Anyone visiting my blog yesterday will know that I was having a problem with a commercial website that was publishing my blog feed in its entirety on their home page.

I’ve had problems in the past, but a quick email has usually resolved the issue. However, yesterday’s problem was proving a nightmare – a phone call (the only contact method I could find on the website) proved to be getting me nowhere, in fact, I was told that although it was my blog I didn’t own the material, and as I offered an rss feed it was okay to publish it.

Does having an rss feed give people automatic right to use a blog’s material? I’m sorry, but it doesn’t. My rss feed is for reading and to save people the hassle of visiting my site, it is not for republishing.

Bloggers work hard, and it isn’t always an easy job particularly at the start.

I work hard on my blog and have done for the past two years. It’s not easy all the time, I am fortunate that over the years I have built up a rapport with several press offices so I do receive plenty of press releases and information that helps me to maintain it, but I still have to do lots of research.

Running a blog doesn’t always mean just publishing content, it’s a social thing. Often, I receive emails from both home and abroad seeking information that cannot be readily found on the internet – I was ‘snowed under’ with emails in the recent bad weather. I answer these to the best of my abilities, often at odd hours.

Yesterday’s blog post worked and within 3 hours the offending site was ‘down for maintenance’.

Sites that helped me find out about content theft:

For any bloggers out there that can relate to the anger I’ve been through here are a few great sites that I researched for information on tackling content theft and ways to help prevent it.

Many thanks to the authors – it’s not easy dealing with this problem, but your articles were a great help.

Here’s the list:

Inky Girls blog – particularly her articles:
http://www.inkygirl.com/republishing-content-via-rss-feeds-right-or-wrong/
http://www.inkygirl.com/republishing-content-via-rss-feeds-right-or-wrong-part-2/

Problogger.net – particularly:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2004/12/21/what-to-do-when-someone-steals-your-blogs-content-blog-plagiarism/

Online tech tips article: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/wordpress/a-complete-list-of-anti-plagiarism-and-content-theft-fighting-wordpress-plugins/

Lorelle on wordpress – loads of excellent advice including:
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

Plagiarism Today – a must read especially:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/03/03/excerpts-scraping-and-fair-use/

mustech.net – how I found Lorelle’s article

http://mustech.net/2008/05/14/rss-scraping-scavenging-stealing-and-content-theftget-thee-behind-me