Stolen.

Every now and again I look at the stats of my blog to see how people are finding me. I always click the random google searches and see what else was listed along with my blog. I get a lot of hits from kidney donation, and cute pug searches, as well as hits for people looking for the Italian company De Nora.

A few nights ago there was a search phrase which I found sorta odd, so I clicked on it. I saw my blog came up as the first hit as a post I'd written about my birthday last year, and there were three other links below it. Imagine my surprise when the last link looked exactly like mine. I clicked it and was shocked to find that someone had stolen my words and posted them as their own. A few minor details had been changed, but it was still blatantly stolen from my own blog. At first I was speechless. I just sorta stared and tried to figure out why someone would do it. It's not like it was stolen and used for an article, but rather stolen and used as a personal blog post. What's the point of that? A personal blog is there to express how YOU feel, not to steal the words of others and post them as your own. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became. I mentally wrote and rewrote nasty e-mails demanding that the post be removed. I finally settled on a polite but firm message to the author asking them to remove the post immediately. 

It's a few days later and the offending post is still there. Technically, there is nothing I can do, as my blog is not copyright protected. But it seems that common courtesy should prevail in such a situation, and the post should be removed, yes?

UPDATE: Not only has the post been removed, but the blogger cancelled their entire account. I'd rather they had kept it and written from the heart, but if this is better for them, so be it.