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I am not a genius author

And, as many of my posts can prove, I'm no insightful writer, or awesome, world-shaking thinker. I know my level, and it's kinda low :)

But I do write this blog, and it is all the product of my own, random mind. I don't blog on legalish/bookish/techiesh stuff anywhere else, and I've never done a guest blog post elsewhere either: anything I write as "Jennie Law" is here, and only here. It may not be of any great intellectual value, I get no financial benefit from it, but it is mine, all mine.

So when I found that someone had come to my blog recently via a link on another site, to an old post from 2008 about ebooks, I wondered why they were looking at such old stuff, and who was referring to it.

I followed the link back, and I found that the entirety of the 2008 post on ebooks is available on the site where the visitor originated from, with a link at the bottom to my blog post. The company is SGD Networks, which appears to be based in India, and has nothing to do with libraries, or law, but a lot to do with web development, graphic design, and web hosting. There was no sign that I was the author of that post other than the link: it had just been copied and pasted onto this site. Along with, it would appear, lots of other articles from various sources, all from 2008 as well.

Now, my memory may not be razor sharp, but I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I'd been asked for permission for my work to be used elsewhere. And I wasn't.
My blog is not under a Creative Commons license, so I certainly haven't given freedom to reuse the content I create - it is up to me to decide where that content may appear.

So, I've sent a polite "you did not ask for permission to use my content, please remove it immediately" email today. Let's see what happens, shall we?


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Comments

Simon Barron said…
That website is definitely infringing the intellectual property of hundreds of people. It'll be interesting to see how (and if) they reply to your email.
15 November 2010 at 16:09
Phil said…
When that doesn't work, you can reply to them and tell them that you'll seek a DCMA takedown from Google, which will result in Google banning them from their index. See if that works.
15 November 2010 at 17:39
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