This Fish Needs A Bicycle

Yes, I think that may call for an aluminum bat.

I am completely non-plussed by all this blog stealing stuff. Why? There's no money to made in it. There can be precious little satisfaction for the person to know that they didn't write that funny post, or whatever. There is no pressure to blog, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. If you can hold off with the bat for a little while, I'd love to talk to one of them about it all.

Oh no...I've had my bat ready to swing since Ms. Dwyer popped up onto the scene....or maybe I'll just start tackling people left and right...

seriously tho, how DO you find these blogs? do you search your own material? Im curious.

Im also curious why someone would even bother stealing content. its so stupid.

but fuck them , fish.

www.copyscape.com does it for you :)

This is so wrong, Fish. Anything I can do, let me know.

Through whois, I found that they are registered through godaddy.com. You can go to http://registrar.godaddy.com and see the information for the domain.

Raccoon, Rocky support@tblog.com
tBLOG
5019 Klump Ave.
North Hollywood, California 91601
United States
(818) 618-3489

Hope this helps!

Looks like the jerk's already removed the chatboard feature. To comment, you have to sign up for the service. What an ass.

just posted so it's back up.

The weirdest thing is that
http://sugarspice.tblog.com/ (who is also stealing your stuff!!!) links to http://cyberpal.tblog.com/ who as you stated is also stealing your posts. This is the oddest shit EVER.

this one too:

http://priscagal.tblog.com/

thats SO wierd... theyre all linked. dont they notice theyre all stealing from the same place? its such a wierd vortex!

"I've had to close all comment for the time being until it's resolved. I've had some freaks commenting here and saying all sorts..."

Duh, jackhole. Probably calling you the low-down creepy thief you are.

Geez, Fish. This is really getting ugly.

Hey, if you need any help, I am so good at kickin' ass and takin' names! That and I love ganging up on the bad guys! ;)

sad that these people have no lives of their own to write about...

go get 'em !!!

They're all gone now. Four blogs that you killed in one day.

I hope you're happy, O spirit-destroying succubus.

Dayum. And I thought Sour Bob was good ....

You're scary, Fish. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

there's another! sugarspice.tblog.com

A whole nest of plagarists! Geez. I sure hope Tblog thought to mention "Thou shalt not steal from other bloggers" in their TOS.

I just checked again, and all three of these blogs appear to be gone. Is Tblog cooperating with you by removing them?

no, not so far.

I think my kick-ass readers have just exceeded Tblog's bandwidth!!!

Try going to tblog.com

Comments are gone. DAMN

How boring their lives must be... Hope they take these idiots down.

Geeze Fish imitation if is the sincerest form of flattery - then you've been flattered...

I think it's time they stop now.

Do you know about the whole debacle going on with http://tequilamockingbird.blogspot.com/ ? She's been dealing with this plagiarism stuff and is actually getting involved in legal action. You could probably get a few tips over there if you want to go after the people taking your stuff. Good luck!

I looked at these sites: I think tblog might be bogus and being used to cull e-mail addresses; provite advertising (look at the upper right corner there is a pharmacy ad) or something.

I say this because the latest post on the third blog is copied from you; commented by the owner of the 4th blog, who is also copying from you. That girl had to had recognised your post - so I think these blogs are all bogus.

Bastards!!

Sorry lady - same thing happened to me - and yes, while there is no money - it's annoying. But i see your plan must be working, because all of the links are no longer working! who - hoo 4 u

Whatever is going on over at tBlog, all you get when you click on those three links (or tBlog.com) is the following message:

"Thank you for visiting tBlog.com Please be patient while we fix some issues....
-The tBLOG Team"

Yeah, "some issues" alright.

I don't know what to think about Anthony's hypothesis here, but the kid on the first blog, cyberpal, last posted a complaint about the "freaks" leaving comments on his blog (um, that would be the Fish Army he was referring to), so there is at least one "real person" attached to these. A cheap little plagarizing punk, but still, it didn't seem like an automatically generated sort of thing to me.

I hope you get to the bottom of it, Fish. Such a shame that being a great writer opens you up to all this nonsense!

Fish, so sorry this crap is happening to you. Lamo losers with no creativity should go away.

What's really terrifying is how close the above-mentioned North Hollywood address is to my house.

All 3 of them are back and open now....

the inflatable emu is gone...checked her site this morning and it's disappeared...

now for the others!

I am so sorry. I hate the jerks that are doing this to you, you are so damn gifted they want to pretend they are too. hang in there you have a hell of a team backing you up!

