At last, it has finally happened, I've lost what respect I had left for Wicca on the web.. I have a best friend. A hell of a best friend. An outspoken, loud mouthed, brilliant, funny, gorgeous best friend. But for my orientation and her long-time spouse, I'd probably marry her. I see her everyday, online if not off, and she is a pleasure to be around, even if she is a bit overly sensitive to the things around her.
This best friend has a website. I love that website almost as much as I love myself. I visit it all the time, and it is a totally valuable resource for my personal Wicca practice.
How good is her site?
It is SO good that people have ripped it off. Not a little here or there, but the entire site at times.
She's more patient about it than I. She'll contact a person, ask them to remove it. Maybe even leave a subtle message, before contacting an ISP. MOST of the time, she gets results.
A few days ago, however, I found a site that not only stole her stuff (including things written in the first person! Nice to know the "I" my friend is can be passed along to other people!) but whose webmistress, an alleged Wiccan, had the audacity to state that some of the material on the page was copyrighted and should not be stolen. On a "credits" page she credited a FEW of the people she stole from (but not my friend) but not where credit goes-ON THE SAME PAGE This is all pretty common. Being responsible and being a Wiccan on the net is a rare combination. The story gets goofy, however, when she writes my friend to say that some of the materials on her page came from unknown sources and that it was the job of the AUTHORS of this material to search her site, find what was stolen and tell her.
This is worse than blaming the victim. I, too, am the author of materials on the net and I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is not my job to search your website and find who wrote the material you stole.
Materials can be found by doing a websearch, just take a line of any page and add it, in quotation marks, to a search box...
What possible stupidity can fill someone's head and have them put ANY material on a page without doing a websearch on it? Why would you reprint anything someone else had reprinted without sourcing it? Maybe that material is a LIE? Huh?
...Regardless, the stupidity, audacity and sheer ignorance it takes to claim it is the job of the author of materials to find you and claim their exclusive rights is so intense, so extreme, that I cannot imagine anyone over the age of 3 doing it.
It is not my job to force you to be a moral creature. It is not my job to make you do things the right way and it sure as hell is not my job to follow anyone around picking up after their godsbedamned carelessness. If you can make a webpage, you can check your damn sources.