Edit: Carlo has taken down his site. I’ve put up a cached ver­sion. Thanks to every­one for the sup­port — goes to show that a voice can count for some­thing on the internet.

Carlo, who lives some­where in Metro Manila and some­times, not most of the time, in Pangasinan, Philippines, has stolen from me. There are oth­ers who steal my work, but this is usu­ally the pic­tures I take, which they use as back­grounds for their own sites (most com­monly the starry sky at Bancroft). I try not to take offence to this; the file sizes are com­monly small, so it doesn’t make much of a dent in my monthly band­width. There are also peo­ple like Sophia, who has made her pres­ence known to me, and uses my words every so often in her own writ­ing as a flat­ter­ing gesture.

Carlo is different.

He’s taken one of my entries and passed it off as his own.
Word for word.

This entry, which I strug­gled days to write, into which I poured my heart, was posted on his blog a day after mine. He did change the title, although I think this hardly ame­lio­rates his actions. He also used my Petal Game pic­ture (per­haps with­out notic­ing my water­mark in the lower right-hand cor­ner), as well as a line from my post inspired by Eternal Sunshine, for a dif­fer­ent entry.

It sad­dens me to think not of how eas­ily some­one can steal things on the inter­net, but how will­ing they are to do it. I can only won­der how many other peo­ple have stolen from me. Lorelle, who offers some great points on what to do if some­one steals your con­tent, sug­gests open com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in com­bi­na­tion with as a let­ter of cease and decist. And while I’m in com­plete agree­ment with this, I felt that for the first time I should write about it instead, to make it pub­lic, so that oth­ers may be aware of their own works. There are peo­ple who will quote with­out ref­er­enc­ing. There are peo­ple who will take with­out returning.

Because what’s the point of blog­ging, when one’s words aren’t one’s own?