Gettin’ ripped off on the net

Hi Ariane, I am truly sorry for deliberately copying the two paragraphs from your web site. We were simply excited about sharing your blog with others and at the same time, "lazy" to write up our own summary - no excuse there.

If you had tried to contact us before, we may have missed it or it got caught in our spam filters (we try to answer everybody's email). We are in the process of updating our site, our organization, and as you have noticed our Terms of Service hasn't been updated in a very long time....

Nonetheless, this is not right. We will immediately take your content down and simply provide a link back to your web site (we are currently writing up our own summary). If you have an official media release that you would like us to distribute, feel free to send that to us.

You have given us a lot to think about and we greatly appreciate your feedback.

Once again, my humblest apologies....

Kind regards,

Rex

Hi Rex--

(Cross-posted to

Not a problem Ariane (I already got an earful from my partner this morning).

Keep up the great work!

Hi Ariane,

Thanks for dropping by our site and leaving a comment! Wow, we must have crossed paths recently - because two weeks ago, I was at the West End Farmer's market coveting the wool that the sheep farmer has! It was gorgeous (and apparently they take an even bigger selection to Trout Lake).

That's terrible about your content being lifted - even if it has gotten sorted out now. I wrote for a city blog a few years back, and when I resigned they kept my articles but took down my author credit (though I never signed a contract or gave away any rights) -- it is very unsettling to have your writing out there without having your identity attached to it.

Anyways, it seems like we are neighbours so who knows, perhaps we will run into each other face to face one of these days!

Hey Leanne--yeah, I found it through Mandy who's a friend of a friend I've met a bunch of times, it's such a fun project that you gals are working on!

That's so funny that you were at the market too that day--I hadn't bought wool in seriously at least a year, but it finally got me!

Yeah, the blog plagiarizing is so not cool, but to their credit they have been really responsive about it, so that's something!

I have no idea what you look like, but if you spot me out and about, be sure to say hello! :-)

Hey Ariane,

Though you didn't ask for my two cents, here it is. While content theft is very prevalent on the web these days, and Creative Commons licenses are abused constantly, I don't find too much fault with the above (especially since he was good enough to drop by your blog and accept responsibility).

The biggest offenders in content theft are those that don't provide attribution to the source. In the above example, they use your own words to promote your content and link to you, and the text in question refers to you as its creator. In my opinion, the minimum requirements had been met (disclaimer here about how I read that you don't use a CC license, so none of what I just said matters). The unfortunate thing is that it appears to be attributed to that site's editor, but you and I both know that "byline" is automatically generated by the CMS, so we might be prepared to let it slide.

Controversy aside, I want to give you a digital "high five" for getting listed on what seems like a reputable source for environmental info in BC. I even recognize one of my former colleagues among the contributors.

Oh wait, you did ask. Funny that that would be the one line I didn't examine under a microscope. Duh.

Heh. :-)

Yeah, I wasn't entirely sure if it was a legit site to begin with--it's so hard to tell sometimes, but obviously it is! To be fair I'm totally impressed with the response, and with the speed in which they modified the content on their site. That said, a byline is no excuse to cut and paste someone else's content (also, it can be themed out if it's not being used)! It takes SO little effort to put a couple quotation marks around it and stick a little "by so and so" or just "from the site" even would do it.

Maybe it's all the years in academia, but this is a total no-no in my books! And I think we have to make sure that others know this--all in all, I think it's worked out for the better, since they're going to clean up all the other content on the site that was posted in the same way (and there was lots more, I poked around a bit before I posted this entry). It is clear to me that this was a (rather large) oversight, and not malicious by any means.

Anyway, two cents appreciated. ;-)

Oh I'm glad to see stuff work out like this. May have been a no-no yes, but a lot less reputable people would have just blown you off and left it as is!

I wish I could find a local source for wool - I never went to the west end market when I lived in Vancouver. The closest sources I have now are Alberta, and on Vancouver Island. Booooo....