Define Fox in the Competitor Hen House

To remove a free content article from a client web site where we had posted it (with several others from different authors) to increase topical relevancy at a site that fit the article perfectly This article was submitted to free web content list archives which I'd found online. A search turned up dozens of additional uses across the web. I began to believe that this author simply didn't like the site that used the article and was seeking removal to avoid competition. We took it down to avoid an unnecessary battle over something we didn't wish tonight about. The site we used it on did compete with this person, but the client site has more to lose than the author, because readers could click through to the author site from the resource box link and gain the customer instead of the client. Having YOUR article on competitor's sites is an incredible marketing coup! You should be glad anytime this happens as long as they follow your use restrictions and provide live links from the resource box at the end of your articles. The client wisely saw topical web content for their site more valuable than the concern of that external link to the author/competitor. It does immeasurable good for your link popularity as well since that link comes from a relevant and on-topic site, rather than from a useless links directory. Your articles serve as 500 to 1200 word advertisements for your business and if it appears on competitor sites, it is as if you have been able to sneak in the back door and steal customers from the competing site via your article. Would you rather appear in random list of links, or have 1000 words to convince people to buy your products or services? All of this just baffles me as a content distributor. All of those authors that requested removal would gain a valuable one-way inbound link to their websites from topical and relevant content that increases their link popularity and their visibility. Why on earth would they want those articles, that notoriety, that credibility and the high quality links removed? When there is no copyright issue present, you gain far more from use of your article than you lose by having an article onsite you don't like. I've got articles lose in the world that I'm not proud of, simply because I've become a better writer since I distributed them originally. Several are outdated and recommend things that are no longer valid or, in some cases, not at all useful for current standards in search engine ranking - but that is because the search engine algorithms have changed and best practices have changed. That is why I now date my article copyright to clearly show the date associated with the article. But I would NEVER request removal of my articles from sites that have old articles posted. They will STILL be more relevant and valuable to me than any cluttered, off-topic reciprocal links directory, because they are a link within relevant text that gain link popularity and sometimes lead to new clients and further visibility. Removal of your articles from competitor sites would be silly in most cases and will reduce your visibility and your link popularity. Be the Fox in the Competitor Hen House instead of Chicken Little in fear of the article marketing sky falling.