Feelings, Blogs, and Making Sense

I'm no stranger to strong emotions. Just ask my wife.

However, I've learned to stop and think before writing something down.

It looks like someone didn't do that on an online community today.

In a discussion headed "Huge Content Theft," a blogger stated that a large number of posts from her blog had been copied (with attribution) and placed on their site.

The only URL in the victim's original post was preceded by the words,
"I'm guessing
they probably WON'T post my last
post, about THEM, on their site:"
[URL]

With those line breaks.

Reading that quickly, it's easy (for me, at least) to perceive it as meaning, "about THEM, on their site:" [URL]

I checked the only URL given in the post: it was the victim's.

I checked the URL associated with the victim's blog: it redirected to the URL given in the post.

I checked the post again. The offending party was not identified, except as "THEM" and "They"

The offending site wasn't named until quite a bit later, when I detailed what I'd found, and asked for clarification.

By then the presumably-offending party had apparently taken down all 30+ offending posts.

Oddly, the presumably-offending party was the exact same one that had been discussed on that community earlier today. Or perhaps not so oddly. The victim's blog involves a common household pet, and the presumably-offending party maintains a pirate blog of pet-related posts.

At this point, I'm taking the claim of stolen posts with a grain of salt, because:

• No offender was named until very late in the discussion
• The offender has not, in the past, taken down posts which were identified as stolen, but tacked attributions on them
• It would have been pretty quick work to notice the online claim of theft, and remove all the posts, in less than a half hour.

Stolen posts? Possible, but unlikely.

Meanwhile, people on the online community are, for the most part, reacting with passionate disgust toward the presumed offender, and great sympathy toward the member who started the discussion. Commendable, in its own way.