Arti is going through the most depressing blogging experience at the moment. No, it’s not the Blog Stats, or the comments, or the lack of them. I admit they can affect one’s mood.
The most discouraging scenario for a blog writer is to see not one, or two, but 10 of her posts being copied and reprinted in their entirety on another website. Of course when they do that, there won’t be any link back to your own blog, neither would your name appear as the writer.
I was aware of this as a “pingback” on my posts, waiting for me to approve. A click on the trackback link I found they were no “pingbacks”. My whole home page with 10 posts all appeared on the plaigerizer’s site. What’s funny is even my last post, stating I was Arti at Ripple Effects, was intact in the content.
This just confirms it’s a myth to think it’s a compliment to your writing when you see your work copied. Do you think Splog operators would care to read every post and think it’s good before stealing? The whole process is automated. It just happens that maybe my posts just carry the tags they’re looking for. By the way, all my 10 posts are categorized under “Music” on that Splog. You can tell how much they care about the content of even their own site!
These are Splogs, Spamblogs. They exist to collect advertising revenues using other people’s materials just to attract traffic. How can one write so many posts all on a single day if not by the simple act of copying and pasting? It has been noted that on the average, a blogger takes from 1 to 8 hours to writer a post. Well, for slow bloggers like Arti of Ripple Effects, it takes days of mulling, reading, viewing, researching, before writing. The last step in the whole process usually logs in the higher end of that 1-to-8-hour range.
Arti feels robbed, violated, and knocked out. What’s the point of continuing wtih this if whatever I write is taken away and published as somebody else’s work?
While still sustaining a concussion, Arti went through the process of writing a complaint letter, found in the very informative website Plaigarism Today, and trying to find the hosting company of the site through http://whois.net. But of course, it’s blocked by the domain owner so I had nowhere to send my complaint letter. It did though lead me to the site Privacy Protect, where I could at least launch a report of abuse and hopefully locate the domain owner. As of now, I’m still waiting for a reply.
Finally, an email to WordPress Support, a most helpful source, led me to the possible hosting company, to whom I directly sent my letter of complaint. Within the hour, I received their reply, stating that they had ‘reminded’ the owner to remove the pirated content. I assume they are in good faith, since the language is not in English, except the few lines addressed to me. I appreciate their immediate response.
Whew! Even writing this sequence of events is exhausting! But now that I’m done, I feel relieved. Another reason why we blog. Ok, maybe it’s still worth it, to continue writing, blogging, and all that.
So yes, if you’re reading this on a website other than Ripple Effects, you know you are reading a post that has been copied without permission. Go to https://rippleeffects.wordpress.com to read this and other interesting articles in their original.
Ripple Effects 