When a laptop or cell phone is stolen, it’s pretty black-and-white: it’s theft, it’s wrong, and you know your property is gone. But what about words? What happens when you put your heart and soul into your blog, only to find your words on someone else’s site, your stories stolen? What about if your ideas are stolen and put into other words, is that theft? And what can you do if this happens to you?
This week the Blogging Angels talk about the problems of plagiarism and scraping online, and how you can find out if you’ve been a victim and don’t even know it.
Check out this week’s Golden Halos, our top picks for who’s worth checking out:
Amy gave her golden halo to The Work at Home Woman, who listed her picks for the 50 best blogs by women, divided up into handy categories. (Thanks for including Amy on the list – the check is in the mail.)
Heidi spotlighted Dear Crissy’s post about when it’s appropriate to ask other mom bloggers for advice.
Rebecca gave her shoutout to Slate.com and their podcasts, which inspired the Blogging Angels to start their own.
Nancy wants us all to check out Dawneing.blogspot.com, who is outside of our little NYC parenting world and writes about her life as a pediatric nurse for terminally ill children.
Plus, here are links to some other sites and topics we discussed this week:
A completely plagiarized site was discovered recently because a reader recognized something she’d originally read on TheBloggess.com.
Google Alerts can be a useful (if time consuming) way to check and see if your work is being stolen.
All you need to know about copyrighting your work can be found at Copyright.gov.
Tradmarks are more complicated (and expensive) than copyrights – learn about trademarking here.
The Yahoo Style Guide is a very handy resource for online writers.
Copyscape.com is a handy (and free) way to check and see if a particular post was stolen. Automatic and batch checking, though, will cost you.
BlogHer had a good post about the recent plagiarism scandal, but some of The Angels were irked that the perpetrator wasn’t outed.
Our friend Carol, who writes NYCityMama.com, had a big problem with plagiarism a while back when someone stole her entire site.
Kim from MomInTheCity.com told the famous story about the family whose picture ended up on a billboard in Europe – without their knowledge or permission!
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