because of this seemingly anonymous medium) to the real world consequences for their illegal acts of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

My blog has always been my reprieve from academia, and yet I now find myself facing some of the same sorts of issues that I have to face at work. I once had a student who was judgement-impaired enough to plagiarize me in a term paper for me-- so one can never entirely know how it is that people think that they can get away with theft without repercussions. Trust me when I say I take no pleasure in reprimanding students who cheat, but there is just no wiggle room for this type of behavior in college, and there shouldn't be in the world of blogging either.

This plagiarist either captured my posts through my email subscription, or more likely from my RSS feed- therefore a friend told me to shorten those feeds so that this would no longer happen. I apologize to the many of you who read my posts by either of these two methods- now you will actually have to click to finish reading. I am truly sorry that one bad rotten apple will add an additional click to your day.

My intention is to have the offending blog shut down because while my posts seem to appear in the greatest abundance, there are other blogs that have had their work stolen as well.

I am tempted to leave the blog URL here for you to see in astonishment, but my attorney husband thought that I should hold off for now since I just filed a complaint yesterday (and still need to submit the remaining 29 stolen posts).

I will say, that this thief is rather indiscriminate in her choices of posts since she included my Beauty Spotlight Team Dessert Island Post as her own, and Lola's Secret Creamy Lipstick-- both of which were clearly about, or for me specifically. She also forgot to remove some of the internal links that lead right back to my blog- tisk tisk! Also the repeated use of pictures of my cats in my house seems an odd choice for someone out to steal the content of others for some sort of personal gain. Any way that you look at it the offense was despicable, and you just have to hope that the bad karma will be justly rewarded!

Lola (shown above) does not approve of her name being misused!

Thank you to Jamilla for making the discovery that I was being ripped off! Thank you to my Beauty Spotlight Team, Beauty Blog Coalition, and Beauty Blogazons friends- all of whom had wonderful advice on how to deal with this wretched situation. A special thank you to my very good friend Rachel (The Beauty Professor) who called me on the phone the moment that this came to light to talk me down since I was so furious! xoxox

What are your thoughts?