Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Blogging communities can do a lot for a writer: critiquing new material, spreading the word, and encouraging you to keep going. Today, I realized something else.

Your community protects you.

Over at ThisFish, Heather L. Hunter has built up a dedicated following, writing about her struggles and triumphs during early adulthood. She wrote many touching posts, like this popular story: "azure and coincidence."

A few weeks ago, two dedicated readers (web writers Mindy Childress and Brandon Rogers) started doing some detective work--discovering that a couple different blogs had robbed Heather's prose poem and pretended that they wrote it.

In a series of nearly 80 posts, her community rooted out scores of spineless bloggers who stole Heather's writing. It's difficult for freelance writers to prosecute this sort of plagerism alone, and webby copyright laws are still murky.

That's why it's wonderful to see Heather's readers fighting back, swamping these offending blogs with angry comments. Their vigilante policing efforts drove the phrase "azure and coincidence" to number one on the Technorati ratings.

This sort of monumental fact-checking effort was impossible before blogging, and I'm so happy to see dedicated readers in action. One of Heather's blogging readers--a New York writer named Ari--said it best:

"HA! Oh the poor souls - they have no idea with whom they are f***ing," she wrote. "Lawyers - a delightful necessary evil. Stealing from Heather? Bad. ivillage? Ouch, I don't want to even imagine the coven of esquires they have lolling about."

I'm fascinated by the whole thing. What would you do? What can web writers do to protect themselves?