Our Hubs Got Stolen: BigEzine.com - The 'Biggest' Plagiarist!

Well, as mentioned in the forums, this site appears to be down. I checked my gmail, which I rarely do and found this that confirms, when clicked on, that the site is down.

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

We have received your attached DMCA complaint. Upon recent review of the

website(s) mentioned in your complaint, we were unable to locate the

allegedly infringing content on the following page(s):

http://health.bigezine.com/modern-medicine-guilty-...

If this matter is still a concern, please reply to this email with

detailed information to enable us to locate the allegedly infringing

content.

Regards,

The Google Team

Hi Healthy Pursuits,

I got a request from one of the hubbers to spread the news. Being a blogger, it is my duty to support such act.. and that post was my part for the support..

See my writings at http://lifecan.blogspot.com There you can find how I prevented my posts from being copied by simply adding a javascript...:)

Thank you, Hunbbel! I went to check if any of my hubs were there and the site is, thankfully, down. It looks like this same guy owned another site, and it was shut down, too. It was a place to search for people.

Does anyone know of Vinod Suthersan? He also wrote about the theft of hubs at

http://www.itechcolumn.com/2012/04/hubpages-stolen...

You are a star, Hunbbel - so many of us would not have realised what was happening if you hadn't written this hub.

I have just been told that one of my hubs has been stolen and by the time I went to check it out the site has been taken down. Thank goodness.

I don't monitor my hubs for copies, mainly because I don't know how. I have a copyright declaration on my profile but that is all.

I need to watch this hub in case this creep starts up again ...

Hunbbel - Great job! We are lucky to have you as a member of the Hub community! I think I will start publishing again too.

oh thank GOD,its down now.congrats to all.

Yeah site is down, m so happy....

whew! just received my 3rd email from DMCA and this one said "Please note that the material claimed infringed is currently inaccessible at this time"

I had to smile at the 'claimed infringed'

and again Hunbbel Meer, thank you so very much for telling all of us about this when it happened...I for one do not police my work...naive I know,

I believe this site would still be up if not for your warning! Thank you!

Took them long enough!

Yes, the site is down. I think it's down for good, but we better keep checking!

This is horrible! Thanks so much for sharing this information with everyone.

OK, I just clicked the link to my plagiarized article and it seems to be down for now. Great News, but I'm afraid we're not at the end of this. We will have to be vigilant. I was considering joint the site to act as a shill to see how it operates on the inside and report back. Right now, that does not appear necessary, but it is an idea held in reserve.

Excellent news! And although I tend to think "once a pirate, always a pirate" maybe concerted efforts as demonstrated by the Hubpages members will make it harder and harder for these lowlifes to make a pilfered living!

Yay!!!!Now to see if it stays down and that it won't appear as anything else.....So he won't open any other sites....that snake.......what goes around comes around....

I would like to see hubpages make it to where nothing can get copied or pasted, I know it can be done......but they have to do it.....Power to the Hubbers for sticking together....

So, that being said, are those of you that quit publishing hubs going to start publishing again?

yes,Rosemary50,he like a Cockroach, he is just waiting. But yes!!! I'm just thankful we have each other :)

This is not over yet. I wouldn't be celebrating too early.

It might be down... for now... It has not died a death, it is only 'parked up' and can be resurrected at any time or can be sold on to some other unscrupulous person.

About time! But great news all the same. Power to the People!

great to hear

Fabulous news!

Well done everybody. Terrific news.

Poor guy, he just wasted his time.

YAY!!!! This is awesome news! Finally, our voices we heard and justice was served!

Yay go back where you came from and don't come back out of your hole! :) Very good news indeed! :)

Great news!!!!

Wow ! This is really a great news.

Time to bust a break-dance move...owe, my back!! :P

Hubbers it appears our voices have been heard. The domain appears now to be parked and apparently this thief decided to invest in domain privacy a little to late but as of now the site does show it's offline.

Seriously?? Then if so that is brilliant news.

Woot!

Good news1 BigEzine is DOWN!

CHECK OUT:

Protecting Your Written Work Using Google Alerts

https://hubpages.com/community/Protecting-your-Wri...

