So you say you're not a Web designer

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Yesterday, as part of an ongoing but probably futile effort to increase 
my Web site's ranking on Google, I put quotes around a phrase from my 
tag line and clicked Search. Usually this brings up only my own site, 
which I then dutifully click.

However, this time it brought up two listings. The _other_ one led me to 
a site that was plagiarized wholesale from my own--meta tags, style 
sheet, graphics, site architecture, page layout, tag line, and verbatim 
home page (and nearly verbatim the other two main site pages). The cell 
background colors were changed to protect the guilty. (I shared the link 
with Lisa Admin Bronson, and she can confirm that the copying was 
blatant.) Needless to say, I was a tad upset.

So I spent a good part of the day trying to track down the ownership of 
the site and pursuing various interactions with hosting companies, 
Google, and an intellectual property attorney (left voicemail, never 
spoke with him).

When my SO got home last night (actually we're going to get married, so 
I guess I can call her my fiancée now, but that just sounds so--I dunno, 
check out the Craig's List greatest hits and you'll know why I don't 
want to use that word) and I showed her the offending site, she offered 
that perhaps the site owner was an innocent victim of an unscrupulous 
Web designer.

This morning I wrote as diplomatic a note as I could manage to the site 
owner. She replied quite promptly, mortified that her "friend" had done 
this, and took the site down immediately.

From my point of view, the incident is over. All's well that ends well. 
The dogs have been called off.

But the techwr-l tie-in is this: If you are considering starting your 
own writing business, either full-time or moonlighting, beware of 
entrusting the front door to your business to someone else. At the very 
least, ensure that the words on the site are your own, even if you 
really, really, really don't want to learn how to build a simple html site.

Thus endeth today's lesson.

Dick

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