It isn’t uncommon to wake up one day, take a look at incoming links and realize another blogger has pulled content from your site and posted it on theirs. It recently happened on Raising Arrows and I had to write a short and sweet note to the blogger asking that they remove the content (photos and all) from their site since it is copyrighted.
Most of the time, these other bloggers are new to blogging and do not realize that copying is the same as stealing. Many even give credit to the blog from which they took the content. However, this does not make it acceptable.
In case you are still unclear about why copying is considered wrong in the blog world, here are a few reasons no blogger should ever be a copy cat.
First of all, in the book world, this is called plagiarism. It is one thing to quote a small portion of text, but quite another to copy an entire book. Blog posts are the same.
Secondly, multiple posts of the same blog article are frowned upon by search engines. They are seen as duplicate content and create confusion in the internet world. Not something a blogger wants to promote.
Thirdly, if you really admire the other blogger and their content, you will want to promote them in the best way you can, which is to link to their site and their content so that they end up with full credit for the content.
It is important you find your own voice and speak that, not use another blogger’s content to fill your blog.
Have you ever had content lifted from your blog? What was your response? What was the other blogger’s response?