Still rather new to HP, but if it is possible, don't forget to insert your Referral Tracker into the article link of your warning Hub. You may be glad you did!

Also, we may have to change the title (keeping the main point clear) each day if BigEzine.com or one of its "insiders" at HP actually manages to catch on and take measures which would allow them to continue their criminal activity.

I've delayed posting artlicles for the very reasons outlined here.

Just an idea:

How about no publishing of hubs for 72 hours except a daily OR MORE publishing of the following Hub by each Hubber. That way, when BigEzine.com copies hubs during the 72-hour period it will hopefully participate in its own demise in some way. Just a thought...

TITLE:

This Page Was an Attempt by BigEzine.com to

Plagiarize a Copyrighted Article From HubPages.com

BODY:

BigEzine.com appears to be a phishing site for email addresses. It is engaged in fraudulent activity in an effort to compile a data base for an ezine email business of some sort. Please click on the following link for more information:

https://hubpages.com/community/Our-Hubs-Got-Stolen...

....or, it could be a new strategy for someone who has such software - scrape a website, then under a profile at that website (the scrapped one) - start articles and forum posts about the scrapping website in order to promote it.

Not that anyone here would do that - just thinking out loud.

Hunnbel, I take back my comments about this Hub being a bad idea, because it does seem that it has spread the news around the Hubbing community better than the forums.

But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can you do two things.

One - remove ALL hyperlinks to bigezine. Maybe you are not an experienced internet writer so you don't realize what a HUGE favour you are doing bigezine by giving them these links. They are probably thanking you right now. This Hub is being shared, so those links are multiplying around the web and giving them even more "link juice", which is vital to do well in the search engines.

Daughter of Maat has a better Hub on how to report this particular theft, which details ALL the places you need to report it. So I suggest you change your DMCA link to her Hub. Here it is:

http://daughterofmaat.hubpages.com/hub/My-Hub-Was-...

Please also delete any comments that have a link to BigEzine in them. I'm sure the authors won't mind when they understand those links are helping bigezine and hurting HubPages.

I agree, Hattie but how???

Mine are on there too! :) We need to put a stop to this!

It is so sad to see that they are still stealing our articles! Has anyone found a way to stop this from happening??

This is what I just found out. The home page is active and when you click on an article it says the server cant find it. but look at the address bar...it is missing part of the address....there are two articles on page 11 written by Hubpages writers bellawriter23 AND Epigramman. G up to the address bar and add the word education at the very front of the address there and up pops the article in its entirety credited to other writers...I don't understand all this stuff but someone messed with the link from the front page to the actual articles....but they are all stillllllll there!!! and these were published yesterday on Hubpages I believe, or the day before but recently!

@ alocsin and hoteltravel: I just checked again and the access to the articles is still live. I don't know what the problem is except for the fact that articles are a little problematic to access. The way I found the copy of mine are by title (of your hub) searching on their site and this usually brings it up. So far, I have only found one as the site is a little difficult to navigate. You have to guess what category the copy might reside under as you cannot do a global search of the site. This may be where the error messages are coming from. The site over all is not as well developed as Hubpages, difficult to navigate etc., which may be why they are not getting a lot of hits.

We have to take some serious action against this website ..Thanks for pointing it out

I just published a haiku which HubPages said was a duplicate and made me take it down. I always check for duplicates before I publish anything. Now I'm wondering if it was because it is on Bigezine. Grrrrrr.

Thankfully, none of my hubs are there. But I found it strange that not one of their top authors have uploaded profile images. And, an author with 200 published articles had just 340 views! As alocsin said, the articles are not loading anymore. We can see only the list with the summary. Thanks for bringing this to the notice of hubbers.

Looks like they're finally shut down. The front page is there but clicking on an article shows a "no server' error.

OK, I just located a totally plagiarized article of mine under the name of Linda Wade, published March 16th, 2012 at;

http://technology.bigezine.com/how-a-faraday-cage-...

