Dear readers,
It was brought to my attention that another website has been copying several of my complete blogposts and reproducing it in its entirety on their site. By the time I was alerted, I had a trip planned and have not able to address the situation until now.
First of all, I would like to personally thank the author of I-Luv-Dolls for bringing this whole sordid incident to my attention and keeping me informed over the past month. I would also like to thank the author of Black Doll Collecting for her efforts and information on combating this problem.
Since January of this year, myself and other bloggers, have been victims of "bot scraping" by a website that professes to report doll news from around the world. Bot Scraping or Web Scraping is the practice of using programmed software (bots) to extract large amount of data or content to post on another site without crediting the source. And while all of my identifying tags were left intact, if someone were not familiar with my blog, it would be easy to surmise that Fashion Doll Stylist is produced by some sort of publishing group WHICH IS NOT THE CASE!!!!! Moreover, by publishing my blog on another site, I am robbed of visitors to this page.
As all of you are well aware, my blog which is in its 10th year, (on the Blogspot platform) is completely produced, written, photographed and published by one person....ME!!! I do not receive any money for my hard work or the materials I use in producing my doll fashions. My blog is a labor of love. I do not mind sharing my knowledge, my love for dolls, all my experiences with others. I only ask that before reproducing anything, I am informed prior and that credit is given to me. That's all. And for the most part, whether it has a photo or a tutorial, most of the time others have complied and I thank you for that.
But in this case, I am particularly upset because the people behind this website never requested my permission or that of any of the other blog authors from whom it has STOLEN content. Moreover, it REFUSES to take down content when requested!
With that, I urge anyone else whose work is susceptible to be impacted, to read the April 6 post of Debbie Garrett's Black Doll Collecting for a detailed idea of the problem and what she tried to do to regain control of her work.
If you have a blog on Blogspot, you might want to go to the offending website to see if your posts have published without your consent. Then return to Debbie's April 10 post "Updated Settings" for a few updated ideas as to how you might stop this from happening to you. w
I will be publishing this first before changing my settings so that should this website decide to "scrape" this post, they will alert their own readers as who really produces Fashion Doll Stylist and how I feel about their practices. And then I will adjust my settings in hopes that it will put an end to future work being taken.
We'll return with our usual type of fashion related posts shortly.
April