There's something terrible happening in our beautiful corner of the Internet and I cannot stay silent about it any longer. In the past two months, two of my dear blogger friends have been
ripped off. Both of them had their templates stolen. Both of them had their content stolen. One of them had her blog name stolen! (I've even heard about another woman who put a right-click lock on her site to stop the thieves!) This is crazy!
There needs to be a strong code of conduct -- or a copyright lawyer who willing to fight for bloggers who want to protect their content and identities. How can we call ourselves "inspiration bloggers" when we're stealing inspiration from our colleagues? Or even from our friends? I realize that many of us are new to blogging and are still trying to figure out HTML.
Unfortunately, a lot of the templates you get for Blogger tend to look a lot alike. (Witness mine). But there has to be a way to make them look different enough that each person has their signature. There is a line between similarity and copying!
One of my friends -- who is probably one of the largest bloggers on Blogspot at the moment -- was so disheartened last night that she told me she wanted to quit blogging. If the Internet is really the medium of our future then we must make it original -- and more beautiful.
Bloggers, do you really want inspiration? Visit this site:
Make Better Websites.I would like to say this: We should make better blogs. Give credit where credit is due. And don't steal!
--Tina