Most recently, a person called Cleo, who also goes by the misnomer “sexy1980”, stole both words and pictures from a heartfelt entry I wrote after a particularly hard day. Word-for-word. You see that car on her site? That’s my car.
If you dare to look at this abortion of a web page, do so at your own risk. I warn you, the animations and colours are not for the feint of heart.
I wasn’t happy when someone started copying entire entries of mine, word-for-word, or when another person stole my design of Version 10 (his attempted redesign in an effort to cover up his actions isn’t that far off either). Sure, I also get people hotlinking my images too, but I take simple pleasure in replacing the images with pictures of a lemon party, because I get to laugh at things like this.
But when someone steals both my words and hotlinks my pictures I get really pissed off.
!!! omg. How can someone steal your posts like that? Isn’t there an unsaid blogger rule, thou shall not steal blog posts from other bloggers! Those are your thoughts, not hers. How dare she!
What are you going do it about it?
So I guess we can assume that the photo of “Miss Cleo” is probably stolen from someone’s website as well. She’s probably really a troll of the feminine persuasion in real life … or the eponymous obese man sitting naked and drooling at this computer monitor.
@J. — There are no specific “blogging rules” (aside from an unwritten code), but thankfully there are copyright laws. I contacted multiply.com to report member abuse, and I’m trying to contact other writers who had their content stolen from her. Sometimes, a bad reputation is enough.
@Michael — Since the photo is of a decent quality, I think it’s safe to assume the profile picture is stolen too. Obese man is probably not far off.
Ok so maybe I should be shot but I signed up just so I could leave the troll a message calling “him” or “her” or “It” a thief. Doesn’t accomplish anything I know but what can I say? Reminds me of the days in high school when people would do my friends dirty. Its just not right!
I say bring back the lemon party. It could snuff out other hotlinkers as well.
This troll should burned at the stake as an example to other trolls ! ( we could take pics — let them steal them if they like? Hahahahah )
:D
@Lucy — Actually, the last time I had an whole entry stolen, many of my readers left comments on the thief’s page, and that was enough to stop him. So thank you. Maybe it’ll get through to her.
Would love to have read what you wrote. :)
@Karsh — The only problem with the lemon party method is that I just temporarily replace my original image with the offensive one, which means people who see that picture legitimately from my site will be in for a bad surprise. Works great when it’s on the hotlinkers front page though.
@beautifulisness — If the pictures would be used as a warning, I would have no problem letting people post them. :)
Omg that’s so maddening.…
She even stole your title!!!
“Hello from Canada! Today I decided to drive to nowhere.”
Unbelievable…
I don’t understand the mentality of content scrapers. What piece of common sense are they missing? Even when people scrape in the name of “promoting me” they don’t ask they just take and may or may not link to me. I don’t get it. But it falls under the inactionable. My energies are worth more than getting thru to people who don’t get the harm.
I agree with beautifulisness ( nice name dude ) This is totally unacceptable behaviour at the dawning of : THE NEW WORLD ORDER !!
@Julie — Yes, quite authentic that she greets people from Canada when she lives in the UK, and decided that day to take a drive to nowhere.
Very real, indeed.
@Pearl — I’ve had people scrape “with credit” as well, and I’ve always had to tell them to stop. They aren’t doing me any favours when the rest of the content is terrible, and there are ads everywhere.
@plat0 — I think you’re reading his comment the wrong way. He’s agreeing with me that this is wrong.
Haha…I love the entry from that guy/girl that had their background changed to lemonparty. *glares*? How about *gofuckyourself*.
The next one was stolen from someone else as well: http://www.metamend.com/blog/2008/06/20/oh-canada/
If I kept checking I bet I’d find that there’s absolutely no original content there.
I think you should leave a message on her wall, explaining that your blog has copyright material and that she should remove the material she lifted immediately. Refer her to the Copyright Act ( R.S., 1985, c. C-42 ). Maybe that will get her to stop.
@trolley — Sometimes it’s almost worth other people hotlinking, just so I can pull a lemon party on them.
And yeah, it turns out almost all the entries in her journal were taken from other sources, word-for-word.
@Sheila — I did contact her host, and hopefully they’ll do something about it. I love having lawyer friends. :)
This is most likely not a she at all and that text is probably cribbed as well. It comes up as “blocked site” at my workplace, who knows what keys to porn sites lurk.
It could just be a RSS2Web aggregator spam site. Where the site has no content of its own, but simply grabs fed content from other blog sites. It’s happened to me a few times.
The funniest graphic hotlinking story I’ve heard, sadly came from one of our presidential candidate:
http://correntewire.com/saint_john_mccain_myspace_site_hacked_by_designer_whose_work_and_bandwidth_he_stole
Common sense, just isn’t too common sometimes.
All of the blog entries have been made private now.
@Xibee — It seems like an attempt at a legitimate journal, but not legitimate enough (with inconsistencies in things like writing and photography style) to not be caught stealing.
@Jin — The way the titles were modified and images re-used shows that a human spent time trying to fit the content into her site. Quite unfortunate. There have been RSS scrapers that have taken content from me, they’re very obviously spam sites with the number of ads and no personality.
I love the way that designer got back at McCain. People should really know better.
@trolley — I noticed that too; kind of confirms her guilt now, doesn’t it? Good thing Google Cache still has a copy (and I have the screenshot).
heh, good link Jin.
One of her jackass friends on there had the nerve to call me a “sicko” on my profile on that shitty site for calling her out. Hah. I see he called you a “troll” too. Pathetic.
Your PC ID is being issued to all service providers by Multiply as a result of your obscene and slanderous remarks.
This should result in you being banned from all social sites and ( hopefully ) the internet in general.
My advice to you my friend is to seek medical help — you obviously need it very badly.
Good luck.
–plat0
@plat0 — Hahahhhahahhhahaha.
Bahahahahaha…not your PC ID! That’s super duper secret isn’t it? I thought I was anonymous on the internet!
Also, apprently plat0 still doesn’t understand the meaning of the term “slander”. Let’s track him down by his PC ID and mail him a dictionary.
LOL.
But is that even possible? Banning from the internet?
It most certainly isn’t, but apparently Mr. New World Order doesn’t understand that.
I think this will be a useful htaccess for you
Options +FollowSymlinks
# Protect Hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domainname\.com/ [nc]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://domainname.com/img/hotlink_f_o.png [nc]