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Originally Posted by severin
Rated - other than one solitary post on another thread, you'll find that all of my time spent here has been focused on you. If you had any brains, you'd have realized that such attention would indicate a personal interest. And it did.
You see, I've been a lurker on this forum for years. I've enjoyed reading the sometimes acerbic humor and opinions from parts of the world I'm not familiar with. It's a fun forum - unlike many others I frequent - and I've had many a laugh reading threads devoted to a myriad of topics including my profession - design. I've just never registered until the day before yesterday.
During those years, I've ran my own website, for which I write a lot of stuff. Blog, articles, design tips, what have you. I spend a lot of time writing my articles - a lot of time - sometimes months in aggregate. I parse every word - I want the articles to perform well in SEO but also be informative and nice to read for designers and clients alike. It is a job I take very seriously.
Imagine how I felt when I found my articles on your site - yes, my articles, Rated. This was not a mistake or an error. You had stolen my work - design articles that I had spent weeks on - cutting and pasting them into your own site. You found my articles through a key word search that you wanted to rank well for, and figured that if you had found my articles, then they'd help people find your site under similar searches. So you helped yourself. In a few seconds you had stolen articles that had taken me weeks, if not months, and now you were laying claim to my work. No permission. No credit. Theft.
When you were approached about this - you claimed you had permission to use my articles. But we both know you didn't. You hadn't asked - you just took. All in all, Rated, you were a very bad boy. If you had have apologized, you'd never have heard from me again. I wouldn't have smacked you from one end of this forum to the other. I would have left you alone. But you didn't. I asked you to stop. Repeatedly. But like some Energizer Bunny, you kept coming back, making excuses and telling lies. I actually don't care about your site one way or another. Nor do I care about the (very) few dollars you may make from affiliate links. Your site doesn't matter. But if there's something I hate more than a thief, it's an unrepentant thief.
And if there's a lesson here, it is this. When you're building a website, do not steal other people's work. Be it design, logos or articles. Build your own. The internet has made the world a lot smaller of a place and you will be found out. I located my articles on your site within a few days of them being posted. I'm not the "FBI of the internet" but I am very good at finding stuff that's stolen from my site. That's because you're not the first. Nor will you be the last. And when you've been caught, simply remove the articles or designs and move on. Do not try to justify your actions or tell me that you have permission to use my articles when you don't.
Especially on a forum where designers and other creatives hang out.
Now go away Rated. And be a good boy.
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