Blogger Accuses Redbook of Ripping Off Her DIY Project

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In 2011, blogger Jen Yates (she runs the popular site Cake Wrecks) came up with a great way to store her flip-flops: bending and stretching a wire hanger so it had hooks on the sides for holding the shoes. She posted the instructions on her "geekery and girliness" website Epbot. The final image became a big hit on Pinterest and got repinned a lot. That led to issues for Yates, who hadn't watermarked the image, but she reached out to individual bloggers and asked them to credit and/or link to her. But when Redbook magazine ran a piece that included a remarkably similar flip-flop-hanger image, Yates took to her website to complain.

Yates wrote a post entitled "Shame On You, Redbook Magazine" on Epbot, posting images of both her original project and the version in Redbook. Unlike a lot of bloggers and artists who have accused big publications of knocking off their work, Yates has a huge following and was able to get Redbook's attention. They addressed the issue on their Facebook page:

Thank you, everyone, for bringing this to our attention. We did run a version of Jen Yates' idea in our story without crediting her — it was an unfortunate oversight on our part. We promise you that the mistake wasn't intentional, and we deeply regret it. We'll make it right by crediting Jen online, as well as in a future issue, and compensating her, as we do all our contributors. We agree with all of you that it is essential to give credit where credit is due.

Yates has reportedly asked Redbook to donate the fee to charity and to do an article about "Pinterest and how it drives traffic to smaller blogs and helps spread ideas."
· Redbook Ticks Off Internet After Copying Blogger's Idea [Consumerist]
· H&M Rips Off Atlanta Artist, Does Damage Control on Facebook [Racked]