I don't think you're encouraging them with these sorts of posts.. but I don't believe for a second they'd ever read this. This post allows your fans to flag them too, which should hurt their reputation and hopefully make them reconsider stealing someone else's work.

These sort of posts do often get upvoted by votebots really close to the 7 day payout time... so unfortunately the flag is really the only weapon at our disposal.. and reporting them to Steemcleaners via their abuse report form

I'm sorry this happened to you... but like you said... it was probably only a matter of time... Your stern face is pretty great though.