I regularly find other people republishing my content without permission (and usually without acknowledgment of the source).
Here’s some of the real excuses I’ve had recently when I’ve confronted bloggers who do it:
- “I was just testing a new template with your posts.” (all 100 of them)
- “I just couldn’t resist – it was too tempting.”
- “We just installed a new plugin that promised to give us new content without lifting a finger, I didn’t realize it was using other people’s content.”
- “Sorry, my Son was playing with my blog and did it without me knowing.”
- “Oh, I didn’t see any Copyright notices.” (he was republishing my RSS feed and in doing so was republishing my copyright notice on every post too).
- “I was just doing it to see how long it would take you to realize I was doing it.”
- “Sorry, but can you tell me whose site YOU’RE scraping YOUR content off? It’s really good!”
- “But I just don’t have enough time to write my own content for all 279 blogs that I run!”
Update: here’s a new one I had today – ‘I wasn’t fully aware we were doing that.’ Hmmm – how can you not be ‘fully aware’? In my books you’re either aware or you’re not!
