Sunday, September 12, 2010

So maybe I'm a little bitter...

If you've been to my site you know that there are a few free goodies on there. I offer pdf's, image files and wholeheartedly encourage people to make their own loverly magical messes. I am an absolute advocate for mutual inspiration... you inspire me, I give something back. Breeding wonder and spreading the magic is what it's all about.

When I see people recreate crafts that I have made I generally find it flattering. Fat lot of good it would do to make things that simply gathered dust, I'm glad they hold some value for others. As an artist who hears the words "weird" and "creepy" a fair bit I'm well chuffed that some people are inspired by my strange little world.

That said, what I abhor, is outright theft.

It seems someone has stolen a page from my website. A WHOLE damned page. Not only did they steal the text, in it's entirety, word for word, but they also stole the images. Not only did they steal the text, and all the images, they linked to my images and stole my bandwidth. *sigh*

Now, if this person had simply put "...from knickertwists" I wouldn't have been irked at all. Instead, at the top of the offending blog, it reads "All of the photos posted are taken by me, unless I say otherwise." Ah, a thief and a liar.

Now, I can count the number of public domain images used on my site on my fingers. I have spent countless hours shooting and editing literally 100's upon 100's of photographs, graphics, and creating the entire content for my lowly site. Don't get the wrong idea... I'm not silly... I expect that images are going to be swiped, but for someone to steal a whole damned page? It's too much.

Thief, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you've pissed me off. It's not okay to take something that isn't yours... it's unethical, immature, lazy, demonstrates a complete lack of integrity and shows that you are devoid of imagination. Guess what? There's an actual person behind those words, and photographs you stole. Why don't you put your own damned heart into something?