permaculture

[paul wheaton <paul@richsoil.com>]

Every few months I get obsessed on some topic and write an article -
and I usually spend about 40 hours over the following month polishing
it to make it just right.  And then I find it copied and pasted
somewhere without any credit to me.   This has been happening more and
more.  Today's examples is this article on soil ph (
http://www.richsoil.com/ph/ ) which has been copied here (
http://www.reelyard.com/?p=11 ).

In the dozens of times in the past when I contact folks that do this,
I try to convince them to change it to "here is an article I like" -
maybe have a paragraph and then a link to my article.  Instead, about
half the time I get some bullshit about how they wrote it first.  So
then I go to the wayback machine and prove I wrote it first.  Then
they say that there is no such thing as copyright on the internet.
They are nearly always livid pissed that I could be such an asshole
about it.  Well ... it just ends up a big hassle.  In the end, they
usually delete it and I feel like crap for having hassled them.

So I already have a way of confronting them that turns into a big shit
storm and ends up with them sending me all sorts of nasty and after
all sorts of pain, they finally delete it.

I want to find an approach so that the response is "sorry about that -
let me make it right by making a link to you and telling folks your
stuff is good!"

So I'm fishing for suggestions.  Any ideas on how to approach these
most recent offenders?