The other day, I woke up to find a notification from WordPress letting me know someone had shared my content. First, I love it when people share my content with their audience. I think, like imitation, sharing your content is highly flattering.
However—-I think there’s a right way to do this and a wrong way. Honestly, I wish people would ask first. That would make it super simple and avoid any confusion. After all, it is my content.
Usually, with most linking to my content or ping backs to my posts, people let their readers know that it is not content they created, but are sharing with their readers. I see this done all the time. It’s like introducing your friends to a new record or band you discovered and dig a lot. I think that’s cool!
That wasn’t the case with this particular notification I mentioned earlier in this post. In this instance, the blogger had copied and pasted my copyrighted and trademarked content into their post. Their was zero accreditation or mention of where they got this info. ZERO.
Has this ever happened to you?
I think when we link to another blogger’s post in our post, it’s good practice to give them a shout out and acknowledge where we snagged the added insight from for our blogpost. Agreed?
How do you protect your blog content?
Here are 3 methods to help protect your blog content that I gleaned from various attributed sources:
1. Content creator Peg Fitzpatrick suggests writing a republication policy and posting it on your site.
2. Several bloggers and web content creators, including Fitzpatrick, urge checking linkbacks to your blog in order to ensure make your content isn’t being snatched without your permission.
3. Web content expert, Kiff from Ask Kiff! advises employing reverse searching tools to track down when text, images, or other content from your blog is used without your permission.
I am finding my research on identifying ways to protect my content helpful. I will share what I find with you in future posts. With permission, of course.
I pray you find this information helpful. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences below in the COMMENTS section!
May the Lord, our God, shine His light on you and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
The Devotional Guy™
#BibleGateway #blogging #ChristianBloggersSupportNetwork#bgbg2
The Devotional Guy™ 
Thank you for sharing this. I love the “reblog” button because it automatically sends the pingback and give the original author their due.
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I do too but interestingly enough I haven’t experienced many people using it when they share my content. Thankfully, some do. And I’m glad if this post was helpful and/or insightful. I appreciate you reading and giving me your insights.
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I find it’s helpful to write content that is so bad nobody would even think of stealing it. I once drove a 1984 puke brown Chevette for the same reason.
Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever tapped the reblog button, but I do link back to posts that inspire me, and also give a shout out to the original author. I like to take a nugget from someone else’s post and create my own content around it. This is ok, right? As long as I give credit where credit is due?
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LOL, brother🤣!
Absolutely, David. I think it’s acknowledging—or making it clear—that what we are sharing or linking to is not our content. I think it’s a huge honor when someone is so enthusiastic about something I wrote that they want to turn their friends on to it.
As young folk, we would often share bands we liked with our friends—Like “Hey Charles—check out this new band I stumbled on. They’re called the Talking Heads.” I didn’t pretend I was in the band or that I had anything to do with writing their songs.
I had a dark brown ‘73 Chrysler Imperial with white leather seats and a mean 8 track.
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I remember the 8-track days!
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Interesting post and conundrum (finally had 5 minutes to sit down, read and respond as this is an interesting one to me personally)
I have a simple rule – if it’s public I need to be happy with it as I can no longer control it.
In short, people absolutely shouldn’t copy and paste, and pretend it’s their own work.
That wrong at so many levels!
Credit should be given at the least. And anything beyond a short quote ( ie a paragraph) should be used with permission only.
But, realistically, there’s nothing you can do – short of asking them to remove it, or litigation…which could involve international repurcussions and costs.
I don’t ask permission before sharing another post or article – from someone else. But then I’m just clearly pointing my readers/listeners/viewers to that someone else to go and engage with that post/blogger.
It doesn’t benefit me as, on a human level, I’m pushing people away from our own website…a definite no no in the business world. The only quoting is the bit that WordPress does automatically (other articles just get a website address and title).
Ultimately we are in the world but not of it…so it would depend on who is using my stuff, and for what reason.
Quoting a whole post, or a large portion of it? Yes. Get get permission from the author.
Pointing people to another post, or quoting a paragraph? No need to do so I think.
We put out our own material specifically for people to stream, share, download and view. So we want it used. But we do have a section in our website asking people to use it as is, without editing, or adding anything to the downloaded file.
The most we can do is add a notice asking people not to reproduce anything without permission (I do that in my books). But they’d have to find it in your website, read it, and take note of it. Adding something like that to a blog post could simply detract from the content of the post I think…
Personally I’d contact them and ask them to assign credit where it is due, if I find it.
But, as some seasoned podcasters concluded on this subject, don’t worry about it because there is nothing practical you can realistically do anyway: just be better than them withbyourbown material – if they’re copying your ideas now, take it as a compliment as they won’t be able to sustain themselves and readers/listeners/viewers won’t stick with them anyway.
Not the most satisfying answer, but a good conclusion from folks who have had their popular show ideas/features copied without permission.
Andy B
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Andy–thanks so much for your thoughtful response to my blogpost on protecting our content. I want to take time to mull over my reply and respond properly to you. I may do that in a follow up post on this subject—if you don’t mind?
I agree–sharing content is something we should welcome and it is part of what makes blogging a vibrant community. Attribution when borrowing content–something I myself need to do a better job of also—is really my concern that I hopefully expressed clearly in this post.
Thanks again for reading and sharing your response.
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you’re welcome. took me longer to get to reply than I wanted
go for the reply any which you think is best 🙂
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Wow. This is very sad and scary. Thank you for raising awareness.
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Indeed. You are welcome 🙏
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