Dear Institute For Politics Democracy & The Internet

We at BlogCampaigning have long been fans of your blog. Some of our team members read your posts quite regularly, and we have admired your writing and insights. That is why it comes as a terrible shock to find that you have totally ripped off a post from BlogCampaigning and attempted to attribute parts of our team member's writing as your own.

While we realize that a lot of blogging is derivative, where one blogger links to another's thoughts or quotes another writer, credit is always given to the original author.

In the case of the post in question, we did exactly that to you. Our team member, Espen, quoted directly from one of your posts but credited you with the writing and linked back to your site.

It hurts us that you would not respond in kind. The fact that it happened a few months ago (and that we've only realized now) lessens the sting slightly, but doesn't erase it totally. Perhaps it was indeed an honest mistake. These things happen. If this is the case, we will accept an apology and offer one back to you for this post of ours.

Of course, it would have been much better if we could have simply posted a reply on your blog. However, by not allowing comments, you've made this rather difficult (and certainly not very democratic).

Thanks for your time,

-The BlogCampaigning Team