Today I chatted with CBC {Listen HERE} about one of the biggest negatives about being a blogger...

Besides the obvious one of SAFETY...I mean the Internet is a weird & wild place and this is always in the back of my mind. And of course beyond the annoying one of receiving without asking for everyone else's "Judgement And/Or Advice". Everyone has something to say about something - "You didn't do up the car seat strap correctly", "You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain","You shouldn't support this or do that". 


The other real frustrating part of being a blogger is photo theft...That uber annoying thing not only bloggers have to worry about but absolutely anyone whose ever posted anything on the web. So what's that like 98.9% of people?


Back when I first started writing I remember another blogger telling me to make sure to watermark all my photos - I had discovered that a Down syndrome site in South America had taken a photo I posted of Pip and cropped out my watermark adding theirs. Since then, I've seen many different websites or Facebook pages crop or blur out Happy Soul Project's watermark & claim pictures of Pip as their own...


But thankfully up to this point, from what I've seen, my photos haven't been used extremely negatively - This one however, well this one takes the cake. So from this photo stolen off my blog or Facebook page;

To this...


It's so bizarre right? However, other images of children with Down syndrome are stolen and used in the most disrespectful of ways - I know other bloggers who are fighting sites, companies & individuals because of stolen images of their children used without their permission and in such a derogatory way, including the momma I talked with CBC about today


Fellow blogger Christie Hoos wrote in a blog post last week that one of her favourite photos of her daughter Rebecca was on the Swiss biomedical firm Genoma’s website and on a building in Madrid, Spain, as part of the company’s marketing for genetic testing, “As if she were a cautionary tale: Don’t let this happen to you.”

Read article HERE
And while I get the whole argument from people who say things like "Well You chose to put a picture on the Internet, what did you expect?" or "Your children didn't ask to have their photo up" - For some bloggers, like myself, we are choosing to share our lives in hopes that it helps others. I'm choosing to share my life as as momma, what life is like raising a child with Down syndrome to help change perspectives. I'm choosing to share so that bloody companies for genetic testing have no reason to even imply the value of a child with Down syndrome's life. 


No one, not doctors, not pharmaceutical companies, not free stock photo sites, no one should have the power to decide the value of someone else's life. 


Fight on...