El Bizarro Copyright Whackos -- A New Movie Coming to Theaters Near You!

Lucky for me, as I said to Cara, I rarely write anything -- and certainly ALMOST NEVER photograph anything -- that is worth stealing.

But read this anyway, if you haven't already.  (You probably have.) (click on the underlined word "this" in that sentence.  I have learned recently that some people did not know that that signified a link.  I am beginning to think bloggers and blog-readers perhaps need to be licensed, or we need to come up with a BRAT - Blog-Readers' Aptitude Test© . No offense.) 

In Cara's blog post, wherever it says "Cara," substitute "Norma" and any place it says "January One," substitute "Now Norma Knits." 

I mean really, people!  It's common sense, is it not?  You're not whackos, are you?!  I'll come over there and smack you if you don't smarten up! I mean it! I don't suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. 

Wait, there's more, sort of a side topic, since we're on rants:  Please don't ask me to give you a copy of somebody's pattern for free.  It won't happen, and I'll just get my dander up.  And you don't like me with my dander up, trust me.

And people just coming onto the scene and pulling this kind of crap?  You WILL be found out.  We are a fast-growing and fairly big community, but we are a community, and you'd be amazed how tight we are.  We are connected, baby.  It's just a matter of time until someone who knows someone (or the aggrieved party) finds out.  You can run but you can't hide.... 

.....Okay, now I'm making myself laugh.  I really do slay myself -- don't I slay you?!  But seriously.  Some of us (including Cara and me, for example) will laugh about it because, well, life is too short to get our panties in twists over things like this and there really are more important things to worry about.  HowEVER, don't be stupid.  That's all we ask. 

In this particular case, the blatant copying and pasting of an entire post, verbatim, was so bizarre that we have to believe it was truly a naive and honest mistake, sort of like the grandmother who put her grandbaby in the baby carrier through the x-ray machine at the airport last week.  Um. Those poor TSA people (work with me here) who saw a little skeleton in there?  Freaking hell.  Can you IMAGINE? The transgressor in this incident really must have just not realized it was wrong.  One just has to briefly wonder:  WHY? and then carry on with one's life. 

Sigh. I guess I'll have to get off my lazy butt and put some sort of language about this back on my sidebar, since it appears that, indeed, the world is populated with whackos.  Either that, or continue to write drivel and take crappy photos that no one, not even the whackos, would copy.

Yeah, that's it!  See?  There was a method to my madness all along!

And you thought I was just crap. Ha! The crap was intentional. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In short:  Don't make me get all fucksake over yo' ass. ©

Comments

[Morgan]

*laughing* that is so well said. The thing I don't get is that this person is a newbie. But. If they are that new how did they copy the whole post ... were there pictures? ... if so ... then they would have had to have gone to the source code to pull it. Anyways. I completely agree with all that you said!

[Kathy]

(nods head) Yep. Agreed.

Though here's where I take great comfort in the fact that my writing is less than stellar and my blog is small and not so popular. I would really laugh at someone stealing any of my writings...people, there's better stuff out there!

[Cookie]

For fuck sake!

No one is that new or clueless or whatever. If you can figure out how to get online, set up a blog and steal from someone else, you have to know it's wrong. Not to mention plain weird. That's worse than those dirtbags who hotlink and/or steal images out of blogs. Yeah, still cranky. :p

Ya know, I'll never have to worry about this since I never make sense. *L*

[rock chick]

Man, look what you miss when you're sick as a dog for over a week. What the effing hell is going on?

[Dave Daniels]

Oh for fucks sakes. The blatant stealing of stuff is all over the place. One guy had the nerve to start his own online yarn shop, and copy/pasted almost MY entire content, typos and all, to a new site. And took my photos, too! Fuckheads. The internet is big, but it ain't THAT big, honey, that we're not going to find out.

[Kathy]

I think that you should copyright all your effisms -- fucksake et al. :-)

[Marcia]

I had someone using my blog post titles for a while...someone I knew, for heaven's sake. I'm sure it was subliminal, and it hasn't happened recently, so I guess she just doesn't read my blog anymore. (It was annoying as hell at the time....I'd come up with something marginally clever and two days later would see the same words over her post!)

[Lucia]

I can't believe people do this stuff. An entire post, with pictures? Cripes. Even less can I believe that people don't think anyone will find out. People! If you think a post is really clever and brilliant and all and you'd really love all your readers to see it, try this neato trick I learned called linking. Like this.

It's not hard, as evidenced by the fact that I can do it. It is also perfectly legitimate to have a post saying "I am totally brain-dead today, but go read this and this and this" although it would probably get dull to do it every day. (Being frequently brain-dead, I should try it sometime.)

[Vicki]

Yes, my dear, you DO slay me. ; )

[Marianne]

For fucksakes indeed. My mind is boggled, gobsmacked, if you may, that someone would *actually* copy an entire post with photos to paste onto their blog...(this could actually turn into an Arlo Guthrie type song here) like....well, this could go on and on so let's just leave it at....I am so glad I don't have to be that person....for me, if there's nothing to post, I don't, this ain't no popularity contest...

[margene]

That's my Norma. You are fuckingfantastic Ms. Wordmiller;-)

[Denise]

wooosh!

[regina]

Dang. I know better than to get you pissed off. xo!

[Chris]

I just startled the resident 4 legged furballs laughing so much. Seriously good post. Copyright is sacred! We're talking intellectual property and people who steal that are showing they are indeed Stupid Fucks. Thanks for putting it so eloquently.

