Maybe it was because I had gone cold turkey on coffee.
Maybe it was because I am sick and tired of people stealing ChurchMag’s content.
Maybe it was because I was being a jerk.
No matter the reason—or excuse—my response to Michael Ernest was rude and not Christ like.
Here’s what happened…
It Was A Dark and Stormy Night
I was going through my daily morning routine when I came across a few pingbacks that required some investigating.
Once again, I had found a ‘scrapped’ blog post.
For those that don’t know, scrapping is the act of copying an entire blog post, without permission, and reposting it as your own. It happens all the time and is really uncool. In fact, there has been one website that I have been fighting with to remove thousands of our blog posts for a few years now, still to no avail.
To make this particular scrapping more maddening, was the fact that the post was found on a Christian’s blog! What the crap!?!
That’s when I overreacted (this isn’t the first time, either).
The Email
I sent Michael a really, really nasty email. I didn’t use foul language or anything, but I am pretty sure you could feel the hate radiating from it. I even went as far as starting a DMCA takedown!
Shame. On. Me.
I had assumed the worst and behaved terribly. I should have sent a nice inquiry, I should have not sent a DMCA takedown without having all the facts, I should have not over reached.
But I did.
Michael Ernest’s Grace
It would have been really easy for Michael to snark, bark, or bite me back. You certainly attract more flies with honey and there was nothing sweet about my words. This was entirely unfortunate, as I was about to eat them.
It turns out it was a simple misunderstanding by someone who was helping him with his blog. It was a naive mistake and nothing else. While it was technically scrapping, there was nothing intentional about it. I had cried foul, but there was no blood.
Despite my rude response, Michel removed the post, apologized, educated his assistant, and we emailed each other, back and forth, for the rest of the day.
LOL
I apologized for my angry response and Michael and I had a good laugh at the end of the day. After sending almost 20 emails back and forth to each other, this was the subject line of our conversation:
Yup.
“Dear Content Thief…”
LOL!
But wait, there’s more.
Not only did Michael show me a lot of grace that day, he also became a ChurchMag contributor.
You can find his first ChurchMag blog post (and future posts) here. 🙂
Rachel Blom says
I gotta admit, I can understand your frustration. I’ve had my fair share of people just scrapping my content and it drives me crazy. I do wish there were more legal options available to fight this form of theft.
But points for you for admitting you were wrong and even blogging publicly about it! And of course major grace points to Michael 🙂
Eric Dye says
🙂
Michael says
i can completely relate! I had a church steal my entire website (cut and paste code) our church branding, logos, even vision statements. At first I was very frustrated and tried to get the Pastor to remove it, but he ignored me. After a while I just figured it is what it is. Thanks for the honesty something encouraging seeing real emotions and growing from them!
Eric Dye says
That’s crazy!?!? They even copied the vision statements!?!
I feel your pain…