Facebook friendships can be a
tangled web – or a prize fight.
I received a friend request the
other day on Facebook. Hey, it happens. But this time, it was a little weird.
Frankly, I didn’t recognize the
person, but we had lots of mutual friends. Plus, she apparently belongs to
several of the same special-interest/recreational groups to which I do. So I
accepted her friend request.
That’s where the trouble started.
Before the day was out, I spotted a
post she had put up in a Facebook group to which we both belonged. It linked to her
personal Facebook page and her Facebook business page as well.
The post quoted
one of my online articles – verbatim and in full – without permission for
publication.
It was copyright infringement,
plain and simple.
My publisher does not take kindly
to such things. So I messaged this new “friend” and informed her as kindly as
possible that the information was copyrighted.
Hey, maybe she didn’t know about
copyrights, plagiarism, and publication laws. Lots of people don’t. Or, at
least, they claim they don’t.
I suggested she remove the post
(and all shares of it) before the publisher spotted it and possibly took
action.
Apparently, she did remove the offending
posts. But she also removed me promptly from her Facebook friends list.
This person, who approached me
first and whom I still don’t even know, was friends with me for about six
hours. That was it.
No harm, no foul. Right? Maybe …
or maybe not.
Facebook does not issue
notifications when someone dumps a friend. But it’s easy to tell, if one looks
at that person’s page and sees the “Add Friend” button. That’s pretty much a
dead giveaway.
So much for alerting someone ahead
of time to possible legal action. And so much for a new friendship.
Well, you can pick your friends,
but …
Image/s:
Vintage/public domain artwork
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