I enjoy writing posts on my blog because it connects me with my garden, hones my observation skills, and is an online journal that not only serves as my reflections at that point in time, but also is a record of what I'm noticing in the garden and beyond.
It's also been a delightful way to interact with other bloggers, other gardeners, and other nature lovers.
So I was surprised today to receive both a comment and a direct email alerting me to a "blog" that's taking posts from legitimate sites, and re-posting them, using a convoluted English to English translation to repackage the text (quite oddly and humorously, actually), but using the same titles and the photographs. They'd noticed that some of my posts were among them.
Kathy, at Skippy's Vegetable Garden, posted about these folks on Monday Oct. 26, who are probably located abroad somewhere. She's had a number of recent posts snagged; in a quick search, I found seven of my posts.
At first, I thought it was inconsequential, since the text of the posts is totally strange post-translation. But then, after reading the comments on Kathy's blog, and seeing my photographs on this other blog, including a post that included views from the windows in my house, and another post that included a photo of me showing dogwood berries to a group of intent young girls (taken by a local newspaper reporter and published in the print version of her paper), it does strike me as a bit much.
And thanks to a net-savvy reader, we know who to complain to about this particular blog. I couldn't figure out why someone would steal content in this strange format, but she suggested that it was to increase the Google rank of their site. Perhaps they think their domain will become some ad-revenue source?
In a quick web search, I found some excellent information at this site about copyright issues.
Perhaps it'll be helpful to some of you!
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