A Happy Resolution

Some of you may recall that a little over a week ago, I discovered a web site (a Google blog at that!) had been stealing ALL of the content from this blog and cut-and-paste reposting it on their blog, which had a ridiculously similar name. My outrage was palpable. According to various metrics, Fishing for History is one of the Top 10 - 20 fishing blogs in the world for traffic (Alexis has us at #6) but that's beside the point. There's a reason I don't take advertising on this blog -- I find it annoying. I work hard, as do our many writers, to create original, interesting, and informative content. That someone else had apparently been pocketing a good bit of Google ad sense money based on stealing our content infuriates me. It was so bad that a Google search for one of our posts would bring up their illegal site just below ours.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that after filing a complaint with Google they took down the entire site. There was one funny point; they asked in a follow-up to my original request send the URL for any infringing content. Since they had stolen over 2000 posts, I replied back that it would take a day to do so, and that every single word on their blog was stolen! They were very cool, and acted quickly (considering all of the requests they get for copyright violation), so my many thanks to the Google team for taking this serious and acting quickly.

The point being, if you ever see your on-line content being co-opted (the problem IS HUGE), don't sit back and take it. Be proactive.

-- Dr. Todd