They're definitely back up, which shocks me. I could be a great "writer" too if I just copied from you. At least one of them had the decency to change your cat's name.

Amazing.

Here's what I know; Cyberpal reads (and comments) on one of my friends blogs that is here in town. Seems to be an actual person. They all know each other, to my knowledge. I could ask her a few questions, but I had to double check before I rocked any boats.

I hate getting involved in this stuff, but I'm an artist and I know I would be ONE HACKED OFF BITCH if it happened to me.

Im confused...I have a tblog...I am a real person. Its really upsetting. Just about everybody has a link to Matts blog. I spoke to him just the other night. Im still confused

There ain't that much to be confused about, TigerLilly - your tBlog buddy has been going through the Fish's archives, making minor edits, and posting her words as his own. Guess he thinks that there aren't that many folks who've killed whole workdays reading Fish's backlog - HA!

The current post about how nobody better be messing with him is definitely the most offensive bit of the plagiarizing issue I've seen thus far.

Even cyberpal's very first entry (06/10/04)is stolen from 'your local goddess' (http://goddess.droyer.org/archives/2003_10/11/i_am_not_alone.php). Just compare both versions, check the dates! I'm sure there is much more material on his site that is copied. This guy is a fraud.

Wow.
I went and looked at a couple of the blogs in question - those people SUCK. Seriously. WHY would you ever do that?

I guess some people just having boring little lives and need to live vicariously through people like you.

Hang in there, Fish.

Doing a little stalking, I stumbled across the websites of two guys who are obviously annoyed by this 'cyberpal'. They are asking serious questions if he sis for real, see here superman.tblog.com and here some.tblog.com. They've got some good arguments, it's really strange that a hardworking businessman can spend so much time posting comments in the tblog-world.

I've got the suspicion that this cyberfraud is a fulltime employee of tblog.com, doing some 'PR-Job' to make bloggers feel noticed. Someone should ask tBlog some serious questions!
And anybody with a tBlog-account, pls give notice to 'superman' and 'SoMe'. They'll love to hear the news...

very, very weird indeed. That said, I got some dodgy pop-ups on that site so maybe it is a twisted way of getting hits.

Wow. This is so amazing. I recently got a call for submissions from an academic person (college prof type) that said, ERRONEOUSLY that "work on the internet is in the public domain." Yes, this person was saying that one should cite and quote anyway-- but they were wrong about the public domain thing. Writing is copyrighted even if you don't have that creative commons thing on your site. As soon as you write something, it is YOURS. It makes NO difference when it is on the Internet.

But what's really weird about this is that there are writing professors who clearly are confused about this. I mean, these bloggers are trolls and jerks BUT if the "good guys" who teach us how to write don't even know this, then there is a serious problem. How do we deal with this? Maybe a movement should be started to encourage commercial blog provider services to add something about what is plagiarism... I know the TOS says not to do it, but they're doing it anyway. And it's not their job (the commercial blog hosts) but... I dunno.

It sucks! And the fact that these people steal your posts is one thing, but when they go in and edit them a tiny bit, to change names, and/or genders, and/or places, then that's just even weirder. Then they comment on their blog like they're some innocent. JEEEEZ!!!!

I don't even understand. What's the point of having a blog if you're going to fill it with someone else's words?

I hope Taylor takes care of it right away.

I'm sorry this is happening. How it must suck (but at the same time, it shows you're such an amazing writer/blogger that everyone is stealing from you!)

re Kim's comment - yes, I think the copyright laws of the US are as you say; but I wouldn't bet money that you are afforded automatic protection under the laws of other countries.

Wow, like I said before..trolls...

In as much as I abhor plagiarism in any form, isn't there an arguement for "fair" use here.

The little I know about copyright law, isn't it the case that the Copyright Act gives copyright holders the exclusive right to reproduce works for a limited time period. Fair use is a limitation on this right. A use which is considered "fair" does not infringe copyright, even if it involves one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Fair use allows consumers to make a copy of part or all of a copyrighted work, even where the copyright holder has not given permission or objects to your use of the work.

From what I've seen and read on this blog site of the guy/girl, he/she hasn't made any gains from it financially or otherwise? Maybe I am wrong but I dont think it is so black and white.

But I'm appalled at the lack of remorse though.-

But Temi, I'll go out on a limb here and say that the part that is most objectionable to bloggers in general (I won't speak for Fish, specifically, she is more than able to speak for herself) is not the use of the post, but the total, purposeful, and as you said remorseless lack of attribution to the true author.

