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Stealing Not Allowed
Suppose you wake up one morning, and realize as you make your way to the kitchen that someone has broken in overnight and stolen your belongings! You never heard anything – you slept right through it. And yet, they’ve taken some of your most valued possessions. You feel violated. You’ve lost your sense of security. It’s a disruption, it’s disturbing, it makes you feel sick…. You try to figure out exactly what is missing, what exactly they have taken, and you wonder whether you’ll ever get any of it back or even more importantly, whether you can ever feel safe in your own home again. They’ve not only stolen your stuff, they have destroyed your peace of mind. Very upsetting. I’ve been fortunate. (Knock wood) no one has ever broken into my home. But I’ve felt that same sense of violation and it forever altered my peace of mind…. How? I’ve been plagiarized. People have stolen my written work. Except for the fact that there are no police I can call, nor fingerprints left behind, it’s that same sense of being violated – that someone has taken something that belongs to ME – MY work. And just like a thief would sell stolen jewelry or electronics or household items on Craigslist, those who stole my words have published them online,perhaps even pretending they were their own. It’s wrong. It’s unethical. It’s against the law…. and it happens every day. Further – not only has it happened to me; it has happened to at least two of our Alliance members, too. I know this because in both cases, they wrote to ask me what they should do. How could they get their stuff back? !! In both these cases, the advocates who wrote to me found their own words on someone else’s site. But that’s not the only way plagiarism takes place…. If you have a website or a blog and someone else has ever posted to it – from a webmaster, to a PR person, to a guest blogger – YOU may have plagiarized without knowing it! If you have…