Annoyed

I had written before that I found a web site that used snippets of text that were literally stolen from this blog for what is called a "Made for Adsense" advertising site. I've now identified other similar sites and one particular site that has copied my entire entry on Resources for Early Retirement, verbatim. Again, there was no attribution to my blog or any link back to this blog from that site. Others whose stolen material appears on this site include 2million, John Greaney, Suze Orman, and other bloggers. It appears that the sole purpose of that web site is to earn revenue from junk ads that appear there.

Annoyed is perhaps an understatement of my feelings. Someone else is making money off of the material that I wrote here, and I feel that this is a violation of trust to say the least. I created PFStock with the genuine intention of giving others my insights in the areas of personal finance and stock investing. I had never expected my writing to be plagiarized in this way. I sought assistance from Google, the owner of Adsense, but they have been useless in helping combat this problem. And why should they be? After all, Google makes money from these sites that steal copyrighted material from others. Considering these events, I am now seriously considering ending the publication of this blog.

Update: On the advice of JLP from AllFinancialMatters, I Emailed a cease-and-desist letter to the owner of the offending website. In the end, the offending website was removed. But, I am still annoyed by the whole situation.

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