When blogging, we all tend to quote one another (using quotation marks and spelling out the source) or post a link to blog entries that inspired us to write one of our own that might be similar or on the same topic, but these people that have used Fish's writing do nothing of the kind. That amounts to stealing, and is NOT fair use.

It seems pretty clear that these three blogs are run by the same person. It looks like this person is using the other blogs to generate fake comments. It's the only way to explain how they comment on each other's blogs while stealing from the same sources.

Gah, what a loser. I'm surprised that the provider hasn't taken them down yet. Regardless of why, there is plagerism going on.

I've found some post stolens from http://goddess.droyer.org/. She's taking an "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" attitude. Hope she comes here and reads some of these comments.

The 3 blogs as one writer theory would obviously explain why sugarspice and priscagal's blogs are so sparsely posted upon and why these 3 comment on each other's work as if it's original...but the cyberpal blog is much more developed, and if you look around the tBlog world he is obviously interacting w/ other tBloggers under that identity. Maybe cyberpal wanted to create his own virtual harem? It would follow w/ superman.tblog.com's stuff about cyberpal being kind of a shit toward women...what a bizarre little community this tblog place is.

The "sugarspice" theif stole the post you wrote immediately AFTER your first post/rant about plagiarizers. Perhaps she got the idea to plagiarize you from your rant about plagiarizers. What an asshat.

Fair Use requires that a "quote" be credited. It also demands that there be no more than 200 words from the original source quoted. It also requires that the "fair use" be something like academic/educational use and/or not for profit-- which you've gotten right-- they aren't obviously profitting, but it's still not at all fair use.

Before this gets out of hand, please...

There is no magic number that defines "fair use." IF there were they'd call it the "200 word rule" or something. Fair use is about... _fairness_.

Similarly, While financial gain is a factor in deciding whether or not (a) something is fair use and/or (b) the amount of damages the copyright holder can look for, it is also not on its own a determinant of fair use. Attribution is important, but lack of attribution alone probably won't defeat a fair use argument. So too with academic use.

right... so the only point that i can see about blog theft, is that 51 (now 52) posts about the theft within the comments has made for whoever the theives are, vast entertainment.

i think that sometimes, things aren't exactly what they seem, and just maybe, of course this is my sense of twisted humour, so maybe i'm way off base anyway... however... it strikes me, that they did it to see how you all would react to it and thus create for themselves a semblence of temporary amusement at your well trained lemming response and band wagon jump on masses mentality. congratulations. within all of your individualism, you have all wonderfully fallen into the mundane of identicalistic well media trained sameness. heh.

Actually, there is a 200 words rule. And those of use who use it do kind of call it the "200 words rule." So. There you go. I know this because I have been published in an academic encyclopedia, and we had to limit ANY quotes of the original material because with several thousand pages and entries, even if you quoted "one" word in your entry, it would add up quickly over time. I don't have the exact citation information on where you would find the exact wording of the rule, but it is there. I'm sure if you looked in a book like the MLA handbook, you'd find it. I don't myself have the inclination to look cause I hold to the rules, myself. :) AND generally, a good citation and attribution solves the problem admirably. And if you want to quote longer, you can ask permission. Most writers, if it's used in a way that is acceptable to them, have no problem letting you quote more, for free even. That's why you can have "covers" of people's original songs-- attribution and permission.

BUT the point of this is to mention that the first blog listed has issued an apology, of sorts, if an ill-natured and badly written one.

No wonder the person had to steal your writing. And dearie, if you the stealer are reading this, changing an ocassional "she" to "he" is NOT editing and changing content. If you did it in my English class, you'd get a zero and possibly be expelled from the univerity, depending upon the strictness of the university policy.

Just so you know, Fish. I was wondering what happened regarding this and peeked today... and saw the "apology". Now, the other two on the list haven't done anything that I can see. I didn't look too much at the blog, either, but she/he says that they've removed the offending posts.

This has just caught my attention and I feel I have to reply to all the asinine and inane comments I have recieved. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? To set the record straight, I didn't copy, duplicate, or plagiarise your work knowingly. I have deleted the offending posts, and have written an email to the website that provided the info and material I used. to explain. But in future before everybody (close to 50+ on here) join a bandwagon of abuse and recrimination, you should really find out the facts! My apologies to thisfish.com for any inconvenience caused.