Should I raise an invoice?

Should I raise an invoice, or do I offer my services?

An organisation called “Madrigal Communications” (which seems to be a bloke and an internet site) has lifted the meat out of one of the posts here in my blog, added one sentence at the top, and three at the bottom which are soliciting business, and put the whole thing up on-line. He did this in November, but the credit’s just turned up here. Oh, and he has miss-spelt “Behn” but there you go. Ironically, he offers proofreading services. At least he doesn’t offer ethical advice.

So, the question is, do I send him an invoice for the time I spent putting the original blog together which was a professional lifetime plus a couple of hours? You could argue “no” because what he has lifted are quotations from Einstein, Kipling, Aristotle and Lewis Carroll which are in the public domain. On the other hand, the “Questions” series is the result of a good couple of decades thought, the post he’s lifted them from is about a specific category of questions to be used for a specific kind of analysis, and I make it plain that I ask questions for a living. It seems he doesn’t, though he does write for a living and is trying to get business off the back of my blog post. Or maybe I should be grateful that he credited me at all.

Bugger the internet.

Photo later in the day, I think.

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I just received a very pleasant and honourable email saying that he’s removed the post from his site. I’ve reminded him that he can wrap his own words around the Kipling questions, and pointed him in the direction of my source material for the Carroll and Aristotle questions. To be honest, if he’s soliciting for business for his writing skills, then it would do no harm to cut out my list of questions and use the space for his own words. I do hope he does. I didn’t create the questions, just the thinking about them expressed in my post.