[Carole]

Did you know I am the official copyright enforcer for my town? Yup. Librarians kick ass when it comes to copyright.

[Kathleen]

Agree on all the copyright stuff... I've been protecting copyrights for a long time - people just don't get it - frequently!

What I want to know about is that poor child in the TSA X-ray machine!! You'd think if a TSA agent can remind you - ad infinitum - to remove your shoes and empty your pockets, they'd notice a child in a car seat/carrier BEFORE it went through the machine!!!!!

I am often amazed at the cluelessness of the population!

[Carrie]

I have to take the charitable road and assume that, rather than a whole buncha wackos, there are instead, a whole buncha morons. (See? Charitable, that's me.) My dad, for example, can get on the internet and knows just enough to do damage, but doesn't know how to get himself out of his messes. Maybe the post was copied because the copier thought it was clever, or funny, or interesting, or whatever. And of course, because s/he is stupid. (There's that charitable attitude again.)

[Anne]

Sometimes it's just better to be an anonymous mass. Er... you know what I mean.

[Roxie]

I suppose plagerism IS the sincerest form of flattery, but who needs it? I read about a guy who wrote a cookbook, and at a book signing, some woman showed up with a photocopy of the book and told him that it was such a wonderful book that she had copied it off for everyone in her trailerpark. And had no clue why he wasn't thrilled by the compliment.

[Cara]

I do honestly believe there was no malicious intent in my case. That's not to say that there isn't malicious intent out there, I just think bad judgement is more common than badness in general. Or at least that's what I choose to believe.

And seriously. I can't cast the first stone, what with my own legal history and what not. ;-)

[sandy]

So, if I click on the word THIS in every post, is THIS a link?
I may be whacko. But I'm not stupid!
:)
xoxoxoxoxoxo

[Julie]

As a matter of fact, I AM a whacko but I'd NEVER steal anyones content.

Great post (except that it made me laugh out loud at work and really, there is nothing funny about tax assessing so it's kinda hard to pretend I'm doing work here)!

[scout]

I'm askeered of you.

[margaux]

damn girl, i know who i need to gets my back if any blogshiznit needs to throw down. word to yo mutha.

[Cathy]

So... that's along the lines of coming up with a good idea and having someone else use the premise in something else altogether... and getting all kinds of raves. I am a bit bitter.

[Katherine]

Now wait, wait. Was it the SAME person who stole an entire Cara post AND an entire Norma post? That would just be ... odd.

Oh, and by the way, this morning as I was clicking through Bloglines, I was reading another blog, thinking for some reason that it was yours (it wasn't). And after a minute I wondered if maybe you were taking Vallium or something. I'm so glad to have correct my mistake and found THIS post instead. Much more Norma.

[Rachel H]

Does getting one's dander up make you taller?

[Stephanie]

Hahaha. Thanks for the laugh. I am continually amazed at the shit people pull, and the sad thing is that at this point I shouldn't even be surprised.

[Sarahfish]

Yeah, this sucks. I just found someone's grabbed my content to put on a money-generating site. I wrote about it on my blog. Grrr... I am putting up a creative commons license as soon as I can figure out how to get it up there where I want it.

[Lady S]

I have a librarian friend whose ENTIRE WEBSITE was stolen by another librarian. And I don't just mean a few pages about books, I am talking an entire site of links organized by the Dewey Decimal system. And when confronted, the woman didn't take it down until the principal was told and lawsuit threatened!

I am glad I am not so popular or smart that anyone would want to steal from me.

[Carol]

~snort~ I for one am not in danger of that happening, but hey, I'm a banker, maybe I need to put the obligatory warning claus in the footer anyway. Jeeze-I really wanted to mess with other things on my blog. I also believe there are some settings that make web page copying impossible, but then I'll have to ask one of kids about that.

[Beverly]

Why?!? would anyone do that...I don't get it!?1

[KnittyOtter]

That is really really messed up. o.0

[Aarlene]

What the fuck? What's wrong with these people? My then 5 year old understood the concept I explained to her when she 'found' something she wanted to keep, "You may not know WHO it belongs to, but you know for damn sure it's not YOURS" . In this case of course the name on the blog should give them a clue. Idiots.

[Kristen]

Well! I am definitely a wacko, but not that kind of whacko! (It comes without an h in my part of the country.)

[Beth]

That's just insane. I can't believe people would stoop so low. Sorry it happened to you.

Maybe they've stolen your blogging mojo too ... might want to check it out!

[denny Mcmillan]

I don't even know how to do that, (what did they do, some bad computer
thing?)

You give'em what for Norma.

Watch out bad numnuts computer person.

[Sue]

I'm too naive, I guess, because I can't even fathom why anyone would do that, mistake or no. How can it seriously be a mistake?? Do people have no creativity of their own? And do people seriously ask you for free patterns?? I can see asking where you purchased the pattern, etc., but asking for it for free? That's too much. *extremely exaggerated rolling of the eyes going on here just at the thought of it*

[Amy Boogie]

Good thing I post drivel and bad photos :P
What the hell is going on with people?!!?
Very well said as usual Miss Norma.

[Martha]

What I don't get is, why would someone want to copy a post? Isn't the whole point of blogging the writing and sharing of personal experiences? If you just copy other people's posts, what can you possibly get out of blogging? Why even bother?

That was a lot of question marks.