So my web site has become quite popular now; so popular that people are
starting to plagiarize my material. It all started with some loser
sending my Children's Artwork critique through email as a Microsoft Word
Document--without credits of course; great idea. Instead of sending a 30
byte URL to people and have
them check out the entire site, why not convert it into a 500k Word
Document that is prone to viruses and destructive macros? Brilliant.
I've had people bring the plagiarism to my attention, and it's usually
just someone with a personal site who had the email forwarded to them
and they didn't bother checking the source. What really pisses me off
though is when commercial sites that sell advertisements post
my material. They're essentially making a profit off of my hard work.
Here are the facts about my children's artwork page and my web site:
1. The Children's Artwork piece was originally posted on my site on June
17'th, 2002 and was read on air on the Don & Mike radio show that same day.
2. Any variation of this page you might have seen on the Internet, through
an email forward or as a Word document was originally written by me. I
have the original source images I used to create the pictures (which I've
modified considerably).
Why I care:
You may not have noticed a few things that are unique about this web site.
First of all, there are no banners. Nowhere on this site will you find
any banners or pop-ups. This site gets more traffic than most commercial
sites, and I don't make a cent off of it. I don't even have a lame PayPal
donation link begging for money. Money has never been the goal
of this site, and that's why even as I get upwards of 60,000-100,000 hits
per day, I still refuse to sell advertisements. I could be rich off of
advertisements, and I could even quit my job, but I refuse to sell ads.
Why? Because selling advertisements gives people an incentive to lie and
because it takes power away from the author.
The reason this site doesn't have advertisements on it is because
I want to say whatever I want to without having to worry about offending
advertisers. People who sell ads essentially have to censor themselves to
do it; if they ever want to talk about something controversial, they have to
look over their shoulders to make sure they're not going to piss anyone off.
By not selling ads, nobody can
ever force me to change my content by threatening to cut off my advertising
revenue because there is none.
This site is 100% free, and will always be free. I refuse to hold this site
hostage to donations. My hosting fees have gone
up (although not much thanks to my kickass ISP), but I continue to pay it
out of my pocket because I enjoy posting on this site when I have some
free time (usually a few hours per week). If
it ever becomes too expensive for me to maintain, I'll simply take it down.
It pisses me off when commercial sites plagiarize my material, because it
defeats the whole purpose of this site. There's too much crap on the Internet
and there are too many people running web sites for the wrong reasons. It's
refreshing to come to a page like this that refuses to spam you with ugly
banners trying to sell you shit you don't need. So I ask that you don't
take it for granted, and that you don't plagiarize my material. I don't
care if I ever make a cent off of my site, but I sure as hell don't want
anyone else to make a profit from it either. If this site helps me land
a position writing full time, that's more than I ever expected.
What I need from you:
If you see a site that has a plagiarized copy of one of my pages, email the
webmaster and ask them to remove the page. If you get a copy of my site in
an email with no credits, reply and tell them that someone is sending around
a plagiarized copy. I don't want to see any more plagiarized copies of
my site ever again. I know a lot of the plagiarism is unintentional (still
plagiarism nonetheless), but people who post my material to add content to
their site should at the very least check for sources--especially if you
run a commercial web site. This shit doesn't spontaneously appear, someone
has to write it. Give credit where it's due. If you want to see more
children's artwork reviews in the future, don't let people plagiarize my
material.
285,728 untalented hacks have stolen my material.
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