As a few other bloggers have shared, a website called QuiltPatternsPro has been publishing the blog posts of many, many quilting bloggers without our permission and without linking back to the original blog posts. It's flat out plagiarism and illegal.
This site is hosted by GoDaddy.com and as a part of their terms, if one of their sites is violating the copyright of someone else (ie. us!!) we can contact GoDaddy.com and put in a complaint. I already wrote an email to GoDaddy.com Copyright Claims and wanted to share it with everyone so that you have a simple way to see what a copyright claim with GoDaddy requires.
If you want to use the same letter, GO AHEAD. If you want to tweak it, SUPER. It's important that we don't put up with infringement -- no matter how big or small your blog is.
To Whom It Best Concerns:
The website QuiltPatternsPro.com which is serviced by GoDaddy.com is currently violating the copyright of myself as well as many, many other quilting bloggers by illegally copying our content without permission and without referencing the original sources.
Electronic Signature: (LEGAL NAME HERE) 4/8/14
The content that has been copied illegally has all come from my blog site: littlebunnyquilts.blogspot.com
The content that has been copied illegally can be found here: http://www.
The owner of the blog http://www.quiltpatternspro.
I absolutely DID NOT give QuiltPatternsPro.com permission to post my blog content in any way.
I affirm that the above statement is accurate to the best of my knowledge.
Please let me know if you have further questions regarding this issue, I'm going to imagine that you are going to get a barrage of complaints against this site today.
Best,(LEGAL NAME HERE)
(blog website)
(email)
(phone number)
I assume they've just copied all of the feeds from quilterblogs.com?
ReplyDeleteThey may have. The difference between the two is that quilterblogs links back to the original blog post driving traffic to the original site, and they have permission to do so from the bloggers that agree to be on the site :-)
Deleteand, now, this very post is copied onto their website! I am thinking they are not manually doing it, or they would have noticed that, LOL.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI noticed that, too. They also copied the label which is JERKS.
DeleteI'm sorry so many helpful quilting blogs had posts, patterns stolen. Hopefully it won't happen again anytime soon.
I think as Karin says, it's hilarious - they are not checking anything, including our comments - I will be blogging tonight, guess a lot of others will be too so their feed will be full of stuff slagging themselves off! Mind you, they have probably had more traffic today that they ever have before, just as long as no-one clicks any of the ad links!
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, even this post, word for word, is on the front page of that website! the only exception is hte blog title has your blog name "little bunny quilts" in it before the "stealing and copyright".
ReplyDeleteThey stole my stuff too. I reported it and will be putting up a post about it on my blog tomorrow as well (today's post was already scheduled). Thanks for the form letter. I think that's very helpful.
ReplyDeleteAnd they stole this post and put it on quiltpatternspro! The Bitchy Stitcher told me about them and she can be found at http://thebitchystitcher.blogspot.com. I don't have my blog connected to quilterblogs.com so I probably haven't had this happen to me. This sucks!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!!!!
ReplyDeleteI scrolled through the other posts from the last few days and contacted every blogger on there, telling her that her content had been stolen. I hope people can get a good loud voice going and Quilt Patterns Pro will stop their slimy ways.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the form letter. They stole from me too. We should all post the letter to our blogs because it shows up directly on their site. Made me laugh. Do you mind if I post your letter to my blog?
ReplyDeleteThanks
Amy
Sew Incredibly Crazy
This is gross. What a slimy way to make a buck off of someone else's efforts!
ReplyDeleteThey got me as well. Another place to complain is WordPress since the blog is using them
ReplyDeleteHi Alison I found you from A Quilting Sheep. Thank you so much for sharing this. I am one of the ones this has happen to as well. I really appreciate you. I am also one of your newest followers.
ReplyDeleteHugs
donna
Thx Alison, I just got a heads up from one of my readers that this site had stolen an entire post from my blog. I have copied the letter you wrote & will fwd it to
ReplyDeleteI also spoke to one of the reps at Godaddy & it has been elevated to their copyright abuse team.
It is rather puzzling because Quilt Patterns Pro links to with all free patterns?? Are they just lazy?
It is shameful in any case, whenever I reference another website or any of it's content I always provide a direct link back, it is common courtesy above all else!
Thank you for this post. It was awesome of you to take the time to write a letter and share it with everyone. I used it as well:) It seems that the site has already been blocked by the server. Hopefully it will stay that way. Some people are such bottom feeders!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you so very much Allison! They got my posts. These folks are morons and need to be stopped.
ReplyDeletexx,
Michelle and the Bunnies
Less than 10 minutes after I personally spoke to GoDaddy and requested that they remove the site it was gone!
ReplyDeleteIt does pay to report copyright infringement, especially when you are dealing with a professional, ethical company like GoDaddy.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, I hope that these people don't just pop up on another website, we all need to be vigilant.
I agree that we all need to be vigilant...I am positive I am not the only one who spent WAY too much time addressing all this today (as if any of us has time to be dealing with creeps, right?). Anyway, as near as I could tell, it was a bot set up to scrape our content. I am not sure they're gone for good, but might just be gone for the moment. Let's just all keep our heads up and watch, huh? But for this evening at least, we can breathe. ;)
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your voices are being heard. So sorry you've had the headache at all.
ReplyDelete