sorry to be so quiet over the weekend but i felt the need to seriously unplug.  i've been busy in the background fighting The Thief.  i was in full blogger combat gear and went on a mission to not let The Thief to steal the joy out of blogging for me.  it took unplugging and several hours of thinking, hunting online, and reading all of your lovely comments, emails and tips to get me to suck it up and take this "Bleep" down (pardon my french).

i'm happy to report The Thief wrote me several emails, all of which admitted his guilt with apologies.  barf.  don't want to hear it Thief, just want you to take my content off your site!  hello!!!!  after admitting his said guilt he then said he would remove my content (he was stealing my rss feed) and stop tweeting his stolen feed as well.  for those of you who didn't know, The Thief is tweeting stolen content linking to to his sites filled with stolen content to bring traffic to his clients.  i have found two twitter accounts so far tweeting all of these tweets filled with my stolen content!  they have thousands of followers.  it's disgusting.  it's taking traffic from me.  it makes me sick...so i'm moving on off that topic.


back to the story....ah yes...he admits his guilt and says he will stop.  he then writes me back a few hours later and has the gall to ask if he fixes his wordpress plugin (that he says wasn't working properly..ya right!) to link back to me in the part that says posted by luvinthemommyhood (before it linked to his site only) could he keep stealing my rss feed.  hahahahaah! are you serious?!!  i thought he was kidding for a minute and then i realized he was seriously asking me that.  NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!  you cannot continue to steal my content.  needless to say i wrote him back a very polite email reiterating that....not.

so far the content appears gone.  the tweets have stopped.  but today will tell as it will be my first post since he said he stopped.  i will have to continue to keep my rss feed as a summary and have added a few sentences at the bottom of it reiterating my copyright and site name so future thieves can be just a little bit forewarned.  The Thief does this for a living.  he builds websites that have stolen feeds in them from popular blogs so his "clients" get a regular feed of traffic to their new websites.  he makes it sound legit...it is not.  so be proactive.  he had ads up on those pages and was profiting from my traffic taking business from my sponsors as well.  also, in terms of copyright, my content and images are fully copyrighted, him posting them illegally on his site changed my copyright to his which was creative commons.  people could take my images and my guests images/tutorials and use them in a different way then what my copyright states.  again, this is not ok.

when doing a google search for some of my content in some cases his links came up right under mine.  that is not OK.  check your feedburner under the "uncommon uses" section to see who is using your feed, do google searches, check on technorati for people linking to you and look to see who is talking about your content on twitter.  you may find wonderful new readers or you may find a Thief of your own.  one is good and one is bad but you are better off knowing about both of them.


the email that got the said Thief was the one to the IP Host.  it was him.  you all know who i was talking about.  oh, and thank you for all the offers to go to mead and knock on his door.  you guys rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  love you all.  i also filed a DMCA complaint with Google and with Twitter.  i have yet to hear from either but will keep you posted as to what will happen when i do.

i have to admit it really put a damper on my joy of blogging for a few days.  i was also sad to hear about how many of you have also had Thieves taking your patterns, posts and hard work and pretending that they are yours.  so to all you Thieves out there...watch out.  we are on a mission.  we will not accept you taking our content and our livelihoods.  get a life.  what you are doing is against the law.  you are obviously too dumb to read the copyright and understand it..i mean come on..you are a thief...so i'll put it clearly for you....IT'S AGAINST THE LAW TO STEAL!


i urge all of you faithful readers of our blogging community to keep your eyes open.  if you see something that looks copied or stolen from a blog that you read please email us.  if we all work together we can catch these guys.  i know that i myself have written more emails than i would like to about stolen content.  i read thousands and thousands of blogs and i see all sorts of copyright infringements.  the best thing we can all do is to email the blogger and make them aware of what is happening so they can contact them and file a complaint.

what can you do if this is happening to you:

* file a DMCA complaint with google or with your blogging provider ex. wordpress.
* file a DMCA complaint with twitter if they are breaking your copyright on twitter as well.
* email The Thief directly asking them to remove your content and explain the situation.  i have to admit after hearing a lot of stories, most of these situations are women stealing bloggers patterns and passing them off as their own and seem to be too dumb to realize this is wrong.  so don't be too kind or fall for their cries of apologies.
* track down their IP address and email the registrant (not sure if this is the right word).  there are sites you can use to see who owns the domain and where the IP address is registered and to who.
* tweet The Thief.
* change your RSS feed from full to summary if your situation was the same as mine and they are stealing your feed.  put a summary burn statement after your feed stating your copyright and your website address.
* block The Thief''s IP address from accessing your site and feed.  their are sites that do this as well as wordpress and other blogging hosts (not blogger though) have a simple way of doing this.  it will also stop them from being able to comment on your blog if you  have someone harassing you.
*tell your readers.  you guys were my most powerful asset.  get help from your readers, work together to take the thief down.
*make yourself aware of your copyright and make sure it is stated on your blog clearly.  

on a happier note, i would like to thank you all sooooooooooo much.  i "heart" each and every one of you.  thank you for giving me the courage and strength to keep fighting this guy when i was ready to give up.  i was able to get my posts that blogger had lost back thanks to him stealing my content as well.  so there was a silver lining..haha.  he had them all.  for all of you who emailed and commented please forgive me for not replying to all of you, i really felt the need to unplug and after this post probably not talk about it much.  it makes me too upset and angry.  so thank you again...big hugs.


i hope you all had lovely weekends and i'll be back tomorrow with our regular posts :)  here's a little joke for you all that cracked me up and was supposed to be in friday's weekend wishes.  also, if you haven't signed up yet, here's the link for our summer sweater knit along! and if you've already joined up - yippee and grab a button to sport on your blog (you can find it on the sidebar)!  so fun!  you can make any sweater/cardigan you'd like :)  i'm off to pick up my yarn today.

have you had this happen to you?  do you have any tips to add on how to fight The Thieves? 

p.s. we are still looking for shops/businesses that would like to donate some gifts for the knit along in exchange for being a sponsor of the knit along and being featured on luvinthemommyhood.  if you're interested please email luvinthemommyhood@yahoo.ca for more info.