Plagiarism

I had my first experience with plagiarism last week. I published a blog post about my first Dogue de Bordeaux and some of his health issues.  I’m new to blogging so so far the only people who can find me are people who are my friends (and read based on my sharing to social media) or people who have found me via wordpress. And although I am hugely grateful for anyone who has read or showed any interest in my blog I also wanted to see if the rest of the world might actually be able to find me or my posts via a google search. I thought that this particular post would be a good one to test because dogue de bordeaux and megaesophagus are pretty rare and when you combine the search terms that’s really rare. Low and behold I do the search and my post shows up. I’m excited, but then I look closer, wait a minute, that’s my post, but that’s not my site. Someone stole my post, changed a few words and posted it on their site as their own personal work. Now what, I’m crushed, finally have something people might find, but they won’t find me because someone stole it. So I contacted wordpress support to see what could be done. They gave me some things to try. Post is still there. So more research, find a post that says to ask them to take it down. So I do that. And it’s gone the next day. Yipeee. It worked. But then I check the next day and it’s back up. Seriously wtf is wrong with this person. So I do more research. Google has a spot where you can put in a copyright complaint. So I fill that out. Next day I check and it’s gone. Yippee for google, that was fast. Then I post part 2 of my dogs story to social media and my friends let me know that the stolen version of my first post is back up again. 

So I guess I conceed defeat. They win. They get to tell a story that isn’t theirs as their own. One that is very near and dear to me, one that had originally felt good to share (because I felt like I was memorializing Sloan and maybe helping someone else who ended up with a megaesophagus puppy out). It’s not like any of us are making money from the post. So I’m not willing to take it to court to have them remove it. I guess I just hope that at some point they develop morals and decide to take it down on their own. 

I really don’t understand why someone would even want to do something like that. But unfortunately when I was searching for help I found another wordpress blogger that had had the exact same thing happen to one of their posts by the same website. So obviously they aren’t creative enough to write their own posts and would rather steal other people’s. 

However I do have to add that if there is anything good that came out of all of this is the outpouring of support and help from my friends. It means so much to me that you all came to my defence ❤