Dear Readers,
It has come to my attention that a website at http://www.beekeeperguide.com is publishing my daily posts, verbatim with photos, without permission and without any attribution to HoneyBeeSuite.com. The person responsible, Nick Winters, is selling a book and using my posts as a sales tool.
Although I often grant permission for the use of my material for non-commercial purposes, I do not allow it to be used for commercial enterprises. I have nothing whatsoever to do with his book called “Beekeeping 101: Beekeeping Made Easy.” I do not endorse his book, nor do I receive any remuneration from sales.
I have asked Mr. Winters to remove all of my material from his site within 48 hours. In the meantime, please be aware that his material is heavily promoted on Twitter under hash tags such as #beekeeping, #beekeeper, #bees, and #honeybees. Thank you for reading.
Rusty
Not cool, Mr. Winters.
This guy is a real slime bag. Can I say slime bag? I’m ready to bust down his front door right now. Come on, who’s with me? Let’s get medieval on this bottom feeder. Unbelievable.
Jerks like Nick Winters, if that’s his real name, are why I remove comments on my little blog from people who are really just trying to leave a link to some website where they’re hawking their junk. I see it all the time.
Some online beekeepers are good people who have provides tons of well informed free information on their websites. But this guy is just a scam artist. Most of the information he’s posted on his website is copied from other sources. I wouldn’t be surprised if the books he sells are plagiarized.
It gets even better: Whatever he’s using to copy your posts, it’s done automatically. He’s even copied your Copyright Infringement post to his website.
Me again. I looked in more detail at this scam artist is doing. He’s selling electronic copies, probably PDF files, of various books, not just books with his name on them. Basically, he’s selling stolen merchandise. I may inform the authors of the some of books he’s selling what’s going on.
Unreal! What’s wrong with people??? Although…it is hilarious that his feed updated with this post as well, so it says RIGHT ON HIS BLOG that he is stealing your work.
Including this post . . . apparently he set up a link so it copies your blog automatically. Maybe you should keep re-posting this until he notices?
You could also put a link to your website at the bottom of all your posts, like a signature line. Most people don’t find this offensive at all.
LOL – they even copied this post!
The best part is, since he is just stealing directly from you and not even copy and pasting, he unwittingly posted your copyright infringement notice. LOL #MrWinters http://www.beekeeperguide.com/uncategorized/copyright-infringement/
I’m sorry. It’s not really the best part. There is no best part. He’s a chump.
Nice catch Rusty. Stick it to him.
Or you could write a post that begins:
My name is Nick Winters, and I’m a scam artist. I steal whatever I can for free off the internet and repack it into a E-books that don’t cost me anything to make. Then I sell it all to suckers by fooling them into believing that I’m an actual beekeeper and convincing them they’re getting a great deal!
I don’t know if he repackages stolen material, or exactly what he’s doing. But does it matter? He’s definitely stealing from you.
Anyway, then you wait for the post to show up on his website (it doesn’t seem to take long), and then delete the post here. You could update this post with a note to explain what you’re about to do, and then remove that notice once it’s done too.
That might be fun.
By the way, I contacted one the authors of one of the books on the website, and he said despite the copyright infringement, Nick Winters seems to be a legitimate sales agent because of his “Clickbank” affiliation. I don’t know what to think about that. Is everyone associated with the website just in it for the money?
Some info that might be useful to you:
http://www.copyscape.com/respond.php
Annoying: http://www.whois.net/whois/beekeeperguide.com
http://www.clickbank.com/network_abuse.html
Might prove to be a better resource, perhaps telling you who is behind the hijacking of your work to run their affiliate link program(probably via here: http://www.discoverbeekeeping.com/affiliates/). The Nick Winters guy likely is not the one doing this, but is still a scammer.
Specifically, this page:
http://www.clickbank.com/dmca.html
As an ex paralegal, I think you need to print “all material on this publication (blog) is copyrighted and written permission is required for any commercial use or re-publication”. It has to be copyrighted to be protected. Simply including copyright pending may be sufficient. My legal knowledge is dated and limited. You really need an attorney I think. Good luck.
Oops, see that you already do that, bottom right. Sue the bastard.
It’s also at the bottom center.