Return of the Blog Thief

Nathaniel alluded to it yesterday, and, unfortunately, the Blog Thief is back, and he's at it again. This time on another ridiculous "blog," wherein he is stealing, among other things, EyH posts and posts from a blog written by a woman detailing her life with breast cancer.

Which, obviously, is wrong on many levels.

But here's the most relevant thing, and, with regards to written material, the most important thing. This guy is stealing. Ain't no two ways about it, Bucky.

He's not breaking into our homes and physically taking our things. But he is stealing.

Now, I get it. We have a blog. We get a few hits, and we have some regular readers. We're not exactly Newsarama, and no one at Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, or Image cares even a little bit about what we write.

But we still write.

Never with any intention to take the blog to higher places, as it were. We just write because we enjoy doing it. And because, now, we actually do have some regular readers.

Not that it makes what the Thief is doing any better or any worse, as stealing is stealing is stealing. But I figured I'd throw that out there.

I'm going to put up a little something about this new mess on Twitter this weekend, and hopefully someone will take note. I plan to launch a mini Twitter campaign, actually, and reach out to other writers to see if this has happened to them, and to ask for any advice.

We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, though, just to repeat this for the hundredth time. The stuff on this blog is copyrighted, and Nathaniel and I own it, and we have proof of ownership. And we're kind of sick of reading our posts on someone else's "blog."

So, if you're reading this anywhere other than exfanding.com, you are reading a blog that's in violation of copyright law. The [I'm not sure what to call him, actually] of said "blog" is taking other people's words and making them his own.

If the same thing were to happen to, say, Neil Gaiman or Joe Hill or Harlan Ellison, it would be called plagiarism, and the offender would be in Big Time Trouble.

Fortunately, the law can be a wonderful thing sometimes. You see, that same law that protects the works of Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill and Harlan Ellison? Yeah, that same law also protects the works of no-name bloggers like Nathaniel and me.

So. What to do?

Currently, we're busy contacting other bloggers from whom the Thief has taken posts, and some of them have started responding, either to the Thief directly, or on their own blogs, alerting their readers to what's happening.

At this point, Nathaniel and I have a plan, and we're following it. We'll keep you posted on how this whole thing ends up.