I just (for the first time ever) caught wind of someone plagiarizing my content for their own nefarious uses. The site itself seems to have disappeared, but Google has faithfully cached the one offending page here. Strangely enough, i located it via a referral from a the search “that the only way to convince me of its worth is to do amazing,” which sounded oddly familiar because i wrote it here. Further perusal reveals that this post was also partially lifted. The only other pages from “Bellylicious” that Google seems to have cached are all just index files or in other languages, and i can’t seem to locate an active email link on any of them, so i’ve hit a dead-end in locating the perpetrator.

I don’t know what i find the most bothersome out of this entire happening. First, the search itself is rather odd … anyone searching for that exact phrase would have had to have read it on either my site or on the plagiarist’s … anyone doing the former would have no reason to search for it, so someone read the latter and found it familiar (maybe the author forgot where she stole it from?). The second thing that bothers me is that i would’ve never even imagined someone was using entire paragraphs of mine to say what they were feeling, let alone known about it. In a way it’s almost flattering … she wasn’t using whole posts, but just succinct sections of them that she found applicable to her life. At the same time it’s rather chilling — as though i’m a blogging thesaurus that anyone can tap into to to find some relevant emotions to spruce up their post with.

The third thing that bothers me is… well, it’s just the stealing itself. I’m sure if someone emailed me and asked if they could use a lengthy excerpt from my page i would probably let them so long as they attributed it to me. Frantically trying to track down the person who has been stealing from CK via Google has led to this tiny kernel of panic in my stomach that is saying “what happens when someone takes one of your songs? you won’t even know… you’ll never know it.” And, it’s true … most of my songs are copyrighted enough to hold out in court, but anyone could be covering them on MP3.com with different titles and i would never even know it. The entire concept bothers me… i’ve never stolen anything in my life … i don’t even eat spare grapes in the produce section of the supermarket! The fact that someone could be stealing from me right now… not only stealing, but stealing something that i spent time and emotion on so that other people can enjoy it totally disconnected from me … it’s almost enough to make me tear all of this down right now.

Of course, i can’t do that. This is my life, and my therapy, and my fun. And, if it brings on a couple of more crises along the way, so be it