My backlink creation is very irregular - maybe tha's causing the jump from page to page. Because I'm in China, I've got to use a vpn, so my ip address is changing a lot - maybe that's got something to do with it as well. Don't know...I'm not a techie-guy...yet!
As for contacting the guy, I tried but there was no email address I could find so I left a comment on his post. I'll look into contacting his hosting provider. Thanks. Oh and check you PM box, I sent you one.

Hey don't let people steal your content without doing anything. Contact the guy and tell him that's he's not allowed to do that and that if he wants to republish your article, he needs to give you credit for that (link included). That's the rule. If he doesn't reply contact his hosting provider and tell them about it. They will contact him and make him aware that his site can be shut down if he doesn't do anything about this. Maybe it's too harsh but we don't work for free for... thieves.
About your google ranking on the 1st and 2nd page, it's strange that your moving from such a high spot down to the 2nd page! It gotta have something to do with how your competition create their backlinks. Are you creating the same amount of backlinks on a daily basis?