I Found This Entry Without A Link Back To The Owner – What To Do? Netiquette On The High Seas

*EDIT/ADD 9/19/20 – Since this theft was posted about here and on Ben’s blog, Mr. Hamson replied to Ben’s e-mail and removed the post from his site.*

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22141 – 713:

Arrgh, Since tomorrow, 9/19/20, be International Talk Like A Pirate Day I thought ’twas ironic that I should find Piracy on the cyber-seas right down the stream from me. Many of you know that I administer what I call the mechanical part of my son’s blog, Brother’s Campfire. By that I mean I don’t ever touch his content or comments or anything, I just keep the domain registration up and update the nuts and bolts of the site. Of course, I follow it, too.

Now, it seems to be a fairly common practice on WordPress to “reblog” other people’s stuff. There may be times when this is appropriate or necessary but you need to get the owner’s permission. I was pretty surprised to find that someone had completely just stolen this post from Ben and put it on their seedy little website without permission and without so much as a link back to his site. Bad manners and criminal behavior, Mr. Pirate. He wouldn’t respond to e-mails so I hit his “reblog” button and left the note, “Since you stole this post without any sort of permission from the copyright holder I’m going to use you as an example of cyber-thievery.”

The turkey Jerky even had the brass to put his name to it as though it was his own work! I looked around his so-called blog and realized that most of his stuff is second-hand. His name is Ned Hamson and the post he stole, word-for-word from Brother’s Campfire is https://nedhamsonsecondlineviewofthenews.com/2020/09/15/working-hard-at-the-homefront/

Ben’s a grown man and can fight his own battles but this is something that has been a bone in my throat for a long time and I’m posting this because I know many of my followers know both of us and may or may not have heard about this. He and I also have different approaches to things.

I wrote about this sort of thing back in May, Plagiarism or Reblogged? What is Copyright Infringement? and recently discovered an article by an attorney about this subject on NOLO.com: Getting Permission to Publish: Ten Tips for Website Managers.