What I mean "online thieves" are the people booming in the Internet who steal your blog contents, online articles, or even worst, your blog or website itself. Isn't it annoying when you spend a day researching and writing articles, then suddenly, you will find out that someone had stolen your articles and reproduced them in their blogs as though they wrote them? I mean, perfectly similar as your original article. Same words, same sentences, same paragraphs, only different author. Grrrrr!
Maybe someone had not yet stolen your work, but believe me, someday, someone will do. I am not threatening you, but knowing the Internet is vast and worldwide, let's just take it as a possibility. So, before that day happen, it is better to be prepared as early as now.
To protect your work from future thief, copyright it. What it means is that if you are the author of a piece of work, you own the “copyright” to that work. Under the laws of many countries, your works enjoy copyright protection. You can permit or forbid others from reproducing, distributing, editing, publishing, displaying or performing your works.
If you do not want a full copyright protection, you can use a Creative Commons License and give certain rights to people to use, distribute or edit your work. Read the terms of the various types of Creative Commons Licenses that you can use and choose the one that best suits your purpose. For more information about Creative Commons, click here. In case you found out that your work was stolen, the first thing you should do is to identify what has been stolen. Next, find the thief and contact him if possible. Ask him for explanation and action. If the thief ignored you, contact your blog host and have it addressed. :D