I know some people think I over-reacted to this whole thing. So someone took a photo of yours and posted it somewhere because they were just wanting to share a cute dog photo with others.You should be flattered. Big deal. Get over it. That may be, and for a short while after the first encounter I was coming around to that idea.

But … it’s more the way the whole thing went down with the person (after being asked nicely) to take the photo down and them refusing. Said person kind of threatened me at one point and said (I’ll paraphrase here since their English was so poor and lapsed into what I think was Dutch) “you know well where it comes from, so secure it, delete it or ...”. In other words they were admitting that they took it directly from my blog.

FaceBook was very quick to remove the first photo. Thank You, FaceBook!

But … when I went back to their site to check, what did I see but two more photos taken directly from the same blog entry—posted after the other photo was removed. I left a comment again regarding taking down the photos, but when I went back in a few minutes later that person had posted the same two photos again (first time the photos had the date stamp of being posted 15 hours ago; the second time the date stamp was having been posted 8 minutes ago) and had banned me from commenting. Now they were on there twice. So in essence this person was poking fingers at me. On purpose. A pay-back I guess for reporting them to FB. Kind of like haha I know where you are and I can do whatever I like, so there. Just plain nasty.

I have to tell you I felt violated. Just like when I had my wallet lifted from my purse in Paris. It’s not like the photos were on Flickr or Tumblr, they were on my blog. They entered my personal space. And they did it not once, but twice.

Finally with the help of Carolyn leaving multiple comments to remove the photos, he did, before FaceBook could remove them. Thank you, Carolyn for your tenacious terrier work!

Again, I know this kind of thing probably happens all the time in these days of “free sharing” but this one felt more like a violation in the way it was done. Like someone came into my home and robbed me and then thumbed their nose at me.

Did I overeact? Maybe. You decide. Either way, it’s over now. At least I hope so.

Thank you for listening.

(photo: Things Aren’t Always Black & White) half-wet tree; Skylands