One of my very pet peeves is seeing another site or blog copying my work word for word and claiming it as their own. Blogs especially are notorious for recyling other people’s work without giving any attribution to the original writer. Lack of creativity and knowledge, lack of grey matter between the ears, lazyness or simply not knowing what to post that day — whatever the reason, it is copyright infringement and it is not kosher.

Just today, I emailed a blogger who copied the post I did way back in July 2007 entitled “The Value of Media Mentions” without giving proper attribution to me and simply claimed it as his own. Problem for him, I specifically mentioned PowerHomeBiz.com in the post so his (mis)deed was easy to track (if you haven’t signed up for Google Alert of your website name or your own name, do it now).

[SPEAKING OF MEDIA MENTIONS, PowerHomeBiz.com was mentioned in an April 1, 2008 New York Times article entitled For Entrepreneurs, It’s All About Time. NY Times also mentioned our site last October 2, 2007 ]

In terms of copyright infringement, the winner for me will always be this business consultant from Atlanta because the situation was simply so bizarre. She submitted to us for possible publication an article with her name in the byline. When I saw the article submission, I thought it most odd that the article seemed so familiar. Then I remembered that it was familiar because it was my own article! She ‘fessed up, but explained that she hired a writer to write articles for her site, and that was one of the output of the hired writer. I filed a DMCA complaint with her web host, and her host gave her 24 hours to remove the content. She removed the content, and said that it was her worst mistake ever.

Be vigilant of who and how your content is being used, especially if you are in the information business.