fracas

The other night I posted Bob.. just hand over the DS Lite. Within a short time, in the control panel, I noticed a link to a site that had stolen the post in its entirety.. and reposted it. Yeah, yeah… so it contains the teeny tiny “original post by fracas” at the bottom, but the fact is.. it’s not a quote of some witty portion of my post, it’s the whole damn post, complete with my title as their title, etc.

If I was a person who is scared of rats or mice, I’d have screamed and jumped up on the computer desk for having just had one run across my screen. Not me though. My first reaction was to google knots that can be imposed upon private parts. Not yielding much, I decided to leave a comment at the Vermin’s content thieve’s site. Of course though… the comments there are “held in moderation” seemingly ignored because it has been more than 24 hours and the post is still there.

The bitchy fracas part of me (what, you thought I was nice and/or funny all the time?) made sure to take screen shots of my politely submitted request so that if the Vermin owner of the site doesn’t respond, I can still show that I made the request. Thank goodness for the feature that shows your comment submitted to their blog, only with the “your comment is being held in moderation” disclaimer in italics.

I have today, subitted again, a not so nice comment, making it clear that at this point, they are being treated as a content thief.

I try to quote when I use someone else’s article or comments from an article. I provide a link to their article to let people know I am quoting them only, not taking their work because I am too lazy to write my own. If it is a poem or song lyrics, I will make sure the author is credited in a prominent way. If it is an image, I try make sure it’s one in the public domain. If I have an original source, I will quote it, as with the kitten holding a gun picture. Another example is my lips post. I found some really awesome fashion shots of lips. They were copyrighted. I didn’t use them. I wanted to post them with a link but in two or three cases, the site of the photographer had instructions barring even that. I was sad, but I didn’t use them. I bookmarked the pages and will share them with others by way of providing link that allow others to see the photos at the artist’s site.  I have however, seen the same photos used at other blogs without credit to the photographer even though I didn’t.

So when I come across Vermin ignorant people who run a commercial site/blog and are too lazy to create their own posts, it makes me really want to do bad things to that person. Good thing I can control myself. Too bad others can’t. Hell.. I’m pretty easy-going. Every day, there are other commercial and annoying blogs that link to the posts us everyday bloggers spend time on. That’s the key. They link only… don’t steal the content and re-post it. I’ll tolerate that. They list your title and link to your site. I can live with that. In fact, this has happened to me once before, and my request was honored.. the post removed. What eGamingLot (a site run by Vermin, don’t do any business with them, don’t be associated with them) has done is just rude, unforgiveable and theft.

So until my post is removed, I would like for as many people as this inspires, to create posts on their blogs with titles, links or other tags to indicate that eGamingLot is a site run by Vermin thieves, don’t do any business with them, don’t be associated with them. Feel free to link back to this post in order to explain the situation without having to type some long winded story (like me).

And for anyone who hasn’t had this happen yet, just know that it will. Lorelle on WordPress has some information on this topic, and she writes,

“First, you noticed that I didn’t say “if” someone steals your content. That was on purpose. With the glut of information on the Internet, it’s now a matter of “when” not “if”.The first step in learning about what you can do when someone steals your content is to know that it will happen, so the more prepared and informed you are, the better your chances of prevention and having a plan in place when they steal.”

And THAT, you Vermin owner of a commercial site who steals from others and posts it over at eGamingLot, is how you’re supposed to use someone else’s content.

So today, I have decided to award my first asshat award. Well… it’s not my award, it’s actually Mark’s, but Mark said I could use it… so THAT too, is how to use something of someone else’s that you know isn’t in the public domain…

with permission.