Over the years I have caught many people infringing on my copyrighted material and I’ve gone after all of these people. But today I found a blog that plagiarized my balloon dog instructions word-for-word and included the step-by-step images. I emailed her informing her that she was in violation of the copyright law that the information must be removed. This is her email reply
I received your request to remove the balloon dog instructions from my site and will comply with your request but as for violation of copyright, here is how you are billed on google:free balloon animal instructions: Make dog out of balloons.
Basic instruction on how to make a balloon animal (dog). These instructions were designed for kids to understand.
www.mbd2.com/makeadog.htmThe word “free” certainly didn’t imply copyright to me and I have been back to the site and suggest that you note that it is copyrighted in bigger and bolder print since I still can’t find where the site is copyright protected.Thank you.
WOW! – According to her logic, if you use the word FREE its fair game for anybody to break copyright law. I’ll be monitoring the blog to make sure it’s removed.
Now for all those people who can not find the copyright information… Go to the main page and using the search box enter Copyright or look on the front page bottom right correr.
Dale,
I appreciate all the material you so generously share on your website, and generally make the assumption that any content anywhere is copyrighted unless the author specifically states otherwise.
Reading your post made me rather curious about how anyone could miss a clearly marked copyright, so I went to your instructions page (the https://www.mbd2.com/makeadog.htm ) link and then clicked what I assumed to be the link to your homepage: a logo in the top left corner with MBD2.COM on a balloon. This link actually took me to https://www.mbd2.com/Tradeshow/BalloonTwister.htm – this page doesn’t seem to have a link to your homepage, either, although I haven’t done more than glance at it. Typing https://www.mbd2.com directly into the address bar seems to be the only way to get from the dog instructions to your homepage. Once I actually get to your webiste, the copyright information is right where you indicated (as I expected). However, I can understand how someone who normally navigates using links and doesn’t really understand the web very well would have difficulty finding the copyright. I respectfully suggest that your content might be more effectively protected from this sort of ignorant or careless infringement by adding the copyright notice link, or just the words “copyrighted – all rights reserved” to each page. Ensuring there is a “home page” link for your website on each page would also help people who have little internet experience to find all the wonderful material on your home page.
Again, thanks for everything you’ve shared with us. I’m just getting started in balloon twisting, and I have you noted as a favorite search for youtube. I also have your busking bag budgeted as the next “big” purchase, and several of your books on my wish list.
-Kat Land
I stand corrected: the site map at the bottom of https://www.mbd2.com/Tradeshow/BalloonTwister.htm includes a “home” link – but many people I know have no idea what a site map is or realize they should look for one. -Kat
Follow up – I checked in on the website to see if they removed my work as stated. What do I find — they replaced my material with more stole information from eHow.com. eHow.com has a copyright statement right on the bottom of the page.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5159_make-balloon-dog.html
This person really does not care about copyright laws, but is more interested in getting people to come her site.
So it seems! That’s one website to be avoided. Thanks for the link showing what to watch for; I might not have recognized ehow’s work if I stumbled across the plagiarist’s site otherwise.
You need to take a chill pill…are you promoting balloon twisting or trying
to sell patents for balloon animals…I make hammerhead sharks and telescopes…I hope you never did…they are my creations…but anyone can
have them…I agree with the woman who said you offered free instructions…
evidently your instructions were good enough that she didn’t need to improve
on them…you should be honored…why not ask her just to credit you?
So one can not be an educator plus a business person? I should be honored that people break the US copyright laws? Using your logic – If somebody wants to break into my car, I should open the door first? What kind of logic is that… She took the material to boost website ranking and gain more money from Google ads.
I work very hard promoting the industry along with selling products. This is what I do for a living… I’m not a hobbyists – I’m a full time professional balloon entertainer. Some times business offer free services to attract customers – its business marketing 101.
I usually solve the problems by making sure my posts have a link back to themselves within the post then when I see my stuff all over the internet I’m happy to have the extra backlinks. You can try copyscape too.