Don’t let this happen to you. And, take a lesson from this tale of plagiarism in the blogosphere.

Here is a bit of background: While doing some ego surfing on Technorati I noticed a blog called Cressfamily.com that linked back to The Client Side. I clicked through and started reading the post and realized that the words were mine. There was no mention of attribution or acknowledgement of myself as the source. It was simply blatant content theft. The reason the post linked back and I could find it on Technorati was that I had a put a link in the original post that referred back to a previous Client Side post and it remained intact when it was reposted.

I had heard of this happening to other bloggers (mostly to my fellow CAPOW friends) but could not believe it was happening to me. Does this mean I have made it big time? I feel so dirty ; )

And, to top it all off, the post underneath mine was ripped off from none other than Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch. Well, at least I know I am in good company.

Check out Scotts post and Techcrunch

Seems as though he copies, slightly edits by taking out key links to hide the real author's identity and then calls it his own. Anyone wanna bet he failed an essay or two for plagiarism in his scholastic past?!?!

Now the post he copied from The Client Side mysteriously came down today after Bryper came to my rescue, but the trial of it was caught on Technorati

Now for the real kicker – this person, Scott Cress, has a LinkedIn profile right on his blog. And, we were only two degrees of separation apart. He is a marketer from the eastern U.S. and we have a famous Canadian web pioneer as a connection point between us on LinkedIn.

It looks Scott has blogged for a while, so he should just know better. Can he claim ignorance? I think not. Is Scott a nice guy? I don’t know. Bottom line is that this is not cool. Not in any way.

What I hope is that this is a lesson learned. And, to show that I am not sore about it enough to hold a grudge, I am asking him via this post to come clean either by written comment or audio comment to +1 -206-666-2242 and explain his motivations. Enquiring minds want to know.

I’m waiting.