I will be on a hunt for more. There wasn't even an attempt to vary anything, same photos, links, etc. Only the videos seem to be missing. Otherwise it is a dead ringer for my work published just the day before. The original article is at;

https://hubpages.com/technology/How-a-Faraday-Cage...

published on March 15th, 2012. If Hubpage admins won't do anything about this, then maybe we should gather information such as I have and begin a class action suit against bigezine. I can be reached at syzygywjp@yahoo.com. Identify as plagiarized hubs so that you are not screened out as spam, as I'm currently inundated by spammers.

It now appears that a new strategy is required to publish hubs. That is to do it up while not on the web on a word processor, cut, paste and publish on the spot and then edit. I would not be surprised if there are program bots of some kind combing the net for articles to lift from all sources. This could even be an "inside job" to justify shutting down sites under SOPA or like legislation,

Thanks Christo. I've since changed my password and deleted my contacts for the time being. I did the whois and page inspect to discover I'd been hacked by a registration in the Ukraine with no contact email of course. How do they get away with all this stuff?

Great hub! I have suffered the same fate.

I don't know if this violates any comment policy on hubpages but my hub was stolen as well.

The hosting company for these people appears to be Softlayer Technologies Inc.

Their email to report a DMCA complaint is: abuse@softlayer.com. phone number: +1-214-442-0605

The registrants contact information is:

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh New Delhi

New Delhi Delhi

10043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: solanki8484@yahoo.com

name servers:ns1.ppanda.net ns2.ppanda.net

 I have filed my DMCA complaint as a comment and received no reply. So with a little research... I found further information.

Hi! Sounds like your email may have been hacked? Easiest thing to do is to change your password. I had the same problem a few months back with both hotmail & google. I changed the passwords slightly and it stopped. Good Luck, Christo.

Moonlake, you can write almost anything you wish in your hub. HubPages provides the space for you to express yourself, and as long as it isn't something listed in their terms of use as prohibited, which it is not by the way, then have at it.

Does anyone know if we can add something like this to our hubs.

"This is my Hub if it's anyplace else on

the internet other than here. It has been taken without my permission."

I can't find the answer anywhere on hubpages.

Hello: I'm having a new problem related to my email that is linked to HubPages. A spam email was sent to all of my contacts saying 'try this, it's great' with a link to

http: // www . news 1 5o.net / biz ? page=0482508

I've spaced it out so that the link doesn't occur.

which promotes something saying 'make $39,000 a year...'. This email does not show up in my 'sent' file but I do see the failure notice for those emails that did not go through.

Has anyone else experience this yet? This is getting to be a nightmare.

If enough complaints are filed with the web hosting company listed above (Softlayer Technolgies), the offending site will be shut down. All web-hosting companies in the U.S. have Terms of Service agreements that prohibit copyright infringement.

It appears to me that they are done with us and are moving on. They are going after 'Sooper Articles' now and also 'Ezine Articles' and I can't see Ezine taking this lying down. The big boys will have more clout than we as individuals

Thanks for writing this hub. You may be pleased to know that it tops the page on Google for Big Ezine. com. Notice...I did not give them a link. Good work and hope that this site gets removed sooner rather than later. Voted up and useful.

I did a cursory check of the site for my hubs and didn't see any. I haven't published a new hub in about a month, so it appears that they began capturing newly published hubs a short time ago. They are probably web-scraping the Hubpages main page and pulling down every new hub. That would be the easiest way to do it without requiring human intervention. No one would need to browse through all of the hubs and select which ones to download - a very time consuming task. No disrespect to our beloved poets, but poems usually have minimal commercial value on the Internet. The fact that so many newly published poems have been stolen tells me that there is no targeting of hubs, just a wholesale capture of the site in general.

It appears to be a fishing site for email addresses since there are no advertising links. Now I'm wondering what they could do with our emails.

Just woke up. Getting caught up on this fiasco. Let me get this straight. HubPages, which is losing revenue and might possibly go out of business because of the increasing number of hubbers either not writing or unpublishing their hubs, IS NOT going to sue Bigezine?

@Bill I agree that Hubpages need to do more, maybe they have filed complaints behinds the scenes that we don't know about though, so we should give them the benefit of the doubt.. I hope so, because as you say it's a site wide problem and so many of us are reluctant to publish new hubs until this is sorted.

