Update (June 16, 2011): The offending post has now been removed by Yahoo!.
Yesterday, an anonymous reader commented on my marble cake recipe saying that she saw it on another website, copied word by word (link at the bottom).
Admittedly, I do come across replications of my posts now and then, images cropped to remove the watermark, etc. I leave comments, email them, and hope they remove it. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I am sure bloggers face this issue all the time.
So I headed over to the site and saw that not only has my post been copied over word by word, but there were close to 70 comments and over 300 FB likes on the post (strangely, I don't see this information now)! Most of the comments were about how good the swirls of the cake looked and what amazing memories the cake brought back, etc. I scanned the page to see if the source has been credited. Even if it was linked back to me, I want the post removed. Porting an entire post over is just not done, even if there's a link back.
Needless to say I was very upset and frustrated and put up a status on Facebook where a lot of you promised to support me if push came to shove.
On going through the earlier comments, I also realised that not only has this "Linda" person copied my entire marble cake recipe to her blog, she has also copied every single comment I got on the post, with the names of the commenters changed! Who does that? I started having serious doubts if this person was even real and whether this was done in some automated way. I checked her other posts and realised she only has about 2-3 posts apart from this. So I am not very sure if she is popular as I initially thought she was.
The first thing I did was to leave her a comment asking her to remove the copied content. Then I contacted Yahoo! following the steps on their Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy page. I got a reply today morning asking for a proper notice and the email has a lot of legal jargon that I am trying to figure out. I wish they had a document for such instances that folks like me can digitally sign so that even laymen can complain and prevent their content from being misused.
Next Steps:
- I am going to write back to Yahoo! and try to include as much information as I can to get this content removed.
- I am not sure if adding more comments will get this Linda person to remove my recipe. I doubt it but maybe that will work.
Either case, this has been stressful business so I am considering adding a watermark bang in the middle of my images going forward and maybe disabling right click on this blog. I don't think the latter is a super useful thing though, because anyone who has subscribed to the feeds will get all the info they need and can copy all they want.
Again, huge thanks to everyone who rallied against this for me. I am sorry if I wasted your time in any way, and I really really appreciate this. The food blogger community and my readers - you rock!
Copied post
My original post
Update: Apparently, my Eggless Chocolate Chunk Recipe has also been copied and posted by another Shine blogger (link). Thank you for letting me know, Swapna chechy.
Yesterday, an anonymous reader commented on my marble cake recipe saying that she saw it on another website, copied word by word (link at the bottom).
Admittedly, I do come across replications of my posts now and then, images cropped to remove the watermark, etc. I leave comments, email them, and hope they remove it. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I am sure bloggers face this issue all the time.
So I headed over to the site and saw that not only has my post been copied over word by word, but there were close to 70 comments and over 300 FB likes on the post (strangely, I don't see this information now)! Most of the comments were about how good the swirls of the cake looked and what amazing memories the cake brought back, etc. I scanned the page to see if the source has been credited. Even if it was linked back to me, I want the post removed. Porting an entire post over is just not done, even if there's a link back.
Needless to say I was very upset and frustrated and put up a status on Facebook where a lot of you promised to support me if push came to shove.
On going through the earlier comments, I also realised that not only has this "Linda" person copied my entire marble cake recipe to her blog, she has also copied every single comment I got on the post, with the names of the commenters changed! Who does that? I started having serious doubts if this person was even real and whether this was done in some automated way. I checked her other posts and realised she only has about 2-3 posts apart from this. So I am not very sure if she is popular as I initially thought she was.
The first thing I did was to leave her a comment asking her to remove the copied content. Then I contacted Yahoo! following the steps on their Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy page. I got a reply today morning asking for a proper notice and the email has a lot of legal jargon that I am trying to figure out. I wish they had a document for such instances that folks like me can digitally sign so that even laymen can complain and prevent their content from being misused.
Next Steps:
- I am going to write back to Yahoo! and try to include as much information as I can to get this content removed.
- I am not sure if adding more comments will get this Linda person to remove my recipe. I doubt it but maybe that will work.
Either case, this has been stressful business so I am considering adding a watermark bang in the middle of my images going forward and maybe disabling right click on this blog. I don't think the latter is a super useful thing though, because anyone who has subscribed to the feeds will get all the info they need and can copy all they want.
Again, huge thanks to everyone who rallied against this for me. I am sorry if I wasted your time in any way, and I really really appreciate this. The food blogger community and my readers - you rock!
Copied post
My original post
Update: Apparently, my Eggless Chocolate Chunk Recipe has also been copied and posted by another Shine blogger (link). Thank you for letting me know, Swapna chechy.
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