In business many may claim that copying is the highest form of flattery, but I was not too flattered by what happened recently at The Parental Olympian. Everyone in business knows that you are your ideas and that businesses go to great lengths to protect those ideas and concepts because your business is usually founded upon them. Well blogging is no different. The following is a personal example, but could easily happen to you. I would use the following as a Public Service Announcement to protect your blog in the future. Note: This entry originally appeared on November 10, 2005 on The Parental Olympian.

Last night, I found a website run by a blogging platform called Greatest Journal. My initial reaction was not to like this use of my work because it is just that - my work. Even though credit is given to The Parental Olympian I felt the need to react to the fact that Greatest Journal, if nothing else had violated my copyrights.

While I do not mind derivative works and use of my content, I did not intend this to mean that you could just take my content and republish it on another site verbatim. I understand that this is the purpose of RSS syndication, but usually regurgitation in full should only occur after receiving my explicit permission.

With that said, I proceeded to contact Greatest Journal about this "zombie" site (as some in the blog community call it) and the response I received was this:

Your RSS feed is open for use on your website, which means that the user in question does NOT violate your copyright.

They went on to have the audacity to tell me that I may wish to take my feed and the site referring to it down if I do not want people to use it. Well that was probably not going to happen, so I pulled out my fine-tooth comb and looked at this with a little more detail. As I said earlier, my content can be used on other sites, but according to my copyright “For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.” This site does not do this. The copyright also states: “Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.” In providing ads on on the User Information section of this Greatest Journal site, in a sense, they are using my content for commercial gains, thus in blatant disregard for my copyright. What are your thoughts? Be sure to pass this along to others that may be having the same problems.

Technorati Tags: Blog Theft, Zombie Blogs, and Copyright Infringement

Scott Goldblatt also writes daily at his personal blog and has given himself permission to republish this post that originally appeared on The Parental Olympian