I am with you suebee, and have put the news of this bad, bad, bad site and its infringements out to all I know and asked them to do the same.

you hubbers need to lay off of Meer and others who used backlinks, they were trying to help and inform everyone...they are not the ones to blame or even get mad at, it is the one guy who stole from us......

Can't Hubpages publish our articles in a read only/no copy and paste format? Or would that interfere with the ability to share? Just a thought.

I tried to go to that nameless site and couldn't go to website, got an error when I tried to click on the website. I was trying to check for my hubs but couldn't

@Bill Well said. You are right, there are no authors, I believe it is one person, a robot, who is doing all of this. I could not agree with you more that hubpages needs to step in and do more than they are doing. This happened to a friend, only his photo was copied, stolen and later it was published in a book, even though he had his photo protected and name on it.....scary to think someone can get by with all this...and my friend, had all his p's and q's in line to protect himself from this, he is a professional photographer.....

I think most are missing a couple of points. There are no "authors" on that site who are stealing our content. The site itself has a robot that is copying the content and attributing it to randomly generated "authors". This is probably one guy in India, not a company. The fact that the stolen hubs aren't showing up in google searches suggests that google is aware of this.

I understand that hubpages doesn't want to get involved in individual claims, but this seems to be a site-wide attack. As such, it's in hubpages best interest to provide assistance. Failure to do so could impact hubpages bottom line if people stop creating new content.

Hubpages should allow us to watermark our photos for this reason.

Yep, they got me too. Reporting them. Sharing this.

Tweeted, Pinned, Google +, shared.

Everyone needs to share this on their social networking sites. I just shared it on Twitter and Google Plus!

I want to ssay thank you very much Hunbbel Meer for posting this and I am following through with my complaint and hope everyone else does as well. I will not stop writing...just as Maggs told me tonight on my hub..."these sites will be gone soon but HubPages will stay"...why? because we are built strong!!!!

Sorry about posting that link to that awful sight yesterday... I think Hunbbel would need to go into his comments to delete it. I didn't even think about them getting backlinks.

Please, please, please remove all links to The Offending Site immediately! You are giving them free backlinks. Google counts all backlinks, even if the text around them is saying negative things - so by including links to articles on the site, you are actually helping the site be successful. This is very important!

@JackC the hub you are referring to is mine actually. They edited all the copyrights to read Father of Daughter of Maat, which I found rather insulting considering my father is no longer here. I do think it's hysterical however. Their name is strewn throughout my article. I hope people who read it wonder "why would someone write an article like this about the website that's hosting it" and do their research. They are basically mocking us.

Great advice, Born2Care2001!!

And I wanted to update a comment I made earlier about HubPages removing the note I posted on its Facebook Page wall. The comment is still there, and here's the response I received from HP:

"HubPages -- Because Hubbers own their own content, we cannot file DMCA complaints on their behalf. You'll have to do this for your own Hubs, but we have a guide on doing so. It's quite easy! http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/how-to-file-a-d...

I just rechecked my email and found a response to my message to HubPages via their contact form. They responded specifically to each point I raised. Here's what they said.

"Hello Patrice,

Thank you for your email. The legalities of copyright safe harbor for websites such as HubPages prevent us from filing DMCA complaints against websites such as bigezine. When we have sent requests to websites such as this in the past, and they were safely ignored by the third party. Going forward with legal action would open HubPages to severe liability. We will not engage with bigezine for anyone, including HubPages staff. If you wish, you can contact your congressional representative about internet copyright laws.

What we can do is provide you with information to expedite your DMCA request. Here is our LC entry for a DMCA complaint, in case you need the link:

https://hubpageshelp.com/content/Learning-Center-h...

We have found the following email addresses that are associated with Bigezine, where you may want to send your DMCA complaint:

abuse@softlayer.com and solanki8484@yahoo.com"

Bottom line, don't expect HubPages to get involved in this. At least we now have an answer, and each hubber will have to decide for him/herself how to proceed.

Softlayer's corporate offices are in Dallas. Any hubbers in the Dallas area care to stop by there and make a complaint in person?

SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.

4849 Alpha Road

Dallas, TX 75244

OR...how 'bout a concerted effort by ALL hubbers whose hubs have been stolen (and who can send faxes from their computers) to overload Softlayer's fax machines?

Fax (main) 214-442-0601

Fax (exec) 214-442-0610

Just sayin'.... ;D

This is horrible and wrong. I hope you all get your justice! I have been investigating to see if anything of mine has been stolen. Attempting to avoid actually going to the site. Eventually I did go to the home page and first article was so very ironic that it made me laugh in the middle of this no laughing matter...of course it's a stolen hub : http:....my-hub-was-stolen-what-do-i-do-now-145275.html,

With all the instructions and screenshots on how to report the site from which you are reading the article.

Domain Name: bigezine.com

Registrar: Name.com LLC

Expiration Date: 2012-11-08 13:31:23

Creation Date: 2011-11-08 13:31:23

Name Servers:

ns1.ppanda.net

ns2.ppanda.net

REGISTRANT CONTACT INFO

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki

WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhi

110043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: solanki8484@yahoo.com

@Marisa--No, I did not give them props--or free links! I wrote a detailed note, I did NOT create a clickable link, and if you read my note, it detailed exactly WHY I did not do that, and I asked for everyone to DEPRIVE them of traffic by NOT making clickable links....It was a stern warning. I called them out as the thieves and scum that they are. ALL who write online need to be warned about these crooks...

And HP itself needs to be FAR MORE PROACTIVE in chasing this down, for in the end, it will hurt them the most, if all the writers leave and/or just stop publishing.

After all HP has done to improve its standing, and create a reputation for solid quality--they should be agressively pursuing this for thier OWN protection, if not that of we authors.

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois/?tool_id=66&am...

Domain Name: bigezine.com

Registrar: Name.com LLC

Expiration Date: 2012-11-08 13:31:23

Creation Date: 2011-11-08 13:31:23

Name Servers:

ns1.ppanda.net

ns2.ppanda.net

REGISTRANT CONTACT INFO

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki

WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhi

110043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: ***********@yahoo.com

ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT INFO

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki

WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhi

110043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: ***********@yahoo.com

TECHNICAL CONTACT INFO

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki

WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhi

110043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: ***********@yahoo.com

BILLING CONTACT INFO

J Raaaj

Rahul Solanki

WZ-34 Kakrola Road, Najafgarh

New Delhi

New Delhi

Delhi

110043

IN

Phone: +1.9810000007

Email Address: ***********@yahoo.com

Timestamp: 1333655589.2669

The Data in the Name.com LLC WHOIS database is provided by Name.com LLC for information purposes, and to assist persons in obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration record. Name.com LLC does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this Data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this Data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail (spam); or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply to Name.com LLC (or its systems). Name.com LLC reserves the right to modify these terms at any time. By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.

Cached on: 2012-04-05T13:53:09-06:00

I went through part of the site and found many hubs there from many different categories. It makes me angry that people would steal so much content and it seems the only reason they do it is to try and hurt those who are working to earn money online.

I have one suggestion and that is you should disable the link to Bigezine in your hub so it is non clickable.

@WebsiteConfetti Yes, you should send the Email to them.

@internetgeek thanks ill send them an email. It's confusing as the whois states the register as "name.com", Maybe thats just one part of softlayer though

@WebsiteConfetti And the whole Email is as follows, if you want to read more about the reply from them.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Protected Domain Services concerning bigezine.com. Protected domain services is not the owner, formally referred to as the registrant, of this domain. When a registrant purchases a domain, the governing authority that oversees domain names (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or "ICANN") requires that the individual provide valid contact details for the domain. These contact details are indexed in a publicly available registry and search-able through "whois queries". You can perform a whois query on this domain through a variety of sites, including www.who.is. Recognizing that some registrants may not want to display their contact information publicly, ICANN allows for companies to offer privacy protection services to registrants. Privacy protection services replace the registrant's contact details available in the whois with the contact details of the company offering the privacy

protection service. However, the registrar of the domain maintains a record of the registrant’s contact details. For the domain bigezine.com, Protected Domain Services is providing privacy protection services. Please note that Protected Domain Services is not the registrant, owner, or registrar of this domain.

We have provided the URLs in your last email and requested the registrant take steps to remove the content and respond to Protected Domain Services. If the registrant fails to confirm that the content has been removed then

the whois privacy protection service will be disabled 24 hours after the notification has been sent to them. The

registrant's contact information will become publicly available at that time and search-able through whois queries.

You may also want to consider other avenues to address this issue. If you feel the website violates any applicable copyright laws, providing a properly formatted Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or "DMCA", complaint to the web host provider may be the best way to proceed. You

can find more information about the scope and application of DMCA complaints at www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf. Unlike Protected Domain Services, the web host has access to and can directly affect the content of bigezine.com. The domain bigezine.com appears to be hosted by Softlayer Technologies Inc. This company's phone number is +1-214-442-0605 and they can be reached by email at abuse@softlayer.com.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We would be happy to provide further assistance. We take complaints of this nature seriously and are actively moving forward to investigate this issue.

Thank you,

Ryan

@WebsiteConfetti When I sent an Email to the hosting comppany (at abuse@softlayer.com), I got the Email from them. I'm posting some of the part from the Email as per your question.

The domain bigezine.com appears to be hosted by Softlayer Technologies Inc. This company's phone

number is +1-214-442-0605 and they can be reached by email at abuse@softlayer.com.

if the domain is registered through Name.com, could a complaint be made to the register? Their terms of service under Acceptable Use states that the following is prohibited

"Content or actions that infringe the trademark, copyright, patent rights, trade secret or other intellectual property rights, or any other legal rights of Name.com or any third party;"

The thing that really annoys me about this is all the traffic they're getting!

btw their information isnt protected on enomcentral yet. looks like he goes under the business/website name "Submitex"

http://www.enomcentral.com/whois/Default.aspx?Doma...

@WebsiteConfetti They have changed to protected domain and their information is protected (hidden).

I see that this persons email has been posted here. Has Hubpages checked their members record to see if this person is silly enough to hold an account here?

I have a hub with step by step instructions for finding and reporting plagiarism. I had a bunch of stuff stolen last year. I was full of anger but I now believe we have the power to help reduce the plagiarism. One of the plagiarists sent an email apologizing for his behavior. I guess it gave me hope. Anyway, I got rid of my anger by writing the plagiarism hub.

I havent got many hubs so couldn't find any of mine stolen yet but as a blog owner this is something I worry about, and has happened before, so I can understand the frustration and it makes my blood boil....

But something is really odd about all of this.. currently their front page article is "my hub is stolen what do I do now" by hubber Daughter Of Maat. Is this their way of taunting Hubbers? They've even added a huge pirates picture...

How are they earning revenue? There's no google ads, just 1 banner...

Does anyone know if the stolen content is just from hubapges or other writing sites too...

What thieves.

I wish we did not have to mess with plagiarism. However, the author is responsible for follow up according to Hp and Google guidelines and forms. That is why we must alert each other so we can fix it in a timely manner. I wish there was a forum thread for that alone Thanks for alerting us.

They work fast... just like my hub, their robots stole your hub the same day you published it... They do not even have pictures for their "writers." Loved the hub! Voted across and shared!! Thanks for writing it!!

I could not say it as eloquently as Born2care2001, but think his approach is best.

Born2care2001, I totally agree with you. I hate that people are dishonest and steal, but people will always be that way. Let's not let it stop us from contributing beauty and truth to the world!

I know there is principle here, with which I agree, I just felt compelled to share my thoughts.

I cannot point the finger anywhere else. I do not blame. I accept responsibility for my own actions and in my case, no matter where or to whom I write, the pen will always be mightier than the sword!

No plagiarist, no rule of law, no rogue website can steal my heart. They may take my words and hopefully, if they are truly kind words, they will take off into the earth with abandon.

Hang in there people and focus on what brings you joy and peace and love. If that is money, so be it! If it is truly the the satisfaction of contributing to the art of the word smith then write, no matter where it appears!