What's the saying?  "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery?"

Well, imitating would be fine, but THEFT is not!!!  I see it also!  There's a Realtor in southern Oregon that does not have ONE original blog at her site (other than the system generated listings blogs).  No credit to others, etc.  Either she doesn't know right/wrong, or doesn't care.   I hope she sees this.

I'm sure your question will bring LOTS of responses.  I doubt any will be supportive of the "thieves".

May the Schwartz be with you!

I think we need to vote for a new law. It would be called "The Kill a Theif Day". A national holiday that we can apply for a license, kind of like gator hunters do here in Florida, that we can go before a judge and give proof that someone has stolen from us. Once we have shown proof we should be allowed to kill just one. LOL

Ok, ok, that is a bit extreme. But it sure made me feel better to say it! hahahaha

Scott, or introduce them to mr jellyfish. lol

Rod,

Am I to understand that this was done by another P2 member?  If so, I think moderators should step in on this.  We can't police the globe when it comes to the net, but I think we ought to police our own community...call it a "digital neighbourhood watch" if you will.

I'd hate to see some of the talented authors here be discouraged by this type of behaviour which might otherwise go unchecked.

I hope P2 would send out a strong message where this matter is concerned.

That's vicious, Scott.   But it would send THE RIGHT message!

Rod,

See Jay's post about this very same thing, and what he did.

Rod, you are bringing up a beautiful point.

But Rod, the trick is to make posts that are SO original that nobody would even WANT to repeat them !!

Rod:

I know how you feel.  I have been a victim of inteliectual thieves in many ways.  Parts of my website and pictures have been copied,  articles that I've written have been copied by other agents in local newspapers, even my ads format have been copied constantly.  It definitely is not fair that your brain is being used for others benefit.  

The only thing that I've come to control a little is my website with a free copyright provided by whozontop.com.  I'm sure that it must not be hard aplying the same system to reliberation blog system.  It won't probably stop plagerism, but at least would make it a little harder.

*Intellectual

I gotta testify to the Godfather of Soul,

Always Imitated But NEVER Duplicated

Don't worry about it. I did a post on getting started in the RE business and there were 3 others next day. Who cares? In the collective intelligence we call the universe, it's all the same song anyway--just sung by different singers and no two will ever be the same.

You also have to consider that who among us has READ EVERY POST? Since the inception of this site.

I don't want to know, but there are bound to be variations on the themes.

Candice - someone using their own words to cover the same topic is one thing. It happens. But COPYING someone's work word for word, is illegal and unethical.

I don't see how P2 can police it when it occurs on members own sites. Here on RELib, yes. But across the world and it's 140,000 members? Not gonna happen. They can help educate, but that's about it.

Absolutely. Sorry, thought you meant parroting posts. . . . Duh, back to sign construction with me! :)

There's a special place in hell for people who would put their name to others' work.

There's a RTer who wrote a 'RE Internet Warning' and gave anyone permission to use it GIVING HER CREDIT.

I've seen that on many websites and have it on one of mine.

I've also seen it on sites where the site owner gave themself credit.

So many have it on their sites now it's gotta be hard to police.

Mollie's statement is great. And it was brilliant of her to "release" it. She must have thousands of back links from it.

I've seen many Bozo's claim it as their own, or remove the link to Mollie. I emailed one guy who was particularly blatant about his theft and tactfully explained why he needed to change it.

He wrote back and said, "Mind your own F'ing business".

Agents being unethical on the Internet *IS* my business!

Astoundingly enough, many people seem to genuinely be unaware that copyright rules apply to online content.  Believe me - we maintian about a thousand pages of our own original web content, so it makes us crazy too.

Jay's right - Point2 could never eliminate intellectual property theft in the bazillions of pages of content in the NLS network.  Just think - we'd not only have to somehow search out duplicate content needles in this monstrous haystack, we'd also have to somehow find out which version came first - and whether or not use permission was provided.

Some webmasters I know have had success with Copyscape.  Might be worth checking out from time to time.  www.copyscape.com

Yep Jay and there are a couple in our area who are blatant about the plagarism. I've written Mollie's compadre in the ACRE pgm who I know and blown the whistle but it's still up there. They may feel it's just too overwhelming of a task to try to police everyone.

Maybe  a reporting system to P2 might help with this.

say the same person gets reported over and over again may make them think differently about letting them be apart of this community.  If nothing else make them aware that it is happening , and take the postion of protection to memebers and their content. Close done thieves website. That will show them just how much time it takes to start all over again.

I posted an article on ActiveRain about how to use the DCMA copyright act's Safe Harbor provision to get an ISP to remove material posted in violation of copyright.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/147429/What-to-Do-When

I successfully used this procedure to force removal of 11 of my designs from her web site after my former sales associate, a P2A and AA VA, posted them in her online portfolio as if they were her own work. Her site is hosted by RealEstateWebmasters (REW), a Canadian company whose CEO offered only  limited assistance to my takedown request. I finally resorted to filing a takedown request through a Dallas company that colocates REW's servers.

Support for the Safe Harbor provision by ISPs outside the U.S., like Point2Agent and REW, is only voluntary. Much of my work ends up appearing illegally on other P2A sites. So far, I've had good luck by simply asking the agents to remove it. I have not pursued the issue of voluntary compliance with Point2Agent management and wonder if any of you know of their position with regard to the issue?

mmmm...wish we could edit posts! I failed to mention that I have begun registering copyright for all my designs work to make proving ownership of my copyright easier to prove and to make it easier to file for statutory relief. At $45 per filing, this would be cost-prohibitive for blog posts, but use of the DCMA Safe Harbor takedown provision is cheap and practical when the ISP is in the U.S.

I too have used the DMCA to get a "splogger" that was stealing my blog content taken off-line.

http://www.phoenixrealestateguy.com/content-thieving-splog-is-offline/399

I say go Tee-Pee their houses tonight. Maybe I'll join you.