Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Please Do Not Copy Without Permission! It's Rude

Wow, I never thought I would have to say this but here goes.

Please do not copy and re-post images or content from my blog without permission. I work hard on each post and do my best to give others credit when credit is due. I don't get paid to blog or sew, although I wish I did. Please be respectful and ask permission.

I say this because I was rather shocked this morning to discover that another blogger has copied and re-posted an entire post of mine without permission and without linking back to my blog. A complete post and no credit what so ever!! Not cool! I have emailed this person and asked them to kindly remove my post from their blog. The post was one with images of some of my vintage patterns, which unfortunately, I had not put my water mark on. I will be going back and doing that soon.

I'm happy to know that there are people who enjoy my blog and Facebook posts. Like many bloggers, I'm more than happy to share my work, (I would not have started a blog otherwise!) but to copy a person's work and re-post it as your own is very wrong. Not to mention rude and in many cases against the law. It's not difficult to find copyright laws. If you would like to share something that's fine but please ask first or at the very least link back to my blog and let me know you have done so. There is no excuse for stealing someone's work.

My apologies to everyone who has been good about following these rules. This just really ruffled my feathers today!


UPDATE - I'm sharing the link to the blog in question because I believe this blog is being used by someone other that it's creator. It showed up in my Google Reading List because at some point I signed up to follow it. In my reading list most of the posts are about 2 years old. The blog is called "the painted woman - olympic colors for summer 1932" http://thepaintedwoman.blogspot.com/  New posts started appearing about three days ago. However, none of those older posts show when you actually click in to view blog. I Googled the first paragraph of one of the non-racy posts and found it too had been copied in its entirety from another blog. I have notified that blogger.

I left a comment on the post with my material asking that it be removed. We'll see. There didn't seem to be any other way of contacting the person using the blog. :(

UPDATE 6/12/13 - Issue resolved!!

13 comments:

  1. Don't apologise for your creative ownership! You are completely within your rights to remind your readers of sharing issues related to blogging. We can all do with reminders, especially if some are new and aren't aware of the rules. But I have never seen anyone copy an entire blog post before!! That is so bold! What a cheek!

    Glad someone 'had your back' pointed it out to you.
    Do name and shame if they do it again!

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  2. Thank you Nessa! I actually discovered this on my own. The blog in question showed up in my Blogger Reading List. My first thought was, cool someone has the same pattern as me. Then when I clicked in to read the whole post, well, let's just say my thought was a little more colorful! lol! I'm actually wondering if this particular blog has been hacked or something because some of the other posts were in another language and a bit, um, racy.

    I will be keeping an eye on this blog. It's possible this is a new blogger who doesn't know/understand copyrights. However, if it happens again I will certainly call them out!
    -Emily

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  3. I can't believe someone would do that! Hopefully it all gets sorted soon and it was an honest mistake, but I'm not so sure that's the case... I remember learning about copyrighting and properly citing work when I was in middle school!

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  4. What nerve. Citing your sources is such an easy thing to do - I'd never, ever think of drawing on someone's elses work and not crediting them with it! Maybe that's the teacher coming out in me, but still...!!!!

    A couple of months ago, I found a few detail shots of one of my 18th century sewing projects on someone's Etsy page. This person was using them to sell his own similar garment on there, but the 2 pictures he had of his own work were nowhere near the quality of what I work hard to research and produce. I contacted him about it and told him I make no money off the sewing work I share, so it wasn't at all right or appropriate that HE should make money off of my work - and then pass it off unsuspectingly on someone else, who purchases his item expecting something else entirely. It took him over a week to remove the images (probably thought I wouldn't be checking back to see if he really did take them down), but he finally did. I couldn't believe someone would have the nerve to do something like that.

    I hope you get your issue sorted out soon.

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  5. Rebecca - That's horrible!! Glad you got it sorted out. Some people have no manners at all!
    -Emily

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  6. This happened to me a couple weeks ago. Luckily you can file a DMCA takedown notice with Blogger, and they will remove the content. You don't have to put up with it...

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  7. Thanks Lauren! How do I go about doing that? I'll wait a day or two to see if this person removes the content on their own. But seeing as they have copied from others as well...

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  8. I just ran across a similar happening last night! I was looking at tutorials for making a tufted headboard and two that I read were almost the same, word for word, but they had different pictures. So this later girl just used her tutorial and instead of crediting the original source, she just cut and pasted it to make it look like hers! I was shocked and so I wrote to the original poster to let her know. I don't understand how people think it's ok to do this kind of thing!

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  9. Hi Carly,
    I don't understand either. It's not difficult to cite sources. That's good you contacted the original poster to let her know. It's scary and disappointing to think about having your work stolen and never knowing it!
    -Emily

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  10. I have that blog in my Google Reader list. When I went to read an updated post there were all these posts in a foreign language with some post that looked to be rather racy.

    I just don't understand people anymore:/

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  11. Ugh. I don't know anything about this. How do you "watercolor" to mark your photos? Can you do a blog post on that? Thanks! Hope you get this resolved with ease!
    Laurie

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  12. Kim - Those foreign language posts were a warning flag to me. I'm pretty sure that blog has been "taken over" Which makes the copy/paste issue even more irritating.

    Laurie - There are couple different ways to watermark your photos. If you blog through Google you can actually do it in their photo album area. I also use PicMonkey. A tutorial is an excellent idea! I will try to put something together.
    -Emily

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  13. Hello, Thanks for the message, I did not think anything like that could happen, it may be some kind of virus? Among the other things I do not remember when I started to follow him, and seeing the previous posts, I understand even less why.
    however, I now give you a look at your blog, looks interesting, good luck with this cause.

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