A blog called My Stay In LA has repeatedly stolen from me. How? By ripping off my blog posts and using them on their own site, as if I were one of their writers. How can I stop them? Any ideas?
If you must, check it out at http://mystayinla.com/?cat=14.
And wouldn't it be funny if they stole this posting, too? They seem to like my weekend getaways, so that's how I'll tag this post. Stay tuned.
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7 comments:
I note that the bottom of THEIR site is says, "Copyright 2009. All rights reserved." Except, apparently, yours! Oh, and by the way, your stealing post is now up on their site, at the top! They must have you on an automated feed. Hilarious.
Lora, you might find some helpful tips at this entry by a veteran blogger:
http://citymama.typepad.com/citymama/2009/06/scraping-content-and-passing-it-off-as-community-building-how-to-do-social-media-wrong.html
Lora - "Stole" is the right word. Except in cases like your former employer 'Sunset,' which requires writers to relinquish the rights to their work, inellectual property belongs to the creator. Period. That's the law.
What adds insult to illegality is that My Stay in LA has put a copyright notice on the bottom its blog, essentially staking a claim to your work (and probably that of other bloggers too).
Here's what I would do: I would contact WordPress and try to find the blogging crook that way. If WordPress couldn't help, I'd take some of the steps recommended by http://www.bloggersbase.com/articles/technology/internet/find-contact-email-of-any-blogsite-owner/ or similar.
I would start a thread on the SATW forum and any other writers' group that you belong to. When some of my work was stolen (by none other, it turned out, than Robert Young Pelton, no less), SATW colleagues were immensely helpful in tracking out the pirate.
Good luck. Claire @ http://travel-babel.blogspot.com
Well it looks like they steal your stuff automatically because this post is on there. The only thing the whois database had listed was that the site was registered to James Hirsen through godaddy.com.
Re "...your stealing post is now up on their site, at the top!... Hilarious." As a writer and blogger who has been plagiarized, I am laughing through my tears (or crying through my laughter).
Lora: I ran a whois search on the domain "mystayinla.com" and came up with this info on the person who owns the site:
Hirsen, James hirsen@earthlink.net
3731 Fifth Ave.
Corona Del Mar, California 92625
United States
(714) 283-8880
I'll send you an email about how I did that and how you might proceed.
-Fred
SO FRUSTRATING! I had this experience recently with a photo being lifted by SFWeekly.com. I got them to delete the pix, here is my post on that:
http://worththewhisk.com/2009/08/17/bloggers-protect-your-content/
So, keep up the good work and do what you can!
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