This is a post that i was planning to do for some time now, but only today, i was able to arrange some time to think about and write it.
The title says it all. Bloggers steal from each other. Probably it s not the best title i could give to this post but i wanted to catch your attention. Probably a title like ” Giving credit is a beautiful thing to do” would be better. :p
What do they steal? They steal ideas, posts from each other.
Let’s see if i can explain this well.
I have been blogging for about a year now, and during this period of time i have read many blogs, and found many things that shocked me.
What “pisses me off” is the bloggers tendency to write about the same stuff at the same time. This is some what, normal when a new site launches and everybody wants take the opportunity while it is still hot. But what it should not be normal is when a blogger comes out with an interesting and original article, and others “copy” the article and don’t give credit for blogger “joe” for being the author, but are smart enough to change completely the phrases to mask the Plagiarism (i think this is the correct word), and after this genius brainstorming of changing the phrases, they manage to come with one or two phrases that were actually made by them. I can give you an example like a post called “10 tips for successful blogging“, that is copied, changed and then comes out like “11 tips for successful blogging“! wow!
Some bloggers take this into another level and wait weeks, even months before publishing copied post or, they post in a blog where they know that their audience does not read the blogs where they take the blog ideas. But for a blogger that reads some decent amount of blogs, will say: “wait a minute! i have read this before, where was it?”, or simply will say, like i said a lot of times: “ah come on! not another post about…..!”
So, who does copy, change and publish a post like it was their own creation?
Small bloggers? Sure. A considerable % of small bloggers (please don’t understand small as a diminishing word) will use this method to create posts, and due to their lack of experience (i hope) they forget to give credit.
And what about Big Bloggers? Surprisingly or not, i have found some of the considered big bloggers doing this (or worse), and getting away with it. And this is more serious than the small bloggers, because the big bloggers, will be the ones recognized by publishing the unoriginal post. Worse, they will be recognised for being the original authors of the post, and they will be the ones getting all the comments, all the trackbacks and all the exposure from blogs that correctly have the habit from mentioning the blog from where they got the post or idea for the post. This is unfair to who tries to come out with an original post (specially in this phase of blogging where all seems recycled content 
).
The main problem is not directly related on posting content from other blogs, as long they don’t duplicate the content. The problem is not giving credit to the true post author.
If you were to do an academic work, you would fail if you don’t discriminate your sources to accomplish the work.
We all make mistakes, an im no angel here, i remember that i wrote a few posts and i didn’t gave credit to the blog where i took ideas from, some i couldn’t remember from where it was, but that is no excuse.
So, in the next time, you are getting inspiration from another blog please give credit. Who knows if you don’t win a new reader?
Sharing information, improving a post from another blogger is healthy. That’s how things evolve, but just remember to give credit. 
You’ve hit it squarely on the head with this post. I’ve recently gotten into affiliate marketing and blogging. Like most, I immediately saw whom the the ‘big players’ were. I’d bounce around from blog to blog, only to see most of the same posts, only worded differently.
I do have some blogs that I regularly visit, and many that I’ve gotten much, very useful information from. However, after I’ve discovered that many (most ?) offer very little new, original content, there’s very few I look to for being my source of creditable posts.
Jeff’s last blog post..Quality Content - Here We Go Again
lucky for them the www is big, and no one seems to care about this…
I also get frustrated when just after I publish a post, I notice another blog that had written the same thing just a few hours or so before me. After experiencing that, I try and give people the benefit of the doubt that it’s just a coincidence rather than them stealing my ideas. However, I do agree that if someone genuinely did get the idea from someone else, they should give credit, especially if the post follows a similar layout/viewpoint.
Alan from Zero and Up’s last blog post..The “Why” Behind Your Blog’s Name
One of my friend’s post was stolen. this was an old story i think past few years..
the funny part was the blogger that copied the article didn’t leave any credit to my friend. except for an affiliate link of amazon associate that belongs to my friend…haha,.
mr.eims’s last blog post..9 Quick Tips To Quit Smoking
well at least that guy had the decency of leaving your friends affiliate links!!! lol really…. guys like that….shhh
You’re right. Sometimes it is hard to remember where you pick up an idea and I do tend to believe that sometimes the same idea happens to two people at the same time. It has been true in science where two researchers who know nothing about each other come up with the same idea right around the same time. I don’t have examples right now, but I can find them easily. Whether that is an butterfly effect of certain pools of ideas floating around the scientific community or not, I don’t know, but I digress.
But I usually use Google to jump start my memory when I think I have a post idea, just to be sure I haven’t read it before. If I did, then I link out because trackbacks can only help.
Then the question becomes, “How do you define stealing?” If you take fiction down to the plot, there are only a few plot lines in existence. Each novelist adds his own flavor. If I write a post about elephants and spice it up, am I still stealing from Wikipedia or is that something new?
Stephan Miller’s last blog post..Link Love for CommentLuv Blogs Part 1 of 3
i have recently studied the autistic disorders, and 2 of the main researchers came out with almost the same designation (autism) for children with “unusual” behaviour, almost at the same time, and none of them knew of each other research. The scientists are Kanner and Asperger.
I do believe that this can happen in blogging, but not has it happens now, to frequently.
about the term stealing, i agree with you, a novelist can add his own flavour, but in the end, he will always give credit to his inspiration sources. Here in Portugal there was a scandal with a young actor that decided to write a theatre play (is this how it is called?), the text he wrote was a complete success and was acclaimed by several critics, until it was found that this play was a not original and was based on a book from an almost unknown writer….
I don’t think stealing content from your blog is really a big problem. Google analyzes almost every content and will see that it got stolen, therefore not rank it high. If you want to run a successful blog then there is no way around creating unique, good content.
hendrik
hendrik, that is not the purpose of this post. This post is about bloggers taking content from other blogs and write in their words faking they were the genious behind it