Stealing someone elses work.

Today I was searching the Internet for information on "The Milkman's workbench".
It was my dad who sold his old one to Christopher Schwarz, so I once in a while like to read about all the different places this little bench has been built.

I just random clicked on the hits that looked interesting, and one of them was from a site that offered an instruction in building a copy. I had hoped that they perhaps had found some novel idea to make it even easier or more user friendly to build etc.
Instead it was a copy of the original article as it appeared in Popular Woodworking Magazine a couple of years back. As it happens I have brought that issue with me on board this time, cause I like to read my older issues every now and then, so I checked to make certain that I was not mistaken.

A vague attempt had been made to incorporate a water mark from the site, but it was so poorly done it couldn't fool anyone.

My Friend Brian Eve told me some time ago that he had encountered a similar thing, and he had contacted Megan Fitzpatrick of PWM, to let her know what he had found.
So I thought that I would do the same thing.
Megan replied and thanked for the information which made me glad that I took the "trouble" to write a couple of lines and add a link to where I had found the information.

I don't know what can be done about it, but I guess that FW publications have got some sort of lawyer that might be able to approach the people behind the website.
After all they are the holders of the copyright to the article, so offering it like that is actually a way of stealing from them.

Most people have the courtesy to inform if they try to follow the advice of someone who has made a book or an article about it and this piece of work is being used as a direct source of inspiration during the build.
But is is still interesting to see how that particular person goes about getting the job done.

What I don't like is a downright rip off like what I encountered today, where another persons work was just copied and offered in a shameless manner, like the owner of that site had the right to do so. I am fairly sure that the only reason someone would do that is to get traffic to their site, and that way earn some advertising money.

I am a bit angry with myself because I couldn't spot the bad site while looking at my search hits, and I hate to think of that I might have helped generate 1 more click on some jerks page full of illegal stolen content.

Guess I just had to blow out some steam..