When someone steals your ideas

I was generally advised not to talk about this. And out of respect for the people that gave me that advice and my esteem for the advice that I received regarding this I am not going to say much about it.

I have been working on a project for almost a year now and as usual I blog about different things I'm working on from time to time. I blog with the trust that when I put my ideas out there people will respect them and not steal them. Obviously, I was naive and it is more than apparent that I have a lot to learn still. I have done a number of posts in the past few months about a particular project/website that I am working on and lots of people showed interest in it which made me happy. However, one particular blogger continued to ask me about this project and in my naivety and stupidity I practically revealed almost everything about it to this person in detail thinking that they were just interested and enthusiastic about it.

One week later this person went and set up a website that was the exact duplicate of my idea and project that I had just blogged about in excruciating detail. To say I was shocked, hurt, and disgusted was an understatement. I do not steal other people's ideas or work so what this person did was beyond shocking to me. And they didn't even have the decency to try and hide it. They picked a domain name that was literally the equivalent of my original and lifted half the ideas from my post directly, do you know how long it takes to find a name for your website that isn't taken?! I spoke to a couple of people about this because I was so upset and my first impulse was to write a scathing blog post calling this person out but like I said, I was advised against it and so I won't, but it doesn't mean that I am not still disgusted. I have proof of this person's comments and WhoIS database records that show that my site has been in existence for over six months while theirs was purchased five days after I wrote the post detailing the idea of the project, not to mention the shockingly blatant similarities between this person's site and my post and my project.

I have kept quiet about this whole thing for over a month now because honestly, I didn't really know what to do. There is very little clear recourse for such things, especially on the Internet, but it is a huge shame that people are prepared to stoop to this level but I shouldn't be surprised.

For the last month, I have vacillated between giving up the project and continuing. Moreover, what is especially painful to me is that this person jacked my idea and hurriedly ran off to release a shoddy website before the release time of my project, as I had stated in the post. If I launch my project now, it will look like I am the one copying this person, when actually, it is the other way around. That is completely unacceptable to me and deeply worries me. I will not stand anyone thinking I copied my work, especially not from someone like this. I have put my heart and soul into this project for many months and painstakingly worked over every detail, only to have it stolen by a fellow blogger. I was probably going to hire a Top SEO Agency to guide me through content approach, keywords, audits, conversions, backlinks, etc. I had big plans for this project. Now, launching it is one thing, but the price of that is for other people to think that I am the one who copied, then I will not bother at all because such a thing is unethical for me. I do not steal other people's work!! If I use anyone else's work, I ALWAYS say over and over again, "this is not my original work!! I got it from so and so, only so and so the part is my original creation", and provide the link to the original content. I am beyond hurt that anyone, especially someone I thought I knew to some degree, should steal mine and then try to turn around and claim that it was their original idea. And the unbelievable part is, there is so much evidence that they did not even conceive such a thought until I had already blogged about it in detail at least twice.

I will not name any names, so please don't ask me to because I have promised not to talk about this and I have done my best in this post not to go into any specific detail about anything.

My question is this: Should I continue with the project or not? I want to desperately but I also am deeply repulsed by the idea of people possibly saying that I copied from this person just because they came out with it first when they actually copied from me.