But WordPress does not encourage content theft. People who didn’t learn in school that it is against the rules to copy others are the ones at fault. Copyright is the law. WordPress.com free hosted blogs have a staff that works hard to protect the rights of copyright owners, as the law requires. I’m proud that they are.

As for bloggers who blog without original content, I would like to see these sites shut down. There is aggregation and republishing of content WITH PERMISSION and then copyright violation. The latter must end on the web.

First, the second post is in Arabic not Persian – which is Arabic. Well, a derivative. It’s hard to read as much of it is translated phonetically rather than precisely, but you get the idea that they are excited about the Plugin. BloggingPro is not a plagiarist, either.

When you publish a WordPress Plugin under the GPL license, the description of the Plugin must be copied, at least in part, to help describe the Plugin to the readers. If you wrote your Plugin description well, the clarity of your words to describe it is the best choice to help promote it. It’s like quoting a press release. You want your Plugin promoted, don’t you? If not, then why put the information into the WordPress Directory?

Think this through and be honored anyone paid any attention to your Plugin.

This is vastly different from plagiarism or content theft. Your announcement in the WordPress Directory DEMANDS it be republished, and its covered by GPL anyway.

Here is a good example.

Should I be pleased that they wrote a couple of original sentences?
Should I be upset that 90% of the “article” is simply copied from my readme file?
Should I give up before I even begin, accepting that I need to choose my battles wisely?

And, just to make things more interesting: I got a pingback from a posting… in Persian! Not even Google Translate knows how to decipher it. What do you do when you have absolutely no clue what “they” are saying about your blog posting? Do you accept such pingbacks or block ‘em?!!

What an amazing world we live in…

I assume that you have reported this to the WordPress support team. Is it their job to respond to such allegations to protect your content, especially within WordPress.com. They are strong advocates of copyright protection.

It is also your responsibility to teach your readers and yourself about how copyright works, especially about Fair Use to everyone can learn and blog in peace.

Thanks and good luck.