Amie, I suppose instead of plagiarism, this woman would have us writing "reformulated material." Or worse – "pre-owned creativity."

Wendy, that's probably the entire business model! LOL What irks me, though, is as you said in your first point – don't tell the writers it's plagiarism. There are some in our ranks who don't get that. And that's how this kind of practice proliferates.

If you're a writer, you MUST know about plagiarism and all its ugly forms. If not, you have no business hanging out your shingle.

What strikes me is the inability of anyone up the food chain to do anything. Do you think that was intentional or was it simply that there was no evidence of an actual person to go after?

What's hysterical is they printed their own names!! LOL Maybe that was the reason they were shut down. In the end, I'd love to think that their stealing your post outing them was an indirect "admission" that nailed them. They may not have realized it, but they may have passed along that information to someone who could do something about it. Wouldn't THAT be karmic?

1. Pay writers dirt cheap to rework articles (or maybe don't pay them at all). Don't tell the writer it's plagiarism-what they don't know, won't hurt them.

2.Take completed article and see if the search engines are indexing it; to make sure it's not duplicate content. Wouldn't want to be slapped by the Search engines.

3. If article clears, throw in affiliate links or ads. Then publish them on the site. If not, make your own changes.

So you see how much work they have to put in to get it done. LOL. The sad part is, these articles are less likely to get detected as plagiarism and also harder to prove that they plagiarized. This one knows what their doing with the 60% original pieces they want. If they do get caught and slapped by Google; what does it matter? They probably have numerous other sites waiting in the wings.

I panicked and immediately tried to contact them but there was no information on their blogs. I then went to today.com, since they actually owned the blog posts because they were paying me at the time and asked them for help. They did absolutely nothing. So, I googled did some research and found that the owners of the domain name were actually in Russia. I contacted godaddy which held the domain and reported them. I then found an online "cease and desist" order and emailed it to the blog owners. Of course I heard nothing. I was disillusioned and bordering on not even writing any longer.

I then decided to let everyone know so I posted about the plagiarism along with names, dates and detailed info on the plagiarizes on my blog. What happened next was ridiculous. I then checked the plagiarizers blogs the next day only to find that my posting, naming them was scraped onto their blogs as well. I then realized that this was some sort of automatic program they were using and there was nothing I could do. I left today.com and my two blogs because I could not bare the thought of seeing all of my work on other blogs.

Long story short, that was in April. I just the other day checked on the plagiarizers blogs and found they have all been deleted. Thank God.

I haven't yet found anyone copying from my active blog and hope I never do. It's very frustrating when you work so hard on your blogs only to be ripped off. It's even worse than someone coming into your home and burglarizing you because plagiarizers steal your spirit as well.

It should have read "Seeking writer to basically swipe copy from the Internet, mix it around, and pretend it's original."

That's truth in advertising.

Krista, I suspect it's due to the "extensive" work she was asking me to do. Right. Her own "deep embellishes" aside, she's still stealing someone else's stuff. And what sucks is she isn't even worried about it.

Next is right, Devon. We don't play games – we provide ORIGINAL work.

Wendy, I hope so.

Poetic Shutterbug, can you tell your story? I'd love to hear your experience.

I hope she nails them, Paula. Really, really hard.

Natalia, I only hope she got a LOT of emails like that from other professional writers. I warned her – she can't say she didn't know.

Sad that we need those clauses, isn't it, Eileen? I swear, it's getting tougher to be a writer.

Katharine, you're so right. She's not making any changes. Lazy people who would steal from others wouldn't lift a finger beyond paying slave wages for someone else to shoulder the blame. Wow, what a winning business model, huh?

Chantal, it's one of the reasons I stopped. People like that are shameful.

"The Deep Embellishments" would be a great name for a band. The group could perform songs that are 60 percent original — Strawberry Fields for a Really Long Time, Stairway to a Place That's Better Than Purgatory, Blowin' in a Stiff Breeze …