This is a post by a dear friend of mine, Glenn, who mans one of my favorite blogs Man Over Board. Next to me, Glenn was incredibly upset about what happened yesterday. As a result, he asked if he could post here about the whole mess. I agreed. I’m so upset I don’t trust myself to write about yet, so without further adieu, here is Glenn’s post:

First of all, I thank Joella allowing me to come on her blog and guest post. I wrote the below post during the day yesterday, because I was somewhat involved with the fact that Joella must now redo her blog. In order to protect her work and her intellectual property. Because someone decided to copy her entire drop list. She must re do it so that this does not happen again. Thus leaving her with a lot of new work she must do and keeping her away from adding her daily post.

99% of all us bloggers are good people who trust each other and also look out for one another.

We are a small community, those of us who use Entrecard. Being such, I have seen an ethical standard we all go by. We also have TOS statements about the fact if there is an article someone would like to use, they first must ask the blogs owners permission. The person that copied Joellas list never bothered to ask, and defended their use of it, stating how they made it much better (they didn’t) and that it was easy for anyone to build such a list (then why didn’t they) and lastly couldn’t understand what the big deal was, as it is only a blog. This persons profession is a journalist for a broadcast station that covers a large portion or three states.

I am sure Joella would rather have me talk about anything else in the post but what had transpired yesterday. But I took a day to think about it and I am just as disheartened today about this incident and by the person behind it. If this enlightens one person that doing such a blatant act as stealing from another blog, think twice. Then it was worth the time and effort it took me to write this and also for Joella to have to put in all kinds of safe guards. Lastly, shes does this as a courtesy for us bloggers to help us with saving time in doing our daily drops. She does this willingly on her own time and her own effort. She does not ask for anything in return. This is not how she should be paid back. Here is the post I was going to post on my blog, but feel it deserves to go here where it belongs and let you, her readers know the whole story.

This morning like most mornings , I went to my blog and checked my overnight stats. Within those stats I have various programs that let me know when and where any of my articles are mentioned and also where all my traffic originates from. I am sure most of you have the same programs also. Being a blogger to me is special, because I have joined a group of people who put out their own personal thoughts and work hard into them. I am especially proud because we all originate our own ideas, no matter how large or small the idea is. It is ours and therefore our property. It also affords us an opportunity to meet other good people who also have great blogs. A community in essence. I am always asking other bloggers to guest post on my blog, so that I may be able to share a new audience for them and help if I can, to see their blog grow larger with more visitors. And I also know they wish me the same. Not to mention they have great posts that we get to share with you our readers. I believe most of us when we borrow something, like a picture or a poem, etc from another source, that source is given it’s due credit, with links back to the original post. Most bloggers enjoy to know that their words are being utilize by others and it helps not only get back links, but also some new readers.

This morning as I was going through my stats I noticed I was getting traffic from a new blog from Entrecard. I was going to name the blog, but in doing so, why should I give this person who plagiarized from someones blog that I think highly of, any new traffic to their blog. I know I can be vicious when I am PISSED!!!. And yes I was mad as hell, not only because they copied verbatim a drop list someone worked very hard on. But throughout the day their replies were so very nonchalant with a could care less attitude. As they also stated it’s only a blog why get so worked up? I clicked on the backlink to find an exact duplicate of “Above The Crease Droplist” which is a list that Joella from at Blogs With Wings created. It’s a wonderful list to help us bloggers to become more efficient and quicker when making our daily drops. That list was a work of love and many long hours and continues to be, because Joella does it on her own!!

The owner of this blog that STOLE the entire list verbatim, also added how we should click on links of ads, as they call it” few ki$$e$” , which again if you are not aware is fraud. People pay good money to advertise on our blogs and asking other people to click on ads just to increase the click rate is again fradulent. (They later explained it was meant for people to donate money to their blog, like “buy me a beer button” but that blogger didn’t have the capability to add a PayPal donation button.) I do not use blogger or blogspot so I am not sure if that is true or not, maybe someone could tell me who uses blogspot if there is a way for people to receive donations. Why they felt they deserved a donations is a mystery to me.

Most of this person’s blog is basically links to other blogs/websites about stories they saw and their contribution is a sentence to tell people to go check it out. I have NO PROBLEM with that. If you believe writing a blog is about surfing the net and finding stories and making a post filled with someone else’s links, then that is 100% legal and fine. It would be easier for this person to just get one of the auto-pilot blog set ups and fill it with Google ads. Hell I am sure we would all love to be able to put up a new post each day and be done in less then 15 minutes and feel as thou we truly believed we did a good job. That is their right to do so. I myself would rather just go to the front page of Yahoo, MSN or Google and get the links they find instead. They also have a TOS on their blog that states and I quote blank is intended for your own personal use. If you download or print something from my site, you should retain any advertisements, copyright or related proprietary notices which the material contains. You may not reproduce, transmit, license, sell or otherwise exploit for any purpose any content that appears on my site without my prior written consent. Well then aren’t all of us afforded the same rights.

Lastly this person is new to EC, perhaps I could say they were not aware, but that is not the case here. I also feel like an idiot because I advertised on this site when it first appeared. Before I had known this was how the blog was being run. I hold this person to a higher standard, because in many places through out the blog and advertising sites like EC, they tell us that they are a professional journalist. I hope they don’t think this is the wild west and they can do whatever they please, to whoever they want. I can only imagine what their employers might think of this blog and if this is something they also condone? Does his professional employer merely copy the New York Times, then put their names to it? I doubt it, it’s called ethics.