Yesterday I wrote my first entry in a week and it felt good to do so and I sincerely hope that all my readers will return and will understand the reason for my brief silence, all except for one!
Someone browsed through my blog and STOLE an article. It was copied / pasted to another site, full of stupid publicity that have nothing to do with the subject of my entry and with pictures that in some cases where borderline pornographic! Needless to say I'm angry and frustrated about it.
The blog entry was Ines de La Fressange or Julianna Margulies, about L'Oréal's habit of using celebrities and erasing all their flaws. In it I refer to OeDansLo, a French blog beautifully written by Laure-Myriam with whom I've exchanged several tweets and emails. Since her article was the inspiration for mine it was normal for me to link back to her blog. In my mind this is the way it has to be done, isn't it?
Apparently for some it's not! It's Laure-Myriam who sent me an email yesterday with the link to the suspicious blog. It took me a few minutes to process it. At first I thought she was saying I had copied her article. I was wondering why she would think this especially since she had the link, I had tweeted a link love and thought all was good between us. This was a subject I had been thinking about for a while but I just didn't know how to present it and reading her article pushed me in the right direction. In mine I make it clear that she was the catalyst, that her article was the inspiration for mine.
Then I read her email again... I realised she wasn't accusing me in any way, she was linking me back to a yucky blog!
Of course it doesn't have a Twitter account nor does it have a facebook. I left a comment requesting to have MY article taken off the site but I doubt it will be published so I guess there's really nothing I can do about it.
I tweeted Jane from British Beauty Blogger to ask her if this had ever happened to her and sadly her response was, yes, many times!
Olivia from The Unknown Beauty Blog suggested I send a complaint to WordPress but considering the URL of the blog I doubt it's even on that service. I did a search and wasn't able to find it. Olivia herself was robbed recently. Some of her pictures where used by another blogger with no credit given to her. The same happened to Michelle from Lipstick Rules who's such a sweetie, Jessica from Beautyzine.... and so many others.
What I find sad in all this is that I always take the time to name my sources when I have them, I always link back to other blogs whenever they are inspirational in what I have to say. I tweet not only about my new entries to attract new readers but always make a link love tweet so other bloggers know I've mentioned them. For me, this is the right thing to do.
So please, leave our stuff alone! It takes a lot of work to write a blog and we deserve to be credited for what we do. If you're not ready to put in the hours, give it up or at the very least, link back to the original.
About the image, it, as well as others that I will be using in future entries, was created especially for Icaria's by City Lights, Painted Girls. I will introduce you to the artist in an upcoming post. For now, you can see some of her work on her facebook page here. If you visit, do give her a